Magic and reality: implacable suitors for the heart of Glasgow

that Glasgow presents to the world as UK city of architecture and design

in 1999.

The man with the wand is Geoffrey Jarvis, a local architect who dreams

of transforming the site of the 1988 garden festival on the banks of the

Clyde into a grandiose version of the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. ''I

want to put magic into the heart of Glasgow,'' he says.

His hi-tech adversary is Stuart Gulliver, chief executive of the

Glasgow Development Agency, who has another vision -- of a modern

business park featuring a national science centre. ''I want to give

Glasgow economic firepower, and bring science to the people,'' he says.

The contest has reached a critical stage, as both have submitted

outline planning proposals to Glasgow District Council, which is

expected to pronounce on the schemes within four-to-eight weeks. Mike

Hays, the council's director of planning, says each of the applications

will be judged on its own merits. He believes that both are capable of

delivering a high quality of architecture, leaving open the possibility

that both will be approved.

But the battle may be already won and lost. For while Mr Jarvis is

still trying to persuade potential investors that his project is viable,

the GDA has recruited developers based in Edinburgh and Manchester to

begin work on the site as soon as the city council gives it the green

light. More decisively, the GDA owns most of the land and Mr Jarvis owns

none of it.

Popular sentiment may be on the side of the Tivoli Gardens concept.

The success of the garden festival created a nostalgia for that summer

when the sun shone and everybody had fun; the site instantly became a

''dear green place'' in the hearts and minds of Glaswegians, who would

probably welcome any attempt to bring the magic back. Economic

realities, however, appear to have swung the balance in favour of the

GDA's business-driven project.

The prevailing independent view is that Mr Jarvis has woven a magic

carpet, but that it will not fly. One analyst commented: ''All credit to

Jarvis, he's floating an imaginative idea with some merit in it. But in

the real world out there you have to have corporate backing, you need to

get the big players on board, and so far he doesn't have them. The

essential point, of course, is that possession is 99% of the law, and

the GDA has the land.''

Mr Jarvis is not downhearted, believing that popular support may yet

turn the tide in his favour. ''This is likely to become a political

issue, and we have to persuade the people of Glasgow that a festival

gardens complex is worth fighting for,'' he says.

Surveying the empty lot around Prince's Dock, he conjures images of

bands playing in landscaped gardens, cable cars gliding above a

fairground, and people strolling along a crescent-shaped avenue of

boutiques and restaurants reminiscent of hill-towns in Tuscany. Where

gulls screech over an expanse of grass, he sees open-air concerts,

cabaret, and circus acts; where the wind whips across the grey waters of

the canting basin, he sees a glass pyramid with exotic fish swimming in

a giant aquarium beneath a tropical rain forest. ''It would,'' he says,

''be a great place for a millennium hogmanay.''

The adjacent Govan dry docks are derelict, but the shells of the

red-brick buildings could be restored. Mr Jarvis envisages a luxury ship

in one of the docks providing entertainment and dining facilities,

linked with a hotel on the quayside. The old Harland and Wolff

plate-rolling mill nearby, which recently staged productions of The Big

Picnic, would become a maritime heritage museum telling the story of

Clyde shipbuilding.

The Clyde festival gardens project would extend over about 90 acres,

twice the size of Denmark's Tivoli Gardens. Capital costs, excluding the

land, are estimated at #31.5m, and projected attendances of 1.5 million

a year would create more than 700 jobs and generate a profit of about

#4.6m.

The GDA disputes these figures, insisting the capital costs would

exceed #60m, and saying the attendance estimations are unrealistic. It

also points out the seasonal problem of dreich Scottish weather.

Copenhagen is appreciably sunnier, warmer, and drier than Glasgow, yet

its Tivoli Gardens are open for fewer than five months a year.

Mr Jarvis maintains his consultants have got their sums right, and

says his festival gardens would be open for nine months a year,

irrespective of the weather, with indoor attractions in concert halls,

leisure centres, and cinemas.

''If the garden festival had never taken place, one might have had

qualms about doing this,'' he says. ''But because it did happen, and it

was such a success, it was as if the market research had been done.

''We have to think of the communal good, rather than the private

developer. Of course we have to operate on a commercial basis, but for

the right objectives. I'd like this to be a piece of townscape in the

good old-fashioned way, not a lot of office buildings trying to be

clever. I want to see fun and fireworks. I want to give Glasgow the

magic it deserves.''

There is an element of David and Goliath in the contest. Mr Jarvis is

operating virtually alone from an office near Kelvingrove Park, while Mr

Gulliver is directing his campaign from the imposing headquarters of the

GDA in the city centre, with all the resources of his organisation

behind him.

Yet even on the brink of victory, Mr Gulliver is not a happy man. ''We

are portrayed as the bad guys, putting business before popular

attractions,'' he says. ''I'm in a no-win situation, and it's awfully

frustrating.''

