Author: Emil Lazarian

Kerkorian Strikes Again
Casino City Times, MA
June 7 2004
Most popular gaming on the internet? Visit the new
online.casinocity.com! by Richard N. Velotta
By Our Partners at the Las Vegas Sun
LAS VEGAS — MGM MIRAGE’s surprise bid to buy out Mandalay Resort
Group had the familiar signature of a legendary deal maker.
Who else but Kirk Kerkorian, majority owner of MGM MIRAGE shares,
could engineer such a stunning proposal to acquire one of the hottest
casino companies on the Strip?
It was only four years ago that Kerkorian, who has waged boardroom war
involving companies such as Chrysler Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
stunned the gaming world with an audacious acquisition bid for Steve
Wynn’s Mirage Resorts Inc.
Observers were as stunned over the weekend as they were in 2000 when
Kerkorian engaged Wynn — a casino executive with a vastly different
style.
In the end, Kerkorian bought Mirage, although Wynn’s negotiating
resulted in the price for Mirage going up from $17 to $21 a share in
the $6.4 billion deal.
And, in a fairy-tale “all’s well that ends well” finish, Wynn wound
up taking his cut of the deal to buy the Desert Inn and turn the
site into what promises to be the next big must-see Strip resort,
Wynn Las Vegas, which will open next year.
Kerkorian and his company didn’t fare so badly either — they took
control of one of the prime Strip resorts Wynn built, Bellagio, and
the property credited with generating Las Vegas’ boom days, The Mirage,
as well as Treasure Island, the Golden Nugget (which recently changed
hands again), half of the Monte Carlo and one of Biloxi, Miss.’s best
properties, Beau Rivage.
“The game being played is one Kerkorian has played many times,” Bill
Thompson, chairman of the Department of Public Administration at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said at the time of the 2000 deal
for Mirage Resorts.
Thompson, contacted Sunday about the Mandalay Resort Group deal,
said he could almost say the same thing now.
“It’s clear that he’s found that the best opportunity for casino
gambling in the world is in Las Vegas,” Thompson said. “In one sense,
he’s voting on the Las Vegas Strip with this deal.”
But the fact that Kerkorian is making a play for Mandalay Resort Group
indicates to Thompson that maybe the 87-year-old financier doesn’t
see as much opportunity in international deals as some experts have
suggested.
“Maybe England is not opening up like he expected,” Thompson said in
reference to Great Britain’s deliberations on tax policies accompanying
the expansion and deregulation of gambling in that country.
MGM MIRAGE’s decision in May not to bid any higher than $555 million
to acquire Wembley Plc, a British operator of dog tracks in the United
Kingdom and Rhode Island, lends credence to that theory. MGM MIRAGE
bowed out of the bidding.
“He’s a great deal maker, but maybe there were a few things that didn’t
look right,” he said. “Maybe stuff was not working out as he expected
and he has some capital and he said, ‘What can I do with my money?’ ”
Whatever the answer is, it’s not likely to come from Kerkorian
himself. He shuns public attention, preferring to leave management
of his business operations to trusted executives such as MGM MIRAGE
Chairman and Chief Executive Terry Lanni.
Kerkorian has earned a reputation as a shrewd investor with some of
his most notorious deals occurring outside the gaming realm.
In 1965, Kerkorian, a former World War II pilot, sold Trans
International Airlines for a profit of more than $100 million after
building the airline from a couple of war surplus planes.
He used the profits to acquire the Flamingo in 1967 and to build
the International, now the Las Vegas Hilton, in 1969. At the time,
it was the largest hotel in the world.
Kerkorian sold both of those properties to Hilton Hotels Corp., in
1970, using the proceeds to buy the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio.
The name became the cornerstone for his MGM Grand hotel-casino, which
opened at the Strip and Flamingo Road in 1973. That hotel also was
the largest in the world when it opened.
