BARRATT Homes and George Wimpey are among the biggest names on a shortlist of developers bidding to build the £350m Woolston riverside project for Southampton, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Just five proposals remain from the initial 22 received to build up to 1,500 homes on the prestige site.

Other companies bidding for a slice of the city's biggest regeneration project include Berkeley Homes Southern, Crest Nicholson and Taylor Woodrow.

A spokesman for regional development agency SEEDA said each of the five developers has "significant large scale regeneration experience".

They were also chosen because of past experience on mixed use and waterside sites and for their ability to create the landmark buildings the council hopes to see on the site.

SEEDA's Ken Glendinning said: "This shortlist demonstrates that the private sector shares SEEDA and the local community's aspirations to create a vibrant and exciting mixed use scheme at Woolston.

"The shortlisted parties each have a proven track record on developments of this significance."

The winning developer will be announced in April and will have to realise the grand vision drawn up by architects at the world-renowned Richard Rogers Partnership, the firm behind the Millennium Dome and the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

The former Vosper Thornycroft site on the banks of the river Itchen at Woolston will disappear beneath the development, which has three towers of steel and glass rising ten storeys high at its heart.

Now renamed Woolston Riverside, the 36-acre site, which was snapped up for £15m by SEEDA when VT quit Southampton for Portsmouth, is destined for a mix of housing and marine industry companies keen to take advantage of the unique deep-water quay that is one of the few remnants of the old warship factory.

It is hoped that the development will create 1,000 jobs.

SEEDA aims to submit a planning application to the council in April and hopes work will start in January next year, with phase one of the project complete by July 2008.