A US leisure group has a big ambition. It wants to do something the British government spectacularly failed to achieve. It wants to make the Millennium Dome a triumph.
But like the government, Anschutz Entertainment Group, which has the mammoth task of re-imagining the Dome, is aware that the scheme’s success depends on it being able to dispel the Dome’s image as a costly white elephant.
One of the first steps will be to change the venue’s name. Anschutz is in talks to hand over the naming rights, and it is believed that a deal is close with mobile phone operator O2. In a matter of weeks, the Millennium Dome will be gone, leaving the O2 Bubble in its place. But much more substantial changes will take place within the big white tent. Within two years, phase one of the revamp is scheduled to open, and AEG is already claiming it will be Europe’s premier entertainment destination. This massive remodelling is now under way, and will see around £500m spent on construction alone.
Meshing in with the masterplan
Jayne McGivern, managing director of development at AEG and the woman in charge of transforming the Dome from a loss-making disaster into a £1bn business, is more than a little excited about what is going on inside the Greenwich landmark. While the revamp will mesh with the 190-acre masterplan for the peninsula being developed by Meridian Delta, the joint venture between Quintain Estates and Lend Lease, AEG wants its chunk to be a little bit special.
Phase one involves the building of London’s largest indoor arena, surrounded by a 600,000 sq ft leisure scheme, the Waterfront. This will be made up of two indoor streets, with a variety of shops, bars and music clubs, an exhibition space, and of course – according to mayor Ken Livingstone at least – one of London’s two super-casinos.
AEG already has detailed consent for the arena and the casino, although, according to Greenwich council, the consent is actually for a generic leisure box. Despite that and the continuing uncertainty about exactly what the government’s plans are when it comes to super-casinos, AEG is cracking on with the construction of the casino and is convinced its efforts will not go unrewarded.
“I’m confident that we should get the casino,” says McGivern. “The Greater London Authority and the mayor will ultimately decide what happens. A number of the other schemes have their benefits, but I don’t think there’s another scheme in London that ticks all the boxes as well as ours.”
McGivern stresses that AEG isn’t asking for a casino just because everyone else is. “The casino has been in our plans from the very start; we’re not just jumping on the bandwagon. And we’re not just developing a casino, we’re developing a destination and we cannot do one thing without the other. The arena would struggle without all the other stuff, as the National Audit Office has pointed out.”
Commercial viability
The NAO report published in January argues that the arena alone would not make the Dome commercially viable. It found that the Dome’s rate of return was unlikely to be more than 4%, and it could even lose money if assumptions about the level of income from sponsorship and corporate hospitality were incorrect. The NAO concluded that the integrated leisure, hospitality and entertainment scheme, incorporating the casino, was crucial for ensuring the long-term sustainability of the arena.
Indeed, income from the super-casino is so important that much of the redevelopment will depend on it being given the go-ahead. Although work has already started on the 26,000-capacity arena and most of the units in the Waterfront have been let – including to Starbucks and Groupe Chez Gerard – AEG says it will need to have greater certainty over the casino before it will progress the Waterfront or the 600-bedroom hotel it plans to build with casino resort operator Kerzner.
But in terms of development and using the Dome as a tool to regenerate north Greenwich, the really interesting part of the project is happening outside of the arena and outside the debate over the casino.
To make the Dome a true entertainment destination, it has to be able to offer something for everyone. And with the reputation the Dome has with the British public, it has to offer something truly spectacular. And for McGivern, these challenges were a big part of why she chose to take on the project. “We didn’t want to just have a retail scheme or put in a leisure box in the rest of the Dome. “I wanted the Dome to look like somewhere you would go in the evening, I wanted it to look like a street. But I still wanted it to reflect what we are all about and music is what we are really about so that’s what we are creating – music streets.”
On entering the Dome through its single public entrance, visitors can either turn left and mount the 9m high elevators to the casino, or turn right and enter the first of AEG’s indoor streets, the – provisionally titled – Rock & Pop Street.
A US-based restaurateur has already signed to open a restaurant at the entrance of the street and AEG itself will operate a 2,000-capacity live music club and UK Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which will be the main draw of the street. McGivern says the music club will be unique to the UK, allowing customers to either watch a show while eating their dinner, sitting at the bar with a beer or by doing the traditional thing and rocking out on the dancefloor.
The more discerning music lover will be able to wander on to the (again provisionally titled) Rhythm & Blues Street, which will feature smaller jazz venues.
The streets will each be the width of London’s Oxford Street, and, while being under the protection of the big white tent, will not be wrapped in the cotton wool of climate control. “The street will be like a proper street with trees and street lighting. And if it’s cold outside, then it’s going to be cold inside,” says McGivern.
Sandwiched between the two streets will be several smaller cinemas in the style of Notting Hill’s Electric Cinema, rather than a multiplex. AEG also wants to lure a bigger audience by building a massive 750-seat cinema, which is intended to have the cachet to host blockbuster film premieres.
And with the help of that big tent as protection from the inevitable British rain, an indoor red carpet may be just what the stars and spectators are after.
The first phase is also set to get a £15m exhibition centre, which McGivern claims will become one of the most exciting areas in the Dome. The company has already signed a deal with the Egyptian government to bring the Tutankhamen exhibition back to the UK in 2007. This is likely, according to McGivern, to lose rather than make money for the company. But she hopes that the display will be such a huge crowd-pleaser that it will put the Dome back on the map. “It’s been 28 years since the exhibition was in the UK and more than 1.7m people visited it in the six months the last time it was here. We hope to do even better than that.”
AEG intends the exhibition building to be a work of art in itself. It did not want the hall to be just a bland box, and is working with architect RTKL to make the space more exciting.
Progressing to phase two
The Waterfront is being given a similar treatment. It already has outline planning permission, and will be put in for detailed consent on 31 March. Once that has been granted, phase one can be progressed to full completion, which is scheduled for March 2007.
After that, AEG will move on to the second and final phase of the development — but this will be a much smaller task.Phase two is the late-night 11pm to 1am part of the Dome. A Los Angeles-based leisure operator has signed up to run some of the nightclubs in what will be his first venture in the UK, with a world-renowned architect handling the design of the clubs.
The second phase will also feature the signature AEG musical theatre building. In Las Vegas, AEG has built and operates the Coliseum at Caesars Palace, a music theatre built to house a three-year show starring Celine Dion, a show which has been sold out for every performance. McGivern hopes for the same success over here. The musical theatre would have been built in phase one, but the building is built around the act and as yet no big name has been signed up.
One thing is clear. The proposed contents of the Dome, or Bubble, are creating a lot more interest than those planned by the government in the run-up to the millennium. McGivern argues that to do anything less would be a waste.
“It’s one of the very few buildings in the world that is instantly recognisable. It’s an iconic piece of architecture and our plans will ensure its longevity. What we are doing with it is to provide London with something that it has never had before.”
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“Everyone has an opinion about the Dome. They either love it or hate it,” says Jayne McGivern, development MD at Anschutz. But AEG’s revamp of the Dome’s interior is part of the £4bn regeneration of the Greenwich Peninsula. Although AEG is working in a joint venture with Meridian Delta and Quintain Estates in the development of the Peninsula as a whole – a total of 190 acres and 10,000 homes –the Dome is its private project. McGivern says being part of the overall regeneration was vital to AEG. “We could not have done the Dome if it was not part of a regeneration. We would have never got 22 acres for an entertainment site in London if it wasn’t part of the wider development. “Could we have built an arena? Yes. But could we have been so innovative? No, I don’t think so. We couldn’t have sat on the fringe of town.” |