He held the hotel and studio for several years, even enduring one of
Las Vegas’ worst disasters, a 1980 fire that killed 83 people. In
1985, Kerkorian sold the property to Bally Entertainment Corp.,
which turned the hotel into Bally’s hotel-casino.
Kerkorian picked up the Desert Inn in 1987 and the Sands in 1988. He
quickly sold the Sands to Sheldon Adelson, who eventually transformed
the site into the Venetian hotel-casino, and he sold the Desert Inn
to ITT-Sheraton in 1993.
Meanwhile, Kerkorian stripped away many of the MGM Studio’s assets
and sold them to Ted Turner in 1986, buying it back a few months
later after Turner had secured its film library. In 1990, Kerkorian
sold the studio again, this time to Giancarlo Parretti, an Italian
financier. Kerkorian acquired the studio for a third time in 1996
after accusations of financial misdealings threatened to close it.
Kerkorian’s various dealings in the early ’90s enabled him to build
the largest hotel in the world for the third time — the MGM Grand
at the Strip and Tropicana Avenue on the old Marina hotel-casino site.
Both Kerkorian and Wynn considered buying the parcel across the
street from the new MGM Grand and it was Kerkorian that emerged as
the owner. He and partner Gary Primm built the New York-New York
hotel-casino there, with Primm eventually selling his share of both
that property and his three resorts on the Nevada-California state
line to MGM Grand Inc.
Kerkorian has shown the same deal-making tenacity in his investments
in Chrysler Corp. Last month, he testified in a court case in U.S.
District Court in Delaware in which he has sued DaimlerChrysler AG,
claiming that company engineered a takeover of Chrysler but called
it a merger in order to avoid paying the acquisition fee.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Asia Times
June 9, 2004
Middle East
SPEAKING FREELY
Northern Iraq – calm like a bomb
By W Joseph Stroupe
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested
in contributing.
As negotiations at the United Nations on a new resolution for Iraq
apparently near a close, developments with respect to the Kurds and
north Iraq, where there has been relative calm until now, are looking
more and more ominous. Recently, the People’s Congress of Kurdistan
(the former Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK), announced an abrupt
end to its five-year ceasefire with Turkish forces, warning that it
would soon resort to violent means to achieve its ends.
Within a few days of the announcement, Kurdish forces in
southern Turkey did attack Turkish forces, prompting a violent
response. Additionally, according to a recent Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty report, “Kamis Djabrailov, chairman of the International
Union of Kurdish Public Organizations that represents the Kurdish
minorities in Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and other CIS [Commonwealth
of Independent States], told Interfax on 31 May that his organization
approves the announcement three days earlier by the People’s Congress
of Kurdistan that it will end on 1 June its five-year ceasefire in
hostilities with the Turkish armed forces.”
Hence, the regional political, diplomatic and even military
mobilization of Kurdish forces, in an attempt to secure its own
interests as the June 30 date for the handover of sovereignty to
Iraq nears, appears to be under way. In verification of that fact,
on June 7, Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal
Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan threatened to pull out of
the interim government unless the new United Nations Security Council
resolution guarantees Kurdish autonomy and a veto over the direction of
the interim government as promised in the draft interim constitution,
which was very reluctantly signed by the Shi’ite representatives,
but which is something the Shi’ite majority refuses to accept under
any circumstances.
The Kurdish representatives also expressed their bitter disappointment
over the fact that no Kurd was chosen to fill the positions of
either prime minister or president. Hence, in the Kurdish view,
their interests are being severely slighted as the June 30 date
nears. Whether a political and diplomatic compromise can be reached
that satisfies all the parties is not at all assured. The Sunnis and
Shi’ites appear to be mostly content with the look of the new interim
council and with Iraq’s direction, but the Kurds are certainly not
content. They have been marginalized before, by the United States
itself, and intend to take care of their own interests, by violence
if need be. This is indeed ominous.
