ONE of the UK's largest brownfield sites could become a thriving community with 4,000 houses. Argus reporter DARREN EVANS takes a look around Newport's Llanwern site.

IT is a clich to measure large open spaces using football grounds as a comparison.

But when you realise the Llanwern steelworks site, earmarked for a £1 billion regeneration, could contain six hundred football pitches, you appreciate what a huge development it is going to be.

Surveying the vast, empty site from the top of an abandoned control tower, it is hard to imagine this windswept and desolate space housing a thriving community.

But that is exactly what developer St Modwen is planning. Four years ago 1,500 people worked on what is now no more than a wasteland where tonnes of shale, once brought down from the valleys, lie. Over the next 20 years the very same wasteland could be transformed, with 4,000 houses, 6,000 jobs, two schools, a district centre, sports fields, shops offices and restaurants.

Today the site still bears the scars of its industrial legacy. We enter through the west end of the site, past the Corus security gates and office buildings; the last outpost of a dwindling empire.

In the tower we stand in the empty control room, where once important men would have stood, overseeing the operations taking place below them.

Looking from the tower at the west end of the site into the far distance, what is left of the Corus steelworks rolling mills loom on the horizon. In front of this monolith, one small part of the site still active, a retail and industrial development will be built.

Where the village centre will be built the earth is stained dark black from coke, while next to it, in stark contrast, the land is orange from where the iron ore was kept.

But St Modwen promise the watercourse will be protected from any contaminants left over from these heavy metals, and the site will be capped with a half-metre surface of soil.

We drive along a perfectly straight private four-lane road that skirts the site, alongside a high, imposing security fence with signs warning DANGER and KEEP OUT.

The road disappears into the horizon 2.5 km ahead, vividly illustrating the extent of this barren land.

Access to the site is a concern for some, and there are also worries there will be increased traffic on the existing Southern Distributor Road (SDR) but the plans do include better access and building new junctions on the SDR.

While most of the site is cleared and, claims St Modwen, ready for work to begin, a handful of derelict buildings sprout up eerily from the earth like the remnants of some destroyed city.

It is a world away from the cosy villages and hamlets surrounded by trees and parkland envisaged under the development plans.

But around 150 acres of the site will be public open space, including three lakes totalling 10 to 11 hectares.

St Modwen's regional manager, Rupert Joseland, says these will be important community assets for the whole of Newport to enjoy.

He tells me the project is one of the developer's biggest ever undertakings, and the company is keen to see work start as soon as possible, so this reminder of Newport's industrial past can become one of its future assets.