"Imagine a city state in the middle of the Caribbean,
made possible by 21st-century technology and surrounded by, and interspersed
with, canals of clear, blue water, a clean and beautiful place to live
and raise families. Visualize, if you will, an oasis in the middle of the
ocean: office buildings, hotels, theaters and shopping centres, sitting
slightly above the sea in neat rows surrounded by greenery and flowers.
This is a new country, which will be built in a moderately tropical sea,
a perfect climate, a paradise: Utopia!" -- words of welcome from the official
web site of the principality of New Utopia.
"SEE THAT one? It's bigger than Grand Cayman," says Prince Lazarus
Long, pointing to a blob on the map pinned to the wall in front of us.
The blob sits in the northern Caribbean, to the south-west of the Cayman
Islands, and represents the Misteriosa Bank, which is something most people
would call a reef but which Prince Lazarus prefers to call an underwater
island. It's the largest of the three reefs in the area which together
add up to a surface area of 285 square miles. The Prince first came across
their existence about four years ago and they were exactly what he'd been
looking for in order to bring to fruition a remarkable scheme which he
first hatched a decade ago. At their shallowest point, they're only a foot
or so beneath the sea. More importantly they lie more than 100 miles from
any other country, which means they're in international waters. And Prince
Lazarus has laid claim to them as the site of his planned capitalist paradise:
New Utopia.
Later this year, if everything goes to plan, a construction company
will begin pouring piles at 30 ft intervals onto these virgin reefs. Then
precast-concrete platforms will be placed on top of them, and on top of
these a city will be erected. Plans for the initial stage of development
include 1,200 apartments, a 350,000 sq ft shopping mall, five hotels, a
bank, a 150,000 sq ft medical centre, a casino, a convention centre and
a university offering scholarships to students from every country in the
world.
There will be no taxes in New Utopia, with the single exception of
an import duty on consumable goods, nor will there be any kind of welfare
system. A constitutional sovereignty, the country will be run by a board
of governors appointed by the Prince himself. Currently these governors
are scattered around the world, awaiting the time when they can formally
take up their posts. All of them, the Prince told me, are experts in their
chosen fields. |
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The first phase of construction is scheduled
to be completed by the beginning of September next year and on 1 December
1999, the new country's first birthday celebrations will be held. Prince
Lazarus will be crowned and will bestow titles upon those who have helped
to make New Utopia a reality. A host of celebrity guests will be invited
who will be able to watch the inaugural New Utopia speedboat grand prix
and generally marvel at this glittering monument to free enterprise. Maybe
they'll take a ride on one of the numerous water taxis that will ply the
city's canals, or maybe they'll just go for a stroll in the park and admire
the hugh, three sided water wall at its centre. This will be the veritable
totem of New Utopia, for each of its sides will represent one of the new
country's main sources of income: the banking and insurance industries;
a state-of-the-art anti-ageing medical centre; and tourism.
That's the plan, at any rate. At the moment, New Utopia is more science
fiction than science fact. Indeed it sounds like the deranged idea of a
raving crank, but in fact it's being put together along sound business
lines by a man with a successful record of entrepreneurship. Prince Lazaus
has no doubts that his new realm will rise from the sea. "There is nothing,
no law, that can stop me," he told me. "If for some reason it's slowed
down or postponed, I'll still make it happen. It's something that needs
to happen.
We were talking in the unlikely setting for the headquarters of this
grand enterprise, an unