CAMPAIGNERS are urging arts lovers in Dorchester to back a town centre theatre development.

Developers announced earlier this year that they want a 500-seat auditorium and 80-bed hotel to form the cornerstone of the former Eldridge Pope site in Weymouth Avenue.

Brewery Square Ltd has said it will donate a 35,000 sq ft listed building, known as The Maltings, to local arts groups on a long lease with a peppercorn rent providing cash is found to convert it.

The planned arts centre could include a 500-seat auditorium and be used as a theatre, cinema, lecture room or concert hall.

Dorchester Arts Action Group wants people living in the town to get behind the plan and are organising a public meeting to raise the profile of the planning application.

Group chairman Clive Gameson said the opportunity being offered to the town with this development was too good to miss. He said: "Dorchester is a wonderful county town but the one thing it does lack is a good community arts centre.

"If people become really interested in this project and if planning approval is granted it would be so good for the town. It has the main car park opposite and it's straight off the railway station - it's in a prime position for audiences and performers coming from all over."

Mr Gameson said planners needed to know that the town wanted a new community arts facility and hoped that if people knew more about it they would write to West Dorset District Council to encourage them to give it the go ahead.

Brewery Square director Andrew Wadsworth said he would be at the meeting to give a presentation about the proposals.

He said: "We think it's a fairly extraordinary state of affairs that that county town doesn't have a decent arts centre or theatre.

"What we want to do here is to give a charitable trust, or the council, a significant leg up by giving them a building that is a long way down the line in terms of planning.

"Clearly there is money available from the lottery or the Arts Council for projects like this and we hope that by making the building available it will help the town get the arts provision it deserves."

The meeting, in the Magistrates' Room of the Corn Exchange, begins at 6pm on Thursday, November 11.