CAMPAIGNERS believe they are on their way to helping save a former icon of Bolton town centre.

An application to make the former Bolton Palais de Danse a listed building is recommened to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport by English Heritage.

Karen Bradley MP will have to consider if the former dance hall, which was also home to a number of nightclubs before closing in January 2012, is worthy to be listed as a building of special architectural or historic interest.

The application for the listing, which would protect it from work which would affect the special interest of the structure, was made to English Heritage by the founder of the Save Our Bolton Palais de Danse campaign, Maggie Gallagher.

Speaking at the group's public meeting last night at the Holiday Inn in Bolton, Miss Gallagher said: "A lot has happened since our last meeting. I've applied for the Palais to be listed, it's a 12 week process but it's been a month already so not long to wait now.

"Hopefully it will be good news if we keep our fingers crossed.

"I have suggested we want to keep the building for an entertainment space for dancing and the performing arts. It's got a multitude of uses."

Campaigners fear site owner The Moorgarth Group – the property firm behind the revamp of the Market Place Shopping Centre – wants to demolish the iconic Arts Deco venue due to reporters of it being in a "terrible" state of disrepair.

However, they hope that by gaining listed status for the building the company would either reconsider plans for the site or put it on the market again.

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Bernard Cromarty, from Farnworth, compared the project to the work done at the Stockport Plaza, where the community helped to back a campaign to purchase the crumbling building from a private company as a trust, seeing it reopen in 2000.

"If English Heritage do award it Grade II listed status the building has to be restored to the nearest it can be," he added.

"It might be the group has the vision to do it but like the Plaza we could set up a charitable trust to come up with a business plan, attract investors and raise money to purchase the building. We could get things done with the right expertise."

Tracey Newns, of Westhoughton, added: "We have got the library which is beautiful, when you go down Great Moor Street you still see a lot of the old buildings there being preserved. Why can't we do the same here?"

Attending the meeting were a mix of former Palais patrons and former employees who worked in the building before its closure.

The Bolton News: REVIVAL: Dancers fill the floor once again at Bolton’s Palais de Danse for one night only
Also giving her support was Margot Jones, from Doffcocker, who appeared in BBC Two series You Make Me Feel Like Dancing which reopened the Palais for one night only at the end of last year.

She said: "I am concerned about the future of the Palais. It was a big part of my life, I would go there from when I was 12 to when I was 26!

"I would go back but how times could I go at my age? i haven't the energy, no one to dance with, there are more single women than men! But there are other dancers out there who could use it. There's Northern Soul, line dancers, and salsa classes are really big too!"

The next meeting of the campaign group will be announced in due course.

Moorgarth Group chief executive Tim Vaughan said he was unable to comment as he was on holiday but was not aware of any request to have the building listed.