WORK on a £100million business and industrial park near a motorway junction is well under way with steelwork for the first giant warehouse starting to rise from the 60-acre site.

A new petrol and service station with shop, a drive-through restaurant and a coffee shop, is on track to open in July and planning permission was confirmed last week for a 150-bedroom hotel and conference and banqueting centre complex.

The main access road serving Frontier Park, Blackburn, off the Whitebirk roundabout next to M65 junction six, is also due for completion in summer. This will open up the site, owned by Blackburn-based brothers and founders of Euro-Garages, Zuber and Moshin Issa, for further development.

The first 185,000 sq ft warehouse is due for completion by Christmas. Talks are advanced with an upmarket national chain to operate the hotel while a local company is set to take half of a smaller warehouse when it is completed in Spring. Zuber Issa said: “This is a very exciting time.”

The full development, due for completion by 2022, will have five industrial/ warehouse units of between 94,500sq ft and 378,000sq ft and aims to create 2,000 jobs.

Work on electricity cables and drainage on the tree-lined traffic island between the Whitebirk and Red Lion roundabouts is under way. The new service station will include a Spar shop, a drive-through restaurant operated by Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Starbucks coffee shop.

Zuber Issa said: “This is a very exciting time for the development as the steelwork starts to emerge and people can begin to see the magnitude of what is happening at Frontier Park.

“We’ve got the new Euro Garages service area opening in the summer, followed by the completion of our first commercial building before the end of the year. There is lots of interest in our scheme from not only local, but national, and even international, occupiers.

“The recent full approval of the hotel and banqueting and conference centre also now enables us to push forward with delivering another aspect of the scheme and we expect to be able to make some more concrete announcements on this very soon.”

Cllr Miles Parkinson, leader of Hyndburn Council, said: “This is a fabulous development for our borough and the whole of East Lancashire. It’s excellent news it is powering ahead.” The land, a strategic site for the North West for more than 15 years has seen Nelson-Based Barnfield Construction undertake initial works.