A �100m scheme to regenerate Newport city will include a department store and a large food store, planners have revealed.

Kingsway shopping centre in the city centre will be revamped, with new shops and a new car park for 1,300 vehicles being built.

Work will start on the project in the autumn of 2003 and is scheduled to finish in two years.

This is the second piece of good news for the city, coming within a week of the announcement of a �750m plan to redevelop part of the Corus steel plant at Llanwern on the city's outskirts.

Two regeneration projects

Planners are reported to have worked hard to attract a top retail name to the centre, which the council has admitted needs regenerating.

The Llanwern site is also being redeveloped

Last week's announcement of the Llanwern redevelopment promised to bring thousands of jobs to the city.

Developers claimed the �750m programme would create an entire new suburb of the city of Newport creating 7,000 new jobs.

The plans, which will go before Newport City Council in October, include new housing, a primary school, industrial and commercial buildings and a range of sports and leisure centres.

Heavy steel making ended at Llanwern in July last year as part of Corus' slimming down of their UK operation.

A total of 1,340 jobs were lost - almost half of the positions to be axed in Wales - while the plant now processes steel manufactured on Teesside.

Now the company has agreed the sale of the redundant land to a consortium led by the Chepstow-based developers Broadhall Hampton which has drawn up the ambitious plans for the site.

Work on clearing the area has already started and is expected to take up to three years although that would not prevent redevelopment starting as early as the New Year.

The consortium also includes the house builders Barratt South Wales and AWG Development, the commercial and residential arm of the Anglian Water Group.

Tourism hopes

The city will also be looking for a tourism boost following the discovery of a medieval ship in the city's centre when work started on the foundation of a new art centre.

A campaign by local people to have the ship preserved was successful, with the National Assembly and Newport council securing the money to complete excavation work and save the ship from destruction.

Once restoration work is completed, it will go on public display on the site where it was found under a glass floor in the new arts centre.