West Dunbartonshire Leisure Trust — a charitable arm of the council — is seeking support for a four-story leisure centre it wants to start building within the next 18 months.

Today a public hearing will determine planning permission for the development, before the full council is asked for £150,000 to develop plans that will be put to the Scottish Government for final approval.

The centre, a replacement for the town’s Playdrome, will according to council leader Martin Rooney mark a new dawn for an area of Clydebank that has lain desolate for a generation.

He said: “Clydebank has been blighted by the barren wasteland that surrounds the iconic Titan Crane for too long. I’m delighted that it is under this administration that we are about to change all that.

“The fantastic new leisure centre on adjacent land will be the first step on that journey. It will be followed by a new 150-bed care home and £15 million of infrastructure works to prepare the land for major development. The council has also received a proposal of application from the Dawn Group and Clydeside Regeneration for a development at Queens Quay including housing, retail, professional and financial services, restaurant, public house, offices, and hotel.

“These are exciting times for Clydebank and wider West Dunbartonshire.” The Queens Quay leisure centre will, if approved, sit next to West Scotland College by Aurora Avenue and Ossian Way.

It will include: a 25-metre swimming pool, a teaching pool, and leisure pool with slide and flume; a small cafe on the ground floor; a multi-purpose sports hall lined out to provide courts for badminton, netball, basketball, hockey and five-a-side football, with retractable seating at one end; a fitness suite, dance studio and combat room for martial arts; and office space, conference and seminar rooms.

Requests for a bowling alley and ice-rink were earlier dismissed by leisure chiefs as the new centre is designed to replace the playdrome and not add to the town’s existing facilities.

The project will be funded by the sale of additional land on the Queens Quay site.

There have been no formal objections to the proposal but the council needs permission from the government because it is their project and because the centre would be built on land originally designated for industry.

Meanwhile it is hoped the vacated playdrome will in 2018 be taken on by a commercial developer, with potential retail interests.