CITY AND SUBURBAN
No bid for the Dome, but it's never too late to call time on a dud
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Idon't think I shall bid for the Dome. I have to stop somewhere, and if its man- agement does not yet know what the fig- ures are, how can anyone else? The other bidder, Guy Hands of Nomura, has now reached the same conclusion and backed off. Ministers cannot say I did not warn them. Three summers ago I had a request for the incoming government. Stop the millennium, I said, I want to get off. Drop the Dome while you can still blame your predecessors. Chris Smith, the minister newly in charge of the Dome, was alarmed to find that its cost had crept up to £580 million. It was never too late, so I told him, to call time on a dud project, though it so often seemed to be: now that we've got so far, now that we've invested so much time/effort/money/ credibility/puffery. . . . Even now this penny still has to drop in the Dome, whose managers desperately assert that to go on would cost less than to stop. I found it hard to believe that a pavilion of British banking (it became the Money Zone) would draw the crowds, even though the big banks had been coerced into sponsoring it. The managers had to assume that it would, or their figures would fail to add up. This was wishful accounting, and now the Dome's sponsors can think themselves lucky if they get out with change from a billion pounds. The longer he left it, I told Mr Smith, the worse it would be. My advice to him was to go back to Birmingham, which had offered to put on a great exhibition to mark the millennium, at no charge to the nation. I might even have bid for it when it was over.
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