Tours planned of shopping centre

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A £500m shopping centre in Bristol is open to the public over the weekend.

More than 2,000 people are expected to tour Cabot Circus, in the city centre, which is scheduled to open in a year's time.

About 1,200 workers are currently on site, with hundreds of jobs still advertised in the project office.

The remains of several dead bodies, hundreds of years old, have so far been found under the former C&A store, which used to be a tabernacle.

More than 2,600 new car park spaces are planned, to serve the 15 new major stores and 150 smaller retail units spaces in the centre.

It's a new mixed-use gateway for Bristol Bob De Barr, Bristol Alliance project director

Bob De Barr, Bristol Alliance project director, said: "The project is reasonably well advanced. There are a lot of men here working hard and very long hours.

"This is a mixed-use scheme. We've got affordable housing, market housing, offices, food and beverage, a cinema as well as retail.

"It's a new mixed-use gateway for Bristol."

Ray Brown, construction manager, added: "The biggest challenge is feeding the site - getting materials in and out."

The centre has about 75% of its shop space filled to date.

The centre should be open in 2008

Tours start at 0900 and finish at 1600 BST, on a first come, first served basis.

Cabot was chosen as the official name for the centre after a public vote.

Some groups had complained the first suggested name, Merchants' Quarter, was offensive because of its connotations with the city's slave trading past.

Bristol Alliance, which is behind the project, chose to add Circus.

John Cabot was a 15th Century Italian explorer, also known as Giovanni Caboto, who moved to England and settled in Bristol, from where he set off on many of his epic voyages.