This week the Fife Free Press reveals massive plans to expand The Mercat Shopping Centre – creating a staggering 850 jobs and 450 during construction.

It's the biggest single blueprint for the transformation of the town centre – and it would make the Mercat 50 per cent bigger than the Gyle on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

A formal planning application is expected by March and if it gets the go-ahead, work could start before the end of the year.

The proposals would increase the Mercat to three times its current size and also create a brand new waterfront for Kirkcaldy, running from Volunteers' Green to Tolbooth Street where the new pool is planned.

The Esplanade would be cut to one lane either way, and the tatty Thistle Street multi-storey car park would be torn down.

In their place would come a glass-fronted Esplanade entrance to the expanded Mercat, a hotel and five-screen cinema.

The ambitious blueprint also envisages a new civic plaza for outside the old Oscars nightclub, and the creation of a new multi-storey carpark in Charlotte Street.

City Site Estates, owners of The Mercat, already have a 20-month lock-out to give them time to deliver their multi-million pound project which was formally unveiled to councillors and local groups last week.

Jim McCain, group property director said: "The current swimming pool site becoming available, the lockout agreement, and a change of planning policies in favour of town centre regeneration all mean that now is the ideal time for us to press ahead with our plans.

"We have been speaking to Fife Council about this since 2005, but everything has just come together to make it possible now."

Paul O'Neill, managing director of One Architecture Ltd, the company which has created the vision behind the scheme, said it was important for people to realise that the expansion plans were not purely retail, but encompassed leisure in the form of a much-needed cinema, hotel and civic space.

"With the proposed hovercraft link this would be an ideal addition to the town centre and would make Kirkcaldy a much more attractive tourist destination," he said.

The first phase of the development would see the building of a 100,000 square foot supermarket at mall and mezzanine level, with 450 car parking spaces underneath.

Thistle Street car park would also be demolished and work started on a replacement in nearby Charlotte Street.

The developers dismissed claims that they would struggle to fill the extra space even although many units currently lie empty in the existing centre and on the High Street.

"What we are looking to do is put in additional retail space and use it as a catalyst for significant regeneration of the town centre," said Mark Ritchie, an associate with One Architecture.

"Securing a principal food retailer is the anchor to this – when that happens it can all start.

"It would be done in phases with the supermarket first then additional retail space, the refurbishment of the mall and the cinema.

"It is all very flexible. If outline planning permission is granted work could start before the end of the year."