Grosvenor had agreed to sell the land for £1.5m, well below its estimated market value, and set a deadline of 30 June for the client, also called the Wales Millennium Centre, to secure funding. When it failed to do so, WMC was granted an extension to 30 September.
The owner announced last week that the deal was off and that it would seek the best price on the open market.
A spokesperson for the council said the deal should go through quickly, but conceded that there was a shortfall in funds for the project as a whole. WMC has £70.2m in funding but the scheme, which includes facilities for opera, dance, museum displays and exhibitions, will cost up to £95m to build.
The spokesperson said additional funding of about £5m had been promised from the public sector, including some from the national assembly for Wales and the Millennium Commission, although the assembly has set a ceiling of £75m for the project.
The spokesperson said the project needed at least £10m but insisted, that construction would go ahead. He said: “There is a will in Wales to develop this scheme.”
The assembly this week published a devastating review of the WMC, revealing that the centre had never been within budget and that the only remedy was to prune back the design.
The situation is that we are working with the project and other funding partners
Millennium Commission
The report says the total cost will run to £94.5m and at one point would have exceeded £104.9m.
The report, by London-based cost consultant Turner & Townsend, concludes that there is a danger that the funding bodies already committed to the project will reconsider their position because of the delays and cost overruns.
It also says that the backers and the assembly knew since the end of July that Grosvenor Waterside was likely to put the land on the open market.
It is understood that the report was published with the express authority of first secretary Rhodri Morgan to support the assembly’s decision not to commit any more money to the project.
A spokesperson for WMC said everybody was confident the funding issue would be resolved and that the scheme would get the signal to proceed.
A spokesperson for the Millennium Commission, which has pledged £27m, continued to offer support. She said: “The current situation is that we are continuing to work with the project and other funding partners.”
