Slag heap makes way for world of grape trees

Jonathan Foster reports on an innovative concept that will create 800 jobs

Locals already had a vague awareness of strange goings-on down at Cadeby pit, and yesterday the Government dispelled confusion. It will not be a new Asda, but the third millennium instead.

Few projects of such startling originality can have a more improbable location than the Earth Centre, which yesterday won a pounds 50m grant from the National Lottery, via the Millennium Commission.

The centre will seek to germinate development for the post-industrial age by researching and teaching new technologies that can accommodate the human race without destroying the planet.

On one level an application for Whitehall-funding of a museum, the centre makes no apologies for its millennarian quest to be "a world class educational initiative and an essential new tool in securing a sustainable future based on a green renaissance of society, economy and industry".

All this in Denaby, a South Yorkshire pit village without a pit, its human resources demoralised and impoverished since the day on the picket line 10 years ago when the miners knew their battle was lost.

The idea for an example of sustainable development, a Great Exhibition of ecology, was hatched in 1989 by Jonathan Smales, a former director of Greenpeace. Mr Smales originally wanted the centre to be built at Canary Wharf, in Docklands, east London. But the response in the capital was muted and Mr Smales found unbridled enthusiasm in the Dearne Valley public and private sectors for a project he likens to the construction in London of the great Victorian museums.

The total cost of completing the centre by 2000 is estimated at pounds 125m, the commission joining private and EU investors to transform 350 acres of slag heap and dirty rivers. In their place will rise three striking pavilions, examples of innovative architecture. The Ark, the Sustainable Futures Centre and the Sustainable Science and Industry Gallery are forecast to attract 2.5m visitors in 2000.

Mr Smales anticipates new, green technology industry will develop in the valley, inspired by the innovation boastfully promoted by the centre. About 800 jobs will be provided at the centre, but the spin-off from industrial development and education projects including expansion plans by the two Sheffield universities could turn the Dearne into a sustainable variant of silicon valley.

The project list is exhaustive: humane and organic farming; simulated rides inside forests and giant mammals; "clean" buses; advanced water transport; nature reserves; sustainable methods of manufacturing and power generation.

Sir Crispin Tickell, former UK ambassador to the UN and president of Earth Centre, said the project would collect "a convoy of ideas". Sir Crispin, a senior government adviser on sustainability, said Denaby could influence policy. "The thing we have always lacked is a practical demonstration, an exemplar to the world."

Denaby, in the shadow of Ivanhoe's castle, was yesterday awakening to the stirrings at the colliery site. "All I know is it's got grape trees in it," one local said. Now pounds 50m of government money is making even sceptics believe that the contaminated ground will be cleansed and the ancient woodland of the valley reach down again to the rivers.

And for those who would have preferred an Asda, the centre will also sell meat, fish and vegetables.