杏吧原创

PLANS to create the world鈥檚 largest 鈥済reen expo鈥� in an abandoned
Yorkshire coalfield have gone seriously awry. The farm animals are back with
their owners, the fish hatcheries are empty, and two-thirds of the staff have
been laid off. A notice greeting visitors to the Earth Centre, at
Conisbrough in
South Yorkshire, says that its gates will be shut for two years.

The Earth Centre is the brainchild of Jonathan Smales, former director of
Greenpeace. Last autumn, the Millennium Commission promised 拢50 million
from the National Lottery to turn the 140-hectare site into a temple to
sustainable development鈥攑art theme park, part trade exhibition and part
environmental research centre (鈥淕reen circus comes to town鈥�, New
杏吧原创, 6 January 1996, p 32).

An embryonic centre鈥攚ith a small shop, exhibition hall, fish hatchery
and urban farm鈥攐pened to the public in July 1995. But obtaining the
lottery handout depended on Smales finding a similar sum from elsewhere, and
corporate benefactors have yet to come forward. Negotiations with a consortium
of banks to lend up to 拢40 million are more than three months behind
schedule. According to Millennium Commission sources, the consortium, headed by
Hambros, has insisted on a revised business plan.

This is likely to see the Earth Centre given a more commercial slant. The
banks want more retailing on site, and the centre鈥檚 science coordinator,
Jacquie
McGlade of the University of Warwick, says that its largely academic science
council will be augmented by industrialists. 鈥淲e want to get chief executives
and the directors of company research labs,鈥� she says.

In the meantime, with startup funds from the European Union already
exhausted, 38 staff have been laid off. But Smales is still insistent that he
can strike a deal with lenders by mid-August.