Adam Trimingham reports on the prospects for the latest grand designs for two city centre sites in Brighton and Hove which have been derelict for many years.

Buddleia blooms year after year on the long-abandoned goods yard site next to Brighton Station, last used 40 years ago in the age of steam.

A willow tree stands sentry 500 yards away in Jubilee Street where land in a prime position has been empty for even longer, around half a century.

Yet both the shrubs and the tree are likely to go under two huge projects together worth almost £150 million which will transform the centre of Brighton.

At Jubilee Street, a consortium has gained planning permission from the city council for its scheme which, with any luck, should be ready within three years.

A planning application has just been lodged for the land at the station site by another consortium.

As it appears to conform with a council planning brief, permission seems likely later this year.

Cynics may see them as just the latest stage in a series of schemes which have been put forward for both these sites over many years with no success.

But there is a real chance the current projects will not fail.

Jubilee Street, between Church Street and North Road, is a council-owned site long earmarked for a new central library.

The best chance of achieving this development came in 1973 when Brighton Council approved plans for a commercial scheme which also would have contained a swimming pool.

But it was abandoned by East Sussex County Council when it took over responsibility for libraries. The Prince Regent pools were opened in 1980 at council expense.

Developers Tarmac toyed with the site for a long time, hoping to build an ice rink there as well as a library, but never managed to produce a final scheme.

Then East Sussex produced its own radical scheme or a library amid howls of protest about its design.

A scaled-down version proved equally unacceptable and the project was abandoned when the Government called it in for an inquiry.

In 1997, control of libraries went back to the new Brighton and Hove City Council.

It had to move fast to replace the library as permission was granted to renovate the Dome complex where the old library had been for a century.

Councillors gained permission from the Government for a public private partnership under which a developer builds the library for the council.

Three consortia made bids and one containing Norwich Union and the Mill Group was selected.

The library, fronting a civic square, is just one part of a scheme which has to contain commercial development to be viable.

Other components include a hotel, shops, offices, restaurants, bars and a doctor's surgery.

Unlike the previous schemes, this one has earned almost universal approval for its design and content.

Even the conservationists are in favour. And the cash is there.

The consortium is an expert in this kind of deal. It really does seem that at long last, Brighton will get its library. Construction work could even begin this year.

Up the road at Brighton Station, there were big plans in the past for a site which is much larger than Jubilee Street.

The first one in the early Seventies not only included the old goods yard but also involved knocking down the railway station.

This outraged conservationists and led to the formation of the Brighton Society.

The plan was dropped, but only because the developers had run into financial trouble.

But the public mood on conservation changed sharply and successive schemes after that saved the station.

Next up was Sainsbury, anxious to replace its ailing London Road store with something more sophisticated.

They produced plans for a store along with housing and industry but Brighton and Hove Council rejected them and this decision was upheld by the Government.

The current application by the New England Consortium is a much more subtle development based on the concept of an urban village.

There will be hundreds of homes, many for key workers, a European headquarters for an international teaching organisation, a training centre, two hotels, a transport interchange and several squares.

The road layout will be changed so the development is brought closer to the existing London Road which has seen trade drop over the years.

There is still controversy over this scheme which has escaped Jubilee Street. This is because the scheme still includes a 25,000 square feet Sainsbury's with parking for 194 cars.

Greens and other environmental groups says this will spoil the scheme and bring too much traffic into it.

The consortium says it is half the size of a car park that would normally be provided for a store of this size.

The store only occupies a tenth of the site and drawings show it well tucked away. But it will be the subject of many battles to come.

It is there because it is the chief commercial generator for the scheme. It might not be impossible to fund it with another use but it would be difficult.

The consortium includes Sainsbury's, Gleeson Homes and Sussex-based developers QED. Most importantly of all, it includes Railtrack, the site owners, who in their previous guise of British Rail Property kept aloof from development.

They are determined to make it happen. So is the city council despite the protests. If permission is granted, the development will take place quickly.

These two giant city centre schemes follow the £90 million redevelopment of Churchill Square shopping centres three years ago which has been a huge trading success.

If they both go ahead, there will be hardly any big brownfield sites left in Brighton for the first time in a century.

It will be a tribute to the vitality of the city that these exceptionally tricky sites have found development which is largely acceptable after all these years.

They will also connect the city centre to North Laine and the London Road in a way which has not happened before.

There have been many fine words about the success of the city. Schemes such as these are the proof that something really is happening.