AS many older readers know, I had a DIY and garden shop in Fleming Square, Blackburn, for over 30 years -- in the days when over 20 traders had shops in the square.

For the past few months, I have seen premises in the central block being demolished and rebuilt, not as modern shops, but being rebuilt with the old bricks and stone with added extra features from the now-demolished old Aspden Buildings on Preston New Road.

All this is a credit to Mr Mark Smith, of the Exchange Coffee Company, the brains behind the project -- a man who is investing a lot of his own money along with grants from the regeneration department of the council.

Church Street and the area around the Cathedral will, in the future, be a special place. Even now, when it is only half-finished, I feel excited to be there watching the transformation.

Fleming Square, with all its history, will be part of that regeneration and I now think it is time to give credit to the regeneration department headed by Councillor Ashley Whalley and to all those responsible for what is happening on the Church Street/Darwen Street project.

I know motorists and pedestrians have had to put up with a lot of upheaval but Blackburn cannot live in the past. I remember the 1960s when we had much larger upheaval -- the total destruction of the whole town centre, the closure of the main A666 road, the culverting of the River Blakewater and the building of the shopping centre and market -- which lasted a few years, not just a few months as now.

RON O'KEEFFE (snr), East Park Road, Blackburn.