Chasing The Dragon: West Kowloon Cultural District

The Wright Brothers had a dream. We got airplanes. Thomas Edison had a dream. We got electricity. Now Austalian-born entrepreneur Daniel Marinov has a dream. If he has his way, we'll get the West Kowloon Cultural District: Enter The Dragon.

Like thousands of others, Marinov, a long-time city resident, took a hard look at the three short-listed proposals for the West Kowloon Project when they were on display at City Hall this year. But he didn't blindly vote for his favorite among the models proposed by World City Culture Park, Dynamic Star International and Sunny Development. Instead, he got angry (see below). That was the moment he decided to come up with his own concept, which he believes will change the city forever.

"We've taken the environment into consideration," he says. "We've taken sustainability. We're thinking world class - London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong. All the others are thinking from a real estate point of view. Their proposals are dangerous from a financial viewpoint. What if there's another virus? Property values will just go down again."

Marinov doesn't have as much real estate know-how as the big developers with their convenient plot ratios, but a quick glance around our skyline shows our buildings won't win any beauty prizes anyway. What Marinov does offer, however, is two decades of experience in knowing what people want. He is the founder and CEO of design collective Planet Time, which has sold more than US$1 billion worth of trendsetting products worldwide, notably fluorescent phones and black-light mobiles. He's also been a restaurant and bar owner, whose possessions included Shek O's Black Sheep and Bamboo Club venues. Marinov has been called everything from a dreamer to a Svengali. "It's just thinking out of the box," he says.

He's also not short of ideas. "The dream is to create a cultural sanctuary with unrivalled leisure, entertainment, retailing and residential facilities," his proposal states. What that translates into is a complex that resembles a huge dragon, composed of several geodesic domes covered in transparent canopies. Also included in the traffic-free complex are theaters, museums, galleries, a 20,000-seat all-weather open-air arena, a 30,000-seat concert venue, shopping malls, restaurants, 3,000 apartments, a two kilometer beach and a towering, 488-meter high "People's Pagoda," containing offices, hotels and retail spaces. As he explains, "Nobody thinks museums will attract big crowds. The key words are arts, cultural and entertainment. We've upped the ante on entertainment."

The Big Gamble

There's the huge matter of cost to consider when building this "Enter The Dragon" project. Marinov claims some of the funding will come through the sale of the 3,000 on-site apartments. The rest, he says, "will come from a planned casino on top of the People's Pagoda." Yes, a casino. But one modeled after Monte Carlo, not Las Vegas. It would enable the city to tap the revenue stream that currently flows to Macau, and soon, Singapore. "To become world class, the casino will allow us to throw money at it," Marinov says. "Once that happens, we won't need a Guggenheim. We can use the money to do what we want. We could create the synergy for the local arts and culture scene instead of relying on somebody else's agenda. The casino cluster will also enable money to go into the local neighborhoods."