A £5.5 million rural business centre in Thirsk, which will run agricultural courses for Askham Bryan College in York, has opened.

The 100,000sq ft Thirsk Rural Business Centre, built for Thirsk Farmers Auction Mart Company on a 20-acre edge of town site, will combine an auction mart with 12 units for agriculture-related businesses and a restaurant, plus room for the land-based college courses.

The premises, on former agricultural land, will now add to the York college's series of rural outreach centres, with 3,250sq ft of the project occupied by two training rooms and a workshop fitted out with specialist equipment for engineering-based courses.

Three tutors will be based there and training will be five days a week.

Forty jobs will move over to the new centre from the auction mart's previous site opposite Thirsk Racecourse and eight more people are expected to be recruited. It is hoped the new businesses will generate another 25 jobs. The previous site, in Station Road, Thirsk, has been mostly sold for housing.

With so many agricultural facilities on one site, ranging from insurance and accounts to veterinary services, the new centre is destined to become one of the the top cattle markets in England and revitalise farming and associated industries throughout North Yorkshire.

Lindsay Ross is managing director of Thirsk-based Severfield Reeve Projects which built the business centre in just under a year. He is also chairman of Thirsk Regeneration Initiative, which is part of Yorkshire Forward's campaign to revitalise market towns.

He said: "I am very excited. It is a lovely building which is not strictly utilitarian.

"It has a convivial atmosphere so that people who come there to do agricultural business will find it enjoyable, the kind of place which people will be encouraged to use and, hopefully, attract to the mart more visitors than ever before.

"The college courses will represent a big part of the future for learning in the area. It is a significant bolt-on."

York law firm Denison Till acted for Auction Mart on all legal aspects of the new centre's construction.