A POPULAR skate park is set to close within months – so developers can use the space as a factory.

Interact, based in the Bank Hall Works, off Colne Road, Burnley, has been under threat since running out of cash last summer.

Since then, landlord James Pollard and Son has allowed the skate park, said to be Burnley’s second biggest tourist attraction, stay on the site rent free.

But now bosses have changed the site into an employment zone and hope to move an engineering firm into the 20,000 square feet work space within the next few months.

Tony Stowell, a director at James Pollard and Son, which is based in Farrington Road, Burnley, said: “It has been listed as a leisure site for years but unfortunately it has not come forward as we would have hoped.

“You will find all sorts of things down there and it is not really conducive to leisure use.”

Originally, Mr Stowell wanted to market the Bank Hall Works as a warehouse but now he hopes to attract a company by offering office and factory space for a ‘light engineering’ firm.

He added: “Originally we thought about using it as a warehouse but Burnley has lots of warehouses and we wanted something that could help people in the area.

“We wanted something employment intensive and this can now be used for a variety of purposes.

“Hopefully we can have something in there that uses the skills that people have in the Colne Road area.

“That would be fantastic.”

James Pollard and Son is now expected to open talks with interested businesses.

The landlord hopes around 50 people will eventually be employed on the site.

Once a company is signed up, Interact will be given notice to move out.

At a Burnley Council meeting, former planning chief John Willcock told the development control committee that the Bank Hall Works site was not suitable for leisure facilities.

Councillors agreed it was a “commendable” project to create jobs and granted permission to change its use to employment.

Nobody from the Interact skate park was available for comment today.