A MARKETING exercise designed to gauge support for a tourism and leisure development on Minehead's Vulcan Road car park resulted in an "extremely disappointing" and "poor quality" response, district councillors were told. Just five expressions of interest were received - three based on hotels, two being family pub/ restaurant chains and one for a miniature golf and adventure play area. But at Wednesday's full meeting of West Somerset District Council, members were told that, although financial details had been scant, it was highly unlikely bids for the land from tourism/leisure developers would top the £2 million mark. In comparison, it had been estimated a retail development could generate upwards of £8 million for the authority, together with scores of new jobs and give the council the option of retaining part of the site for coach parking. Specialist property consultancy AtisReal was brought in by the council to oversee campaigns to market Vulcan Road car park for both retail and tourism/leisure uses. According to a report on the campaigns, the latter proposal seemed to be a non starter both in terms of interest from developers and the money likely to be generated from the sale of the land. The consultants said the marketing campaigns had been run over a similar period of time, although the tourism/leisure advertisement had been vastly more expensive, bigger and in colour. In addition, 185 developers, agents and operators had been sent copies of the tourism/leisure brief, compared to just 40 for the retail aspect of the campaign. Although AtisReal believed the council should investigate the miniature golf proposals further with a view to finding a less valuable piece of land, the firm recommended the car park be used for retail purposes. In a report to the council, the firm said: "The response to the tourism and leisure marketing campaign has proved disappointing in comparison to the retail campaign. "We consider this to be for a number of reasons, principally relating to the size of the site and the lack of critical mass within the tourism market, both in terms of visitor numbers and expenditure. "From the submissions received, it is considered that, if the council wish to pursue this option, it will be required to potentially forgo considerable value and assume a high degree of risk as to overall deliverability." Focusing on the use of the site for retail purposes, the report concluded: "Alternatively, the council may determine to adopt a route that is deliverable and should maximise the latent value of the site. "This option would appear to provide a very real and credible route for the council that while not popular with some elements of the community, should secure many of its wider strategic objectives and lever in substantial private sector investment into the area." AtisReal suggested the council imposed some restrictions on any potential sale to alleviate concerns about coach and car parking, together with any perceived impact on the town centre.