A NEW 150-bed hotel and 400-space car park could be built on the site of the former Ikon nightclub and Palais de Danse building.

Plans have been proposed for the new hotel — complete with special rooftop bar — by the owners of the redeveloped Market Place Shopping Centre.

Developer Inception Holdings and its UK partner Moorgarth want to demolish the building at the corner of Bridge Street and St George’s Road, which many will remember as housing nightclubs including Ikon, Jumping Jacks, Ritzy’s and Cinderella Rockerfella’s.

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The plan is to also knock down a spiral car park ramp next to the building, which currently provides access to the Market Place.

The Ikon building was originally built in the 1920s as the Astoria Palais de Danse — a dance hall which existed on the site through to 1979.

Interest in the Palais was revived earlier this year, when the building took a starring role in a two-part BBC programme called You Make Me Feel Like Dancing.

The show — which involved couples being invited inside the former dance hall for a special performance — led to campaigners calling for the building to be restored as a dance hall.

But a bid to have it listed was turned down and it now looks like the dilapidated building could be knocked down to make way for the planned development.

The Moorgarth Group, the UK asset management firm of Inception Holdings, bought the building earlier this year and has always planned to link it to the Market Place centre — which has undergone a £30 million redevelopment including a nine-screen cinema and new restaurants opening in its refurbished vaults.

The building has been vacant since Ikon closed in 2012 and was bought by Moorgarth for around £500,000 at the start of the year.

The spiral car park ramp was built in the 1980s and the developer wants to recreate it with a new car park that will provide 400 additional spaces and improved access for cars and pedestrians visiting the shopping centre.

Inception said it initially looked at creating a hotel with traditional ‘double loaded’ corridors, with rooms on both sides — but this was considered to be inefficient and limit the views of staying guests.

Instead a single aspect hotel will be created facing north and east, providing views to the Lancashire moors.

The proposed building will have an elevated glazed rooftop bar and will aim to form a ‘strong gateway’ to the town centre.

Its lower floors will have a façade of red brick and glass panels, with the upper floors clad in white polycarbonate to match the new cinema.

A spokesman said: “The corner of the building is given emphasis by the additional floor of the rooftop bar and by the projecting canopies, reminiscent of the original Palais de Danse.”

Bolton Council leader Cliff Morris said he was pleased to see a plan put forward for an important part of the town centre.

He said: “We are looking at improving all the gateways to the town centre and so something needs to be done with that building.

“The developers know what they are doing and they are putting a lot of money into Bolton — this can only be good for the town.”