THE Water Place is most likely to be turned into a car park, it has emerged.

Hopes of the £5 million swimming complex becoming an entertainment venue or even a new pool have been dashed.

And that is because it is understood the foundations of the bulldozed site would not be able to take the weight of a new building without the additional spending of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

A buyer has not yet been found for the once flagship building although there has been interest from a number of prospective purchasers.

Rumours that supermarket giant Morrisons will buy the site have resurfaced. It is anticipated the firm will make a bid to build a petrol station on the existing store car park -- which is at the front of the supermarket and close to the road -- while buying the Water Place site for a relocated car park.

Neither Morrisons nor Bolton Council are in a position to confirm this but Stuart Knight, assistant director of corporate property at the local authority, said: "If a developer wanted to build on the Water Place site then they would need to carry out further ground clearance work but it is very expensive.

"What we have done is demolish the building to ground level. The most likely prospect is that the Water Place becomes a car park."

To place a building on the site would mean digging much further below ground level in a bid to find a solid base for a foundation. To complicate matters, the work would have to be carried out in conjunction with Network Rail because of the proximity of a track and that would add to the costs.

Mr Knight said: "We didn't feel it was necessary to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds more on digging up the pool itself.

"It doesn't mean a firm can't come in and build something at the front of the Water Place site though and use the actual site as the car park."

The Water Place remained open for 14 years but it closed nine months ago. The land will be sold for an estimated £2 million -- a cost that will not be affected even if it is sold on solely for car parking.

"It's a lucrative use of land," Mr Knight said.

There are plans in the pipeline to build a town centre pool elsewhere.

The Water Place was forced to close when it emerged that the building needed £4.5 million worth of repairs, a cost the local authority said was impossible to meet since a dwindling number of users meant the facility was leaking too much cash.