MEDWAY'S newest shopping centre will have a "wow" factor, promises a boss behind the £65 million scheme. The Dockside Outlet Centre being created from the Victorian dockyard boiler shop in Chatham Maritime opens next summer.

It will create 350 jobs and have around 90 units, many with well-known designer name. Several are already talking to Dockside Developments, the company behind the scheme, but none has yet signed on the dotted line.

Dockside's Trevor Goff said he expected big names to sign up soon, and that the centre would be nearly fully let by opening day in June. "We want this centre to have a wow factor," he said.

"You've got to do that and from a heritage point of view, we need to make sure people know the sort of historic building they are moving around in."

The Grade II listed building - widely admired as a fine early example of cast and wrought iron construction - was originally constructed in Woolwich Dockyard in 1847 but dismantled and re-erected in Chatham around 1876. Builders Fox and Henderson went on to build the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The latest construction milestone was reached when a 16-tonne girder designed to support a canopy was lowered into place. Its 150-foot span rests on two 300-tonne concrete buttresses.