His scope for manoeuvre is limited by the fact that he heads an

economic development organisation, whose prime concern is to improve

Glasgow's economic performance. His remit from the Scottish Office,

under which the GDA acquired the site in 1992, specifies a

business-driven project.

Having said that, he is as enthusiastic about his agency's proposals

as Mr Jarvis is passionate about his. Glasgow does not have a

high-quality business park in a central location, and it is losing local

investment as a result, he says. He intends the Pacific Quay site to be

the first of four or five such business complexes near motorways and

transport systems, to increase the city's economic firepower.

''At the same time, we don't want to make it a no-go area to the

public. The site offers enormous potential for leisure amenities as well

as a pleasant working environment. What we envisage is a mixed

waterfront development.''

Thus the jewel in the crown of the business park would be a Scottish

National Science Centre with four exhibition galleries, and lecture

rooms where schoolteachers could be instructed in new experiments. It

would incorporate a universarium, taking visitors on tours of the solar

system; an adjacent IMAX theatre would take spectators to the bottom of

the sea and into the heart of volcanos through films projected on to

gigantic screens; and the 100-metres Millennium Tower nearby would

afford a more prosaic panorama of Glasgow.

''A great deal has been done in Scotland to promote sport and the

arts, but there is virtually nothing to encourage participation in

science and technology,'' Mr Gulliver says. ''We are already lagging

behind other countries in this respect. I don't think the science centre

in itself will change that culture, but hopefully people will leave it

saying science is interesting and fun. It will have to have the new

'wow' stuff that people want to see, and a changing programme that will

draw them.''

It is intended that the centre be the hub of a network of eight

smaller science centres throughout the country, to be administered by a

Scottish National Science Foundation.

The third component would be what Mr Gulliver terms the glue that

binds the others together -- a multiplex cinema, restaurants, and

retailing outlets, and a budget hotel. There would also be a small

marina, and an aquarium in a quayside leisure building. ''Overall, we

want to make the site a multi-purpose destination. I think it's heroic

stuff, and if we can pull it off it would be absolutely wonderful for

Glasgow. It's a practical vision for the city, and we have developers

who are ready to deliver it. It's real.''

He does not believe Mr Jarvis's vision is real. ''We've had five sets

of consultants looking at the festival gardens concept, and they all say

it doesn't work. We've also genuinely tried to incorporate aspects of

it, but the developers say it's not viable. I think the people behind

the festival gardens project are being very dishonest and unfair to the

people of Glasgow. They are promising something that is a chimera. It's

not deliverable.''

The GDA envisages an investment of about #80m over five years on a

43-acre site, creating an estimated 2000 jobs. It has applied for

millennium funding for the science centre, and if its plans are approved

work could begin on the site in the second half of this year.

Both projects regard links with the Scottish Exhibition and Conference

Centre on the north side of the river as important, but for different

reasons. The GDA strategy is to span the river with an ''envelope'' for

business development, the Festival Gardens aim is to provide

recreational facilities for SECC visitors.

Opinion is sharply divided over the rival plans. Glasgow's Chamber of

Commerce initially favoured the Tivoli Gardens approach, which it

believed would appeal to Glaswegians who mourned the passing of the

garden festival. After GDA presentations, however, it expressed

qualified support for the agency's efforts to develop the site.

But in its latest position paper in January, it stated: ''It is clear

that many people in the city support the Jarvis proposals for the

festival gardens for the sentimental and emotional reasons mentioned

above, and the chamber is particularly keen to see a major tourist and

visitor facility erected within Glasgow prior to the turn of the

century.'' It concluded with a suggestion that the GDA should consider

whether there was space on the site for Mr Jarvis's ideas.

Mr Gulliver and his colleagues say they have done this, but that their

consultants and potential developers all insist that the gardens

proposals are not viable.

Michael Kelly, the former Lord Provost, disagrees. It was his

administration that brought a smile to the face of Glasgow with its

'Miles Better' slogan, and he considers it time for an amusing image to

be restored to the city.

Pat Lally, the leader of the city council, prefers the GDA concept.

But he says: ''I'm not terribly enthusiastic about either of them. I

don't think the Danish Tivoli Gardens approach would work in Glasgow any

more than Euro-Disney in Paris. People prefer to go and see the real

thing. Also I would prefer to see something that is open all year round,

rather than just a few months.

''The GDA proposals are fine, but it seems to me they are trying to do

too many things that are loosely related. If either get millennium

funding, however, we would have to think seriously about being

supportive.''

Meanwhile Mr Jarvis is making a last-ditch effort to interest

developers. He admits he is ''late in the field'' in this regard, but

says he is making progress. He also intends to apply soon for millennium

funding.

However, time may be running out for the magician. Unless he can

conjure substantial support quickly, his grand vision for the field of

dreams may prove to be an illusion after all.