THE future of a proposed major new tourist attraction was last night hanging in the balance after officials admitted “it might not happen”.

Plans to build an £11.6m observatory overlooking Crosby Marina have stalled. The scheme first hit problems with the onset of the credit crunch, and the Mersey Basin campaign which drew up the plans for the observatory will be wound up in March next year.

The campaign is currently looking for another organisation to take over the project. But its chief executive, Walter Menzies, has warned that, without a new custodian, the project might not happen.

Sefton Council deputy leader Cllr Peter Dowd last night appeared to rule out the local authority taking over the scheme.

While Ian Hamilton Fazey, who sits on the observatory’s steering committee, said he hoped a Community Interest company could be set up to “keep the project alive”.

The observatory is designed to provide superb views of Antony Gormley’s Iron Men, the working docks, the Liverpool waterfront, and the Mersey estuary across to Wirral and North Wales.

A futuristic “vase and bowl” design was unveiled in March last year, after a competition saw London architects Duggan Morris beat off competition from almost 100 other entrants.

The main 50-metre tower would feature a series of rotating ellipses leading to a viewing deck. At night, it would glow like a table lamp.

The demolition of the old radar tower the observatory would replace also appears to have been delayed indefinitely.

Mr Menzies said: “Some of these projects take a long time, and we are going through a boring phase at the moment with nothing happening.

“The Mersey Basin campaign will be voluntarily coming to an end in 2010.”

The campaign has reached the end of its agreed 25-year life next March.

“It [the observatory] might still happen, it might not happen. But it would be wrong to say it has been scrapped.

“The project is in abeyance like many regeneration projects.

“I hope that this one will be revived.