The Debate: Should we install The Sphere?
CityAM’s new weekly feature takes the fiercest water-cooler debates and pits two candidates head to head before delivering The Judge’s ultimate verdict.
This week: The Sphere
On Monday plans to build a giant snowglobe-shaped music venue in Stratford – just like the original version in Las Vegas – were scuppered after mayor of London Sadiq Khan rejected the proposals.
The MSG Sphere would have been identical to the facility recently opened in Las Vegas, with the London site intended to offer the capital a world-leading music and entertainment venue.
Yes: London risks alienating investors
In one sense, the reason for saying yes to the sphere is as easy as saying why not. For too long as a nation we have looked for the negative in everything. We have become unambitious. We have settled for mediocrity. All to not upset the rather noisy apple cart.
But if we delve deeper there is slightly more thinking behind my letter, where I say Teesside would happily welcome the sphere if London would not. Of course, it would be fantastic if the sphere came to this area, and I again welcome any discussions to make this happen, but more importantly it is about demonstrating the attitude me and my organisation have towards development.
We are unapologetically pro-development and pro-business and I have spent six years with my team making sure that my organisation works in this way. We want to be as flexible as possible when working with companies who want to bring significant amounts of investment to our area and we work tirelessly to make sure it is as easy as possible for them to bring their capital here. Every city in the UK should work this way, and the development of the Sphere is symbolic of that.
Sadiq Khan’s rejection of the Sphere development, in all honesty, creates an opportunity for those who are truly pro-business. If investors see London as a place that is slow, difficult and unwelcoming to investment, those investors will look to the rest of the UK to find a home for their projects.
As mayor of the Tees Valley, I have always said if we don’t talk up Teesside, nobody else is going to do it for us, so I feel it is a critical part of my job to use my platform to sell our area to the world and ensure we put our best foot forward, it’s a shame that Sadiq Khan appears to think the opposite about our great capital city.
Ben Houchen is mayor of the Tees Valley
No: We have no business building music venues in a housing crisis
I greeted the news that London would not be getting a giant televisual sphere with dismay. Here was yet another example of a city aspiring to global greatness punching its own lights out. How can we keep pace with the world when we turn down such high-profile growth opportunities?
But the more I thought, I realised it wasn’t the lack of Sphere I was disgruntled with, but the lack of anything at all.
The Las Vegas orb is perfectly suited to Las Vegas. It is a gaudy advert for the city, the United States, and anyone else willing to cough up — a flashing beacon visible from space that bellows ‘here be capitalism’. It’s not very London.
If I had my way, a similar edifice in Stratford would only ever have been acceptable if illuminated more or less permanently as the Eye of Sauron, in recognition of the direction the area is headed anyway. Fun, but not the best use of money or space.
The idea of a giant flashing advertising space, even if it contains an impressive venue within, seems nightmarish for those who live in the area. But, there aren’t enough of those anyway. What business do we have building another performing venue, in the immediate vicinity of the Abba installation and the Olympic Stadium, when what the capital really needs is more houses?
And in any case, if another venue is what we desire, why should we copy Las Vegas? Is originality so far gone that we cannot conceive of another shape? Perhaps, like the pyramids before, spheres are “in” at the moment. But why should London not set the trends? Where is the proposal for the glowing dodecahedron? The radiating hexagonal prism? Why don’t we appeal to our heritage, and bring back the barrow mound, or the henge, but make them neon?
The Sphere captured the imagination of many a Yimby because we just don’t get many wins in this city. But honestly? The fear and loathing the decision has prompted is unwarranted. The aim of the Yimby shouldn’t just be to build, but also to build better than elsewhere.
Benedict Spence is a freelance writer
The Verdict: Bring it on
Our candidates put forth some excellent arguments for and against Madison Square Garden’s 21,500-capacity sports and music venue, known as the Sphere and resembling a giant snowglobe, whose planning permission was rejected by the mayor on Monday.
Spence is right to point to the dearth of homes in London and oggle at the potential building space in E15 (why anyone would want to live in that hellscape is another matter altogether). But business calls. It’s true London should not lamely aim to imitate Las Vegas, despite its economic prowess.
Yet although Spence claims the Sphere is “not very London” 2023 isn’t the 17th century. London’s strength is its diversity – from posh Chelsea to grungy Brick Lane to, frankly, playgrounds for freaks like Stratford with its moonscape industrial non-vibe, spaceage Abba Voyage venue and random Olympic remnants. This is in fact the perfect place to plonk a Sphere. Whilst we’re at it, we might as well add a Cone or a Pyramid into the mix too.
Verdict: Sphere? Bring it on – Michael Gove, we await your interjection with hope.