Something historic is happening in London, as yet barely noticed by most of its residents: The city is reclaiming its river.
Paris is an example of a city that grew up harmoniously on both sides of its river, the Seine. But, partly because of the docks that once lined much of the south bank of the Thames, London’s river has been more of a barrier than a link between two halves of the city.
North of the river is the throbbing heart of London. Until recently, the south bank has been characterized mostly by derelict docks closed after World War II, run-down housing and tacky office buildings put up in the 1960s.
“The Thames was our version of the Berlin Wall,” said Dylan Hammond, managing director of a new enterprise called the String of Pearls Millennium Festival.
The Thames has been in the process of gradual change over recent years, but this is accelerating rapidly with the approach of the millennium and other developments of a coincidental nature.
At one anchor of the Thames revitalization is the old Battersea Power Station on the south bank, which was the setting of the recent movie of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” It is about to be transformed into a $750 million leisure development complete with hotels, film studios, theaters and the largest movie complex in the world.
To the east, another anchor will be the $1.25 billion Millennium Dome, a project the size of two large football stadiums that will house various exhibits illustrating Britain’s view of the world in the year 2000, built on a formerly derelict gas-works site in Greenwich.
Sandwiched between these two ambitious projects is a wide assortment of recent and forthcoming developments, some heralded by a forest of cranes rising along the river banks.
Construction will start late this summer on the south bank, opposite the Houses of Parliament, of the Millennium Wheel, a 495-foot-high ferris wheel sponsored by British Airways. It will be the largest observation wheel in the world, providing a slow, 25-minute “flight” over the capital.
The nearby Museum of the Moving Image, part of the modern eyesore known as the South Bank theater and museum complex, will get a nine-story IMAX cinema, with the largest screen in Europe.
Already in place are the
replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, which opened last year, and next to it the old Bankside Power Station, which is being converted into the Tate Gallery’s Museum of Modern Art, scheduled to open in 2001.
A pedestrian bridge is to be built from the area just below St. Paul’s Cathedral to the museum, the first bridge across the Thames since Tower Bridge was completed in 1894.
A second pedestrian bridge may connect the north bank with the Battersea Power Station development when it is completed early in the next century.
Taxi service on the Thames is being expanded and four ferries, each with a 500-passenger capacity, are planned.
At the south end of Westminster Bridge, the huge building that once housed the Greater London Council, abolished in the 1980s, is being transformed into two hotels.
“This is the greatest change in infrastructure that London has seen in a long, long time,” said Robert Gordon Clark, deputy chief executive of the London First Center, an agency that seeks to attract investment to the city.
He said about $4 billion worth of development in London has been triggered by funds from the National Lottery, and part of that is going to projects in the Thames area.
The revitalization of the Thames began about a decade ago with the development of Canary Wharf, a huge office building and shopping complex on the Isle of Dogs. It has been slow to take off because of financing problems and lack of adequate public transportation to the area, but it now boasts 99 percent occupancy.
Since its development, several smart restaurants have popped up on the south bank, ranging from Terence Conran’s Pont de la Tour to the relatively new Oxo Tower restaurant, which offers first-rate cuisine and a fine view of St. Paul’s Cathedral across the river.
The most eye-popping, and most controversial, of all the new developments is the Millennium Dome, going up on land adjacent to the river in Greenwich, 5 miles south of Tower Bridge.
As a measure of its size, Elizabeth Boyden of the Millennium Experience, a quasi-government body, points out it would cover all of London’s Trafalgar Square and surrounding buildings, two Wembley Stadiums or 13 Royal Albert Halls. It would hold 3.8 billion pints of beer, or 18,000 double-decker London buses, she said.
Greenwich has been chosen as the site for observing the millennium because the meridian that marks Greenwich Mean Time passes through a pier just behind the dome.
Conceived by the former Conservative government, and enthusiastically carried on by the current Labor administration, the Richard Rogers-designed dome has been the subject of widespread complaints that it is a waste of money in a country with a creaky National Health Service and an education system that is the despair of the nation.
The National Lottery is financing $345 million of the building costs, and much of the rest of the money will come from private sources.
Criticism also has focused on the fact that the government initially had no ideas about what would go inside it and at times seemed desperately groping for inspiration.
But the dome, the largest cable-supported structure in the world (twice the size of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta), is now well advanced. Twelve 300-foot-high steel masts that will provide its main supports are in place and over them stretches a woven, Teflon-coated fiberglass cover that looks like a giant sailcloth.
Within it will go what officials of the Millennium Experience hope will be a range of exciting exhibits that have been christened the Mind, the Body Zone, the Spirit Level, Licensed to Skill and the Learning Curve.
These will be designed to show off everything from scientific and medical advances to the best in British style and design and to give a nod to Britain’s religious diversity.
A centerpiece will be a giant human figure, or rather two half figures embracing, that is described as part architecture and part sculpture. The reclining figure would, if erect, be twice as high as the 150-foot-high dome.
Visitors will enter the figure at an elbow and exit at the feet.
There also will be 100 trapeze artists and acrobats performing in the upper reaches of the dome, and restaurants, shops and hospitality suites for big corporate sponsors.
On the perimeter will be a small dome for concerts and films, as well as parks and lakes.
Officials hope that, once the year-long millennium celebration is past, the dome developments will create a new living quarter for London, complete with schools and some light industry.
After the millennium year, officials plan to convert the dome into a sports arena that will be used to support London’s bid for the soccer World Cup in 2006 and the Olympic Games in 2012.
Critics have said the dome will last only 25 years, which makes the expenditure on it absurd. But officials say it could last “for decades and decades.” Nobody knows, because the type of fiberglass material used in the skin was developed only a few years ago in California. If it decays, officials say, it can be replaced.
For the millennium year, officials hope to attract 12 million visitors. The number will be restricted to about 35,000 daily to ensure that visitors will be able to take in all attractions without standing in line.
The dome may be the only major attraction of its kind in the world that will not risk traffic jams. There are no car parks, and visitors will have to come by a new subway line, a railway line, buses, river taxis or possibly cable cars strung over the river.
Anticipated revenues in the millennium year, from sponsors, ticket sales and merchandising, will be nearly $600 million.
While the dome is well advanced, the reconstruction of the Battersea Power Station, closed in 1986, is still in the planning stages.
Michael Roberts, chief executive officer of Parkview International, the firm that is developing the 35-acre site, declined to say when it will start or be completed, but ground-breaking is likely to take place in late 1999 or early in 2000.
Within the old power station itself, which covers 6 acres, will be 550,000 square feet of floor space encompassing exhibition pavilions, restaurants, shops and a 26-screen, 4,700-seat Warner Bros. cinema complex, which will run 24 hours a day.
Flanking the power station on two sides will be a 400-room all-suite hotel and a 750-room family hotel, with parking for 2,000 cars built below the hotels.
There also will be a post-production film studio on the river front and, behind the power station, two 1,800-seat theaters. Some residential units will be built on the rest of the site.
