Noisemakers 2000: Future destinations

The Reichmanns bet the Technodome will be an economic boost and not a Canary Wharf bust

"The next millennium has finally arrived," touts the flyer for Destination: Technodome, Montreal's latest in a long history of futuristic mega-projects. Technodome is the most recent and by far-and-away most ambitious move in the redevelopment of Montreal as a technopolis for the 21st century.

Billed as the "world's largest, indoor single-most technologically advanced and unique attraction," Technodome is supposed to be the catalyst that will--along with the proposed Club Med Montreal--help make Montreal a leading North American destination in the global theme park economy of the future.

From the success of all-in-one fun centres like Ste-Catherine's new Paramount movie theatre, to the world-wide building boom in theme park construction, recreational tourism looks to be shaping up as one of the biggest growth industries of the coming decades.

At least, so much is the hope of Albert and Abraham Reichmann, who wield equity control over this billion-dollar mega-project. Once the fourth richest family in the world, the Reichmanns were written-off by many in the early '90s after the spectacular failure of their notorious Canary Wharf project in London's east end. (They had sunk billions into the redevelopment of the city's docklands, only to be felled by a real estate market crash.)

However, after taking the better part of a decade to regroup, it looks as though the Reichmanns are back making noise again, this time with a new strategy that focuses less on real estate and more on the real value of thrills and chills.



Neverending Expo

The Technodome is the first of the Reichmann's two planned billion-dollar indoor theme parks (the second, larger one is being proposed for the Rockaways in New York State). Ours is being sold as a sort of neverending Expo for Montreal, a cash-generating machine of tremendous duration. Consequently, the Reichmanns successfully triggered a bidding war for the project last summer between Toronto and Montreal. Initially, Montreal offered the Reichmanns the former Expo '67 parking lot (and purported toxic waste dump) Technopark, a near-vacant lot located just off the Bonaventure expressway.

Displeased with Montreal's paltry offer, the Reichmanns tabled the project for an ex-airforce base in Toronto where mayor Mel Lastman excitedly spoke of Technodome as his city's "jewel." However, circumstances unexpectedly soured on the Toronto deal, and the Reichmanns were lured back to Montreal with the promise of prime Old Port real estate, and a lucrative partnership with the $1.8 billion industrial and financial holding company, Societe general de financement, led by Claude Blanchette.

The current plan is to build the 200-million-square-foot complex on the actual site of Montreal's maritime port. In a way this is like replacing the sea port with a Babylon 5-type space port. No one knows quite where the port itself would be moved to; it seems to be of only secondary importance.



Vegas under glass

Technodome is part of Montreal's urban redevelopment strategy for the 21st century, a strategy overseeing Old Montreal's rebirth as the Ville Multimedia. If you're wondering why you haven't heard more buzz about the Technodome, perhaps it's because we find it hard to take sci-fi mega projects like this seriously in the context of a city landscape scattered with the relics of failed visions of the future: the Big O, Habitat, the geodesic sphere, and so on. None the less, it looks as though Technodome is official.

It will start construction this summer and it will be completed by 2003. Early artists' renderings have it looking something like a cross between Blade Runner and Vegas under glass. It will have an indoor ski hill, adrenaline-pumping, next-generation simulator rides based on your latest blockbusters, a recreation of Bourbon St., Times Square, Las Vegas and my personal favourite, the "airplane-crash attraction ride."

A dusty old scholar once said that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. In the third, "theme park" stage of history, everything comes back big as life and twice as real. Except this time it's pay for view. l

-- MARC TUTERS

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