Ha, found it!
When Liverpool won the battle to be Europe's Capital of Culture in 2008, to bold promises of two million extra visitors and a flood of inward investment, its residents could have been excused for thinking they had been here before.
On the southern outskirts of the city, stretched along the Mersey, is a decaying monument to another grand cultural project that was meant to bring economic regeneration in its wake: Liverpool's spectacular International Garden Festival.
These days seagulls and vandals are the only visitors to the dilapidated 100-acre site, but in the six months the festival ran, in 1984, 3.6 million visitors came to see the grand Japanese and Chinese gardens, the Blue Peter ship, the Yellow Submarine, and the water features.
Launched by Michael Heseltine, whose close involvement with projects to kick-start the area's economy while secretary of state for the environment had earned him the nickname "minister for Merseyside", the festival was meant to usher in an era of hope, after the Toxteth riots of 1981 had opened the Thatcher govern ment's eyes to the potential costs of economic deprivation.
Fast-forward almost 20 years, though, and a stand-off between Liverpool city council and Wiggins, the developers who hold the lease for the land, means that most of it is still standing empty and overgrown. "They have let the site deteriorate appallingly," said Mike Storey, Liberal Democrat leader of the council, which took over the freehold of the land from the defunct Merseyside Development Corporation.
After a dispute about the suitability of Wiggins' various plans for the site, which Mr Storey dismissed last week as "pie in the sky", the council has slapped a "dilapidation order" on the firm, insisting it tidy up the former landfill site, and restore the Chinese and Japanese gardens to their former glory, or risk being taken to court.
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The council is also planning to strip the site of its "fixtures and fittings", including the crumbling dome which formed the heart of the festival and is now expected to be shipped off to nearby Southport to be used for its own garden festival.
If the planners of the Millennium Dome had wanted a cautionary tale to show them what happens when politicians fail to think beyond the brief shelf-life of an ambitious project, they only needed to look here, at the dome of the north. Everyone agrees that this prime site ought to be brought back into use before the Capital of Culture throws itself open to visitors from all over Europe.
"You can't have a major route into the city where you look to your left, and see turnstiles from the 70s and a smashed-up dome," said Mr Storey. "We would like to see a mixture: one-third of the site would become housing, with some appropriate retail, and we would like the rest of the site to become a coastal park."
As the history of the garden festival site makes clear, though, the problem with regeneration is that everyone involved has a different idea of how to make a success of it. And in this case, none of the parties is even speaking to the other.
"Out of the blue, in October 2002, the council wrote to us to say, 'We're not going to talk to you any more'," said Tony Freudmann, Wiggins' senior vice-president. "I am left speechless by their attitude. The council is now wearing two hats, as landlord and planning authority."
Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, which includes the garden festival site, would like to bang heads together. "Suddenly there was a total breakdown in communications," she said. "The council has to swallow their pride, get a grip, and get back talking."
Mr Storey and his colleagues may, though, be awaiting the outcome of Wiggins' financial travails, and hoping the council may be given the chance to get its hands on the site again. The firm suspended trading in its shares earlier in the year, and announced it was in talks over a "reverse takeover" bid by the Scottish property group LNC.
As the stand-off goes on, local activists continue their wait of almost 20 years for the land to be given back to them.
Jean Hill, from the Garden Festival Campaign, who lives around the corner from the site, said: "I don't think we need to fill every piece of riverside with housing. We've started to think about things like the Eden Project. Those things are more money-making than anyone thought 10 years ago. But all we can do is wait."
Dome of the North
1984 Liverpool International Garden Festival attracts 3.6 million visitors
1986 600 homes built on north side of festival site
1993 Merseyside Development Corporation leases land to a company which opens an amusement park called Pleasure Island
1997 Pleasure Island fails to make money. Developers Wiggins buy the business and lock up the site
1998 Merseyside Development Corporation, which is about to be wound up, hands lease to Liverpool city council. Wiggins submits second unsuccessful plan for site involving a marina, and 'vertical theme park' in tower on the waterfront
2002 Relations between Wiggins and council break down completely after third set of plans are rejected
2003 Liverpool wins bid to be European Capital of Culture in 2008
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