The plans include selling Christie Park, probably for housing, and creating a sports complex at Westgate including two training pitches and a gym. The pitches would also be used for a major expansion of the club's Football in the Community scheme involving local schools and community groups.

There would also be a number of retail outlets leased to national chains and, possibly, a new hotel within the complex.

The naming of the new ground would depend on the ability of the club to attract a major sponsor but the legacy of Christie Park benefactor, JB Christie, would live on by the naming of the access road to the venue as 'Christie Way'.

The land at Westgate would, if approval is given, be bought from Lancaster City Council.

It is currently used by Westgate Wanderers Youth FC whose officials have already been consulted.

Plans for the expansion of Christie Park, submitted last year, would be abandoned and the new ground, if approval is forthcoming, could be ready for the start of the 2009/10 season. It would be built with the scope for expansion in the event of crowds increasing significantly.

A proposal for a temporary bar area behind the existing north stand at Christie Park would still go ahead.

Announcing the ambitious plans, MFC chairman Peter McGuigan told The Visitor: "Despite our success at Wembley and in gaining promotion last year we made our biggest ever loss as a club during the last season.

"Going into the League has always been our aim but it does bring with it a whole new landscape in terms of costs. We have no scope to expand the way we really want to at Christie Park.

"Westgate would allow us the room we want to develop the footballing side of our business, including the new training facilities we so desperately need, as well as offering the potential to establish other streams of income without which I would have serious concerns for the future of this club.

"It would also allow us to increase the amount of work we do with the community, offering at least six nights of community use of excellent new sporting facilities.

The land at Christie Park was originally given to the town by JB Christie on the understanding that it always be used for recreational and sporting purposes.

This issue dominated the debate the last time a move away from the ground was contemplated about 20 years ago.

Then the land was being offered for a new retail park - a plan that eventually subsided when the company looking to develop the site got into financial difficulties.

This time Mr Mcguigan sees no such problem, saying: "We are acutely aware of the spirit of Mr Christie's legacy - without him we wouldn't have existed as the club we have become. But I honestly believe that if he were alive today he would be sitting beside me recommending this new scheme to the public of Morecambe.

"It offers far more scope for public use of brand new and exciting facilities for good quality leisure and sporting activities which is precisely what he wanted to preserve for the town.

"The Football in the Community aspect of these plans is central to how we want to develop the club in the coming years.

"We think the scheme we want to bring to Morecambe also sits well with the general regeneration of the town."

Plans will be formally submitted straight away and the whole development is scheduled to be discussed at Lancaster City Council's cabinet meeting next Tuesday, July 24.