The pointed Kurdish demands threaten to disrupt the relative
contentment with the transition process, which now exists among the
Sunni and Shi’ite populations, among Iraq’s neighbors and within
the international community at large. In actuality, there is little
sympathy for the cause of the Kurds in Iraq and the surrounding region.
That is especially so in Turkey, Syria and Iran, where Kurdish
groups are viewed as nothing more than destabilizing terrorists,
threatening the national security of the three nations, which have
recently deepened their cooperation in the effort to subdue such
groups. And in Armenia and Azerbaijan, the last thing that is wanted
is for such Kurdish groups to push the region toward violence and
instability in the pursuit of Kurdish autonomy.
An independent Kurdistan is, therefore, anathema to all but the Kurds
themselves. It is the United States which has greatly exacerbated the
current situation by raising Kurdish hopes for an independent Kurdistan
in northern Iraq. Months ago, in the atmosphere of violent insurgency
in Iraq and the approaching handover of sovereignty, the US-drafted
interim constitution significantly raised such Kurdish hopes, giving
them a veto over the direction of any Iraqi interim government,
as well as over the final Iraqi government to be seated in 2005.
Fearful of the influence of Shi’ite religious fundamentalism as the
transition to sovereignty progressed, the administration of President
George W Bush evidently saw the Kurds as an entity it could use to
keep such Shi’ite influence in check, to limit its power in any new
Iraqi regime, so as to prevent the formation of an Iranian-style
theocracy in Iraq. However, as matters are turning out, the most
powerful positions being filled in the interim government are occupied
by mostly secular Sunnis and Shi’ites.
So, the United States now has little use for the Kurds, who see clearly
that once again they are being abandoned by the US. All the parties see
the Kurds, therefore, as possible spoilers of the solution currently
being put together under UN auspices. Hence, little sympathy exists
for them. Realizing this fact, the Kurds are already resorting to
threats and violence in an effort to get a satisfactory hearing. By
its short-sighted, ad hoc approach to Iraq’s complicated situation,
first using the Kurds and then casting them aside, the United States
may have sealed both its own and Iraq’s fate.
There appears little hope that the Kurdish demands can be sufficiently
taken into consideration without at the same time losing the already
cautious and tentative support of the Sunnis and Shi’ites. And
there also appears little hope that the Kurds will suddenly satisfy
themselves with what the other two factions are comfortable in giving
them. Hence, whether the Kurds might temporarily tone down their
demands for the time being, or whether they more likely will ratchet
up their demands as the UN negotiations proceed and the June 30 date
nears, one thing that appears certain is that they will hold a major
key to how events proceed in Iraq.
The United States has let loose a Kurdish “monster”, not only on
Iraq itself, but also on the region at large, a “monster” which
cannot easily be put back into the box. If a diplomatic solution
cannot be crafted that satisfies all of Iraq’s three factions, and
it is doubtful that one can, then a great deal of military muscle
will be needed in the entire region to keep the disenfranchised Kurds
“in check”. And that muscle will have to come increasingly into play
in northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In the end, the handover of sovereignty on June 30 may not change
anything, except that it may well accelerate Iraq’s descent into
sectarian violence, with Turkey and Syria cooperating militarily
to secure their interests in northern Iraq by taking control of
that region, and the southern regions of Iraq moving significantly
closer into cooperation with Iran, with the US military caught in
the middle. The relative calmness of northern Iraq is very likely
to be much like the calmness of a large bomb – its calmness very
deceptively masks the huge explosion which is likely imminent.

Yerevan Adamant In Delaying Metsamor Closure
By Atom Markarian 09/06/2004 01:46
Radio Free Europe, Czech Rep
June 8 2004
The Armenian government remains determined not to close the Metsamor
nuclear power plant in the near future and reaffirmed this position
during talks with senior officials from the European Union last week,
Industry Minister Karen Chshmaritian said on Tuesday.
