Dome 'warning' over millennium projects

The Millennium Dome has suffered from over optimism

A senior figure in the arts has called for the organisers of future National Lottery funded projects such as the £27m Wales Millennium Centre to take a "long, cool look" at their business plans.

Patrick Green, president of the Museums Association, has urged the Millennium Commission to consider spending the money instead on securing the future of existing attractions.

Mr Green pointed to the dangers of centres relying on inflated visitor expectations, pointing to the troubled Millennium Dome, the failed Pop Museum in Sheffield and the Earth Centre in Doncaster.

He described the Millennium Dome as a "great, big warning" to other projects which need to look very carefully at their visitor numbers.

Prime spot: The £27m centre is proposed for Cardiff Bay

"Places like Cardiff should take the opportunity now to look at their business planning because they can now take a long, cool look and make sure that they are in fact viable," he said on BBC Radio Wales.

Commission director Mike O'Connor welcomed Mr Green's proposal for an endowment fund to support millennium projects.

But he insisted that there was no need to withdraw funds from proposed developments.

"Projects such as the Wales Millennium Centre are deeply loved by the people who live there and are very much needed and we are not going to walk away from them when they show all signs of working," said Mr O'Connor.

We have taken some measured risks and perhaps not everything will work

Mike O'Connor, Millennium Commission director

Earlier Mr Green told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "They thought they were going to get 15 million people (at the Dome), then they reduced it to 12m, and then the target went down to 6m, which just shows that estimating the number of visitors to a new attraction is a very, very difficult task.

"I have looked at the targets which some of these projects have got and I think some of them are wildly optimistic."

Mr O'Connor added: "We have about 200 projects around the country, of which about a quarter depend on paying visitors.

"All but 10 are hitting their visitor numbers.

"If you are ambitious and take risks, you do run into the occasional problem, but if you didn't take some risks you wouldn't get out of bed in the morning.

Popular

"We have taken some measured risks and perhaps not everything will work.

"But most things are working and we are learning as we go along and what we are doing now is focusing more on the commercial opportunities, seeing how we can adapt the projects in the light of experience.

'So far, so good.'

Figures released on Monday by the Millennium Commission show that one of Wales's newest lottery-funded attractions is proving very popular.

The National Botanic Gardens of Wales, at Llanarthne, near Carmarthen, has been visited by 37,100 people, an increase of 48% on its projected figures.