The Hospital comes off the sick list

ENTREPRENEURIAL musician Dave Stewart insists that The Hospital, his twice-delayed, £60m Covent Garden music, art and film complex is still on track despite spin-off entertainment group Artist Network hitting the buffers and his relaunched rock venue the Marquee Club rolling into administration.

Nevertheless, the ambitious original business plan has had radical surgery and the opening of the seven-floor, 60,000-square-foot hi-tech arts centre, television studio and private members' club on the site of the former St Paul's Hospital will now be staggered.

The 2,600-square-foot subterranean television studio will open for business at the end of this month, following a low-key launch, and a multimedia art gallery will follow in September. The private club, a 'Groucho for the music industry', and 75-seater restaurant are probably eight months away.

The Hospital is the shared vision of Stewart and his friend Paul Allen who, with a personal fortune of £20bn, is America's third-richest man. Having co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, Allen created Vulcan Ventures, which has stakes in hundreds of companies and majority holdings in more than 40, including Steven Spielberg's film studio DreamWorks.

Despite a recent article in Fortune claiming The Hospital 'is in intensive care' with Allen and his investment advisers getting cold feet after some mistimed US media investments, Stewart says Allen will continue to underwrite the venture.

The Hospital may also house Vulcan's European HQ. The art gallery's first exhibition, Yes Yes Y'all, an interactive celebration of Hip Hop, will be transplanted from Allen's Experience Music Project centre in Seattle.

Stewart says The Hospital is 'a multifunctional content factory that will revolutionise the British entertainment industry and put something back into the community'. It aims to enable talent to flourish via an association with the Camden Arts and Business Consortium, designed for those aged between 11 and 25 who want to work in the new media arts.

The building will house offices, which may be leased to film and music outfits, and video post-production suites. The top floor will comprise a recording studio and three loft apartments for artists in residence. There will also be conference rooms, a multimedia library and a screening room.

Former Eurythmics member Stewart said: 'The whole building is multifunctional. The best thing, though, is that it isn't about any one medium. The most interesting times in pop culture were when media merged, when Warhol met the Velvet Underground.

'It is all very well leaping about making a record but things can really be created through lectures and talks and just putting creative people together.'

Research for the Mayor's office last October showed the creative industries are the capital's fastest growing sector. A total of 525,000 people work directly in creative industries or in creative occupations in other industries, with more than 100,000 of those jobs created in the past five years. They contribute £21bn annually to London's output, second only to business services at £32bn.

'This will be a real living, breathing creative community, the closest thing in spirit to Warhol's Factory that has ever been created,' said Stewart, further emphasising the physical scale of the project by dismissing Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Centre in New York as 'a restaurant with a screening room'.

He said: 'This is not going to be Dave's Disco.'

Seeking a dining partner

THE Hospital's restaurant will be a separate joint venture with an established player and Stewart is negotiating with three potential partners following the collapse of a co-venture with US celebrity chef Charlie Trotter.

Stewart said that he has not given up on Artist Network, his embryonic and radical record company which announced plans for film and TV projects before it went into a voluntary arrangement with debts of £2.8m last month.

He is also pressing on with raising private investment for a £20m complex, including a £7m film studio and multimedia centre, in Inverness.

'Most people seem to think that jaded old musicians should live in manor houses and spend their days playing the guitar faster and faster. In fact, every musician I know wants to do something else,' he said.