Chshmaritian headed a delegation of government officials who
represented Yerevan at a regular meeting of an Armenia-EU “cooperation
committee” which took place in Brussels on Friday. The issue of
Metsamor’s future was high on its agenda. “The European side wants
Armenia to set a date [for Metsamor’s closure],” Chshmaritian told a
news conference. “However, Armenia can not set a date without having
financing resources [to replace the facility] and clarifying the
entire procedure for the closure.”
The EU has long been arguing that the plant is located in a seismically
active area and that its Soviet-built nuclear reactor does not meet
modern safety standards. The bloc’s executive European Commission has
offered to grant Armenia 100 million euros ($123 million) in return
for the decommissioning of the plant which generates about 40 percent
of the country’s electricity.
Chshmaritian reiterated Yerevan’s rejection of the offer, saying that
as much as $1 billion is needed for safely shutting down Metsamor
safely and putting in place an alternative source of inexpensive
energy. “The Energy Ministry presented its calculations [to the EU],
according to which the total cost of the work would be worth that
much,” he said. He added the Armenia-EU body decided to set up a
working group that will look into the issue in detail and present
its findings by the end of this year.
The government wants to keep Metsamor operational for at least another
decade despite its past promise to the EU to decommission the plant
in 2004. The European Commission now seems to be stepping up pressure
on Yerevan to do that as soon as possible in line with its policy of
phasing out all Soviet-designed reactors remaining in Eastern Europe.
Still, an EU spokeswoman in Brussels told RFE/RL last week that the
bloc will continue to finance further measures to improve Metsamor’s
operational safety “up to its closure.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Art Newspaper, UK
June 8 2004
Unknotting a tangled tale of towels
Scientific tests have established that an icon, revered as an imprint
of Christ’s face, is 13th century
By Martin Bailey
Tests on a painting, called the Mandylion, revered as a miraculous
imprinted image of Christ, have revealed it to have been made in
the 13th century. There are several early versions of the image,
but the one in Genoa is the first to have been subjected to a
thorough scientific examination. The results are being presented at
an exhibition (until 18 July) in the city’s Museo Diocesano as part
of the European Capital of Culture celebrations. Appropriately, the
show is presented as a journey, both spiritual and scientific—since
the venerated icon has links with Syria, Turkey, Sinai and Armenia.
The Mandylion is traditionally believed to be a representation of the
face of Jesus miraculously transferred to a towel (from the Arabic
word mandil, “small cloth”), but is not to be confused with the cloth,
which also bears His likeness, with which Veronica wiped Christ’s
face as He went to Calvary.
The first mention of the existence of the Mandylion comes from the
sixth century. In 944 it was brought from Edessa to Constantinople by
emperor Constantine VII. The imperial city lost the Mandylion in the
crusader conquest of 1204, when it was sold to the French and taken
to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Other versions existed from early
on in Rome and Genoa.
The provenance of the Genoa Mandylion can be traced back to the
1370s, when Byzantine emperor John V presented it to Leonardo Montaldo,
Captain of the Genoese colony on the Bosphorus and later Doge of
Genoa. On Montaldo’s death in 1384, he bequeathed his Mandylion to the
Armenian monastery attached to the Church of San Bartolomeo in Genoa,
where it has remained for over 600 years.
The church recently agreed to a small sample of wood being removed
from the poplar panel, for carbon dating at the University of Lecce.
The results show that there is a 90% probability that the panel on
which the painted linen image is fixed dates from between 1240-90.
Other objects associated with the Genoa Mandylion were also examined.
Most important is the magnificent gilded silver frame, which was made
in Constantinople in the mid-14th century. Enclosing the original frame
are two later cases made in Italy, one in 1601 and the other in 1702.
The back of the Genoa Mandylion is covered by a fine piece of
10th-century Syrian silk. The fact that the original Mandylion arrived
in Constantinople in 944 has led exhibition co-curator Colette Dufour
to suggest that this silk could have once formed a covering for the
original icon.
The Sinai connection Also temporarily on show in Genoa are a
pair of diptych panels from the Greek Orthodox monastery of St
Catherine’s, which have left Sinai for the first time in over 1,000
years. Art-historical detective work has proved that these must
originally have been wings for another Mandylion.
The upper-right image on the diptych depicts King Abgar receiving
the imprinted towel of Christ. Abgar is given the facial features of
Constantine VII, who brought the Mandylion from Edessa in 944. The
other wing shows the Apostle Thaddeus, whom Christ had sent to
establish the church in Edessa. The wings are 28 centimetres high,
the same as the Genoa Mandylion, which is the clinching evidence that
they were created for a triptych with the face of Christ.
The Sinai wings have been dated on stylistic grounds to the second-half
of the 10th century and were probably painted at St Catherine’s. It is
therefore now being suggested that a copy of the Mandylion was given
by Constantine VII to the monastery very soon after the original
had reached him in 944, with the wings being created as protective
shutters for this precious gift. A photographic reconstruction of the
“Mandylion Triptych” has never been published, and appears in The
Art Newspaper for the first time.
The mystery is what happened to the lost Sinai central panel of the
Mandylion. As a small object, it was vulnerable to theft, but what is
curious is that the wings were separated from it and survive. This
has led exhibition co-curator Professor Gerhard Wolf to propose
that the Sinai Mandylion “may have been returned to the emperor in
Constantinople after the original was seized by Crusaders in 1204”.
Historical background
Legend has it that King Abgar of Edessa, who reigned during the
time of Jesus, was ill, and believed that an image of the Saviour
would cure him. He sent an emissary to Jerusalem to paint Christ’s
portrait. Instead Jesus took a towel and put it to his face, which was
brought back to Edessa, in ancient Syria (Sanliurfa in present-day
Turkey). The Sainte-Chapelle version was looted during the French
Revolution and probably destroyed.
Another Mandylion was taken to Rome and by 1587 it was in the Convent
of the Poor Clares at San Silvestro in Capite. In 1870, it passed
to the Vatican. It is currently in the “St Peter and the Vatican”
exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art (until 6 September). The
US catalogue accepts the Vatican dating, ascribing it to the third
to fifth centuries, but the entry reveals considerable uncertainty.
However, Professor Wolf believes that the Vatican icon dates from
the same period as Genoa’s, and is also 13th century.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A EUROPEAN COURT TO HEAR A1+ CASE
ArmenPress
June 8 2004
YEREVAN, JUNE 8, ARMENPRESS: Mesrop Movsesian, the president of A1+
television, forced off the air in 2002, told a news conference today
that the European Human Rights Court has decided to start hearing
of the case, filed by the television against the National Committee
on Radio and Television that granted the frequency used by A1+ to
another company after holding a tender.
A1+ first sent its suit against the Commission to the European
Court in 2002 October, protesting against, as it said “the illegal
decision that took away the 37 decimeter frequency and violating the
company’s rights.” The complete package of documents was sent in 2003
January. Tigran Yesayan, the president of the International Union of
Armenian lawyers, told the same press conference that the European
Court has already notified the Armenian government about its decision
and asked also it to provide its answers to four question as why the
Court should not hear the suit.
Yesayan said it is for the time being difficult to say whether the
government could prove that the rights of the television were not
breached. He said the deadline for the government to present its
arguments is 2004 September 28.
This will be followed by open hearings of the case, and a
representative of the television will also participate in them.
Yesayan assumed that the Court may propose a compromise ruling to
the sides, but added that if it is accepted by both parties, its
details will not be disclosed. “Even if the company wins the case,
it will not be given a frequency, as the television’s complaint des
not contain such a demand, the compensation will be of material and
moral character,’ he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NAGORNO KARABAKH PRESIDENT FLEW TO PARIS
PanArmenian News
June 8 2004
STEPANAKERT, 08.06.04. Nagorno Karabakh President Arkadi Ghukasian
flew to Paris today for the participation in the measures dedicated
to the 10-th anniversary of establishment of the cease-fire regime
at the territory of the Karabakh conflict. As reported in the press
office of NKR`s President, the measures are arranged on the initiative
of the Armenian Union of France `In Defense of Karabakh` and with the
assistance of the Coordination Committee of the Armenian Organizations
of France. During the visit Arkadi Ghukasian will visit Marseilles and
Nicå. NKR leader is as well expected to meet with French co-chair of
the OSCE Minsk Group Anri Jakolen. Meetings with the representatives
of the Armenian Diaspora are also scheduled.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Japan to invest in Yerevan power plant
Interfax
June 8 2004
Yerevan. (Interfax) – The Japanese government plans to invest $4.5
million in the construction of a thermal power plant in Yerevan with a
capacity of 1.5 megawatts based on a waste incineration plant, Armenian
Natural Resource Minister Vardan Aivazyan told journalists on Monday.
He said that the ministry has approved the construction of the plant
and thermal power plant at the Nurabshen dump, which covers an area
of over 60 hectares. Talks are currently underway between a potential
subcontractor for the project – Japan’s Shimizu – and the Yerevan
Mayor’s Office.
Aivazyan said that the project would involve the use of up to 800 –
900 cubic meters of rubbish per day to produce methane to be used in
electricity production.
The minister said that recently Armenia set an output tariff for
electricity produced from burning biogas of $0.08 per 1 kWh. The
investor is happy with this tariff.
He said that the talks should be completed by September 10, after
which construction should begin.
Diana Arutyunyan, the national coordinator of the project, told
Interfax that the Japanese state company New Energy and Industrial
Technology Organization plans to finance the project.
She said that Shimizu has already completed the first stage of work on
an audit and preparation of a feasibility study. She also said that
the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is interested
in this project.
Electricity production in Armenia fell 0.29% to 5.5 billion kWh
in 2003.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azer Tag, Azerbiajan State Info Agency
June 7 2004
INTERVENTION IN RADIO SPACE OF OUR COUNTRY STOPPED
[June 07, 2004, 15:53:49]
Broadcasting of the tele-channels of Iran and Armenia in the border
areas of Azerbaijan is one of the problems causing concern of the
society.
As Minister of Communications and information technologies Ali Abbasov
informed the correspondent of AzerTAj, our country is a member of
the International Telecommunication Association. Members of the said
Association should observe the established legal rules. According to
these rules, television and radio channels of the frontier countries,
depending on relief, can be broadcast in territory of the next state
on distance almost 300 kilometers. However, it should be carried out
by regulation of channels between the countries. The Iranian TV channel
“Seger-2” possesses very powerful transmitting system. Therefore, airs
programs of this channel are possible to look sometimes even in Hovsan,
a settlement of Baku. For solution of the mentioned problem in the
corresponding zone a new transmitter was installed as a result of which
the radius of broadcasting of this channel was considerably reduced.
According to minister, for the full termination of broadcasting were
singed two protocols with the Iranian officials. According to the
protocols, the neighbors should bring corresponding technical changes
to the transmitter of the mentioned channel.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIA’S FOREIGN MILITARY POLICY BASED ON COMPLEMENTARITY, SENIOR OFFICER SAYS
ArmenPress
June 7 2004
YEREVAN, JUNE 7, ARMENPRESS: A senior army officer told reporters last
weekend that the army is fully prepared to accept the first conscripts,
granted the right to alternative military service. Lieutenant Colonel
Sedrak Sedrakian, the chief of the legal department at the defense
ministry, said all relevant infrastructures will be ready on July 1.
He said the major task faced now by the defense ministry is to ensure
a full application of the Law on Alternative Military Service. He
said the locations where the alternative conscripts will serve, the
design of their special uniforms will be submitted soon to government’s
approval. The army officer said everything must be done to organize
alternative military service in a way that not violate the conscripts’
rights concurrently avoiding jeopardizing the national security of
the country.
Sedrakian also said some 120 million Drams were collected from
Armenian citizens who dodged mandatory military service escaping
from Armenia in early nineties. Under the law, that came into effect
on March 1, such citizens who have reached the age of 27 can avoid
criminal responsibility after coming back to Armenia by paying around
$3,500. He said a special inter-agency commission founded to consider
such application can consider some 30 applications a day
In a related development, Major-General Mikael Melkonian, the head of
a defense ministry department for external relations and cooperation,
reiterated that Armenia’s foreign military policy is based on what
is known as “complementarity.” Speaking at special discussions at the
American University of Armenia on the existing problems in the Armenian
armed forces, the General said the major points of Armenian military
policy is to keep the military and strategic balance, constructive
cooperation will all interested forces and building the security
environment in the region.
He pointed to Armenia’s allied partnership with Russia and its
membership to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which he
said is the main security guarantee of Armenia and also to Armenia’s
close cooperation with NATO within the frameworks of the latter’s
Partnership for Peace program, underlying the presence of an Armenian
peace-keeping platoon in Kosovo. “Unlike some years ago when Armenia’s
participation in Partnership for Peace program was limited to attending
several training courses, now we are moving towards close practical
exercises,” he said.

Platform souls: New plans for King’s Cross in London show the massive scale of the venture
The Guardian (London)
June 7, 2004
Platform souls: New plans for King’s Cross in London show the massive
scale of the venture. And the smart money – including that of New
York art tycoon Larry Gagosian – is already moving in. By Jonathan
Glancey
The hype surrounding the opening of the Gagosian Gallery in King’s
Cross, London, has been so great and the plaudits have been so
glittering that I expected to find something very special indeed.
Not, perhaps, a riposte to the Bilbao Guggenheim by Frank Gehry but a
landmark building; an artistic adventure.
The Gagosian Gallery proves to be a modest creation, housed in a
former garage in Britannia Street, a rats’ alley smelling of diesel
and urine, scuttling across the Metropolitan and Circle underground
lines as they rattle between Farringdon and King’s Cross-St Pancras.
Behind the gaunt facade, Larry Gagosian’s architects, Caruso St John,
best known for their New Art Gallery, in Walsall, which opened in
2000, have opened up bright, cavernous, concrete-floored, top-lit
white spaces. These are particularly refined white spaces; they have
something of a religious air about them, not least because on a
weekday afternoon this private gallery is as quiet as an abandoned
city church. A security guard sits like a piece of isolated artwork
by the locked door, while bright young things potter about at a vast
reception desk faced with important catalogues. A solitary, studious
looking fellow surveys the brown and white Cy Twombly abstracts,
which hang from the spotless white walls with a degree of respect
owed to icons and statues elsewhere.
None of this is a criticism of this new London art space, which is
one of the best of its kind since Charles Saatchi’s original gallery
in St John’s Wood, designed by the late Max Gordon. Caruso St John
are among our most thoughtful architects, as careful with the process
of building as they are with design. And, yet, for all its graceful
substance, the gallery has something of a temporary air about it.
Should the top end of the art market take a tumble between now and
the completion of the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras in 2007, it
would make a particularly fine restaurant, office or nightclub.
The area will certainly want these as its redevelopment gathers pace
over the next five years. Seedy for decades, King’s Cross is
fast-becoming a blue-chip investment for property developers. Quite
how the promethean building works promised here will pan out is
anyone’s guess. For every impressive new civil engineering
achievement, there will be routine chain stores; for every art
gallery, a fast-food joint. Expect, in time-honoured English
tradition, a mix of the sublime and the banal: the Gormenghast glory
of St Pancras raised to fresh, pinnacled heights as Eurostar trains
snake in and out on their three-mile-a-minute race to and from Paris
with its cafes, restaurants, shops and art galleries. Penny-plain
King’s Cross station stripped of 1970s tat. Both stations are
attended by millions of square feet of gleaming new offices, some
1,800 flats, dozens of shops, washed and brushed public spaces, three
new footbridges over the Regent’s Canal, restored historic buildings
and, so the developers say, more art galleries.
This leviathan plan, announced last week, for the 67-acre area north
of the Gagosian Gallery, has been prepared by a property consortium
comprising Argent St George, Exel, London and Continental Railways.
Allies and Morrison, immaculate Moderns, and Demetri Porphyrios, the
most convincing of the Prince of Wales’s school of classicists, have
been appointed architects in charge of a development that, in scale
at least, matches the heroic urban projects that shaped Victorian
London. The £2bn project will take at least 15 years to complete. It
may yet be rejected by the mayor of London, who will surely find its
tallest 19-storey towers too modest and its plan not sufficiently
dedicated to the concerns of big business. It may yet be called in
for public inquiry by the government, and either held up, heavily
edited or abandoned while lawyers rack up prodigious fees.
Whatever the process – the rise and fall of commercial and
professional reputations, the jaw-dropping fees, the performance
bonuses, pension top-ups, the gongs awarded and brown envelopes
exchanged – King’s Cross will surely be redeveloped on a titanic
scale within the next 10 and 20 years. The dodgy young men,
working-class street-walkers and middle-class kerb-crawlers will move
on, along with the purveyors of kebabs, tattoos and grubby mags.
Spick and span corporate offices, big-brand shops, chain cafes and
relentless street furniture interspersed with well-meant public art
will take their place.
Architects of the calibre of Allies and Morrison and Demetri
Porphyrios will do their best to raise the standards of St Pancras
but they cannot hope to control the quality of the tenants who will
flock here in coming years. There will be something like 30,000 new
jobs here, while millions of passengers travelling to and from London
and the Continent, and looking for diversion, will mill around King’s
Cross. A committed few might waft down New Britannia Street to pick
up a canvas by Cy Twombly or a pickled lamb by Damien Hirst.
Gagosian, however, ought to know what most people will want. This
sharp, silver-haired Armenian-American, nicknamed “Go-Go”, began
making money in Santa Monica in the 1970s. “I would buy prints for $
2-$ 3, put them in aluminium frames and sell them for $ 15,” says the
Donald Trump of the art world. If Gagosian likes art, he likes
nothing better than closing deals. He opened a small gallery behind
Regent Street a few years ago, also a conversion by Caruso St John,
before homing in on King’s Cross, which offers an optimum deal: a
place to show big, headline-stealing artworks – tens of tons of Serra
– in a handsome setting in the sort of grubby street that makes the
art world trill with excitement, while making a quiet future killing
on the property market.
Gagosian likes art, and knows that this, with all its high society
connections, brings kudos, glamour and outlandishly big bucks. Should
you happen to be a wheeler-dealer who builds a fashionable gallery
showing fashionable artists in one of the most fashionable
up-and-coming parts of London, how can you possibly go wrong?
Gagosian’s gung-ho, yet outwardly, highly refined, venture into the
London art world and King’s Cross is, perhaps, to be preferred to the
run-of-the-mill development that could take place here if we fail to
keep a sharp eye on the area and the hugely ambitious “masterplans”
dreamed up by one developer after the other over the past 15 years.
No one should doubt that the real artwork here is the arrival of the
high-speed Eurostar line. This, like the Midland Railway’s grand
Gothic entry into St Pancras some 140 years ago, will change the face
of the surrounding area, including Britannia Street, for ever.
guardian.co.uk/glancey
Graceful substance . . . the new Gagosian Gallery. Below, the
interior, with Rachel Whiteread’s Ghost. Below right, a model of the
planned King’s Cross redevelopment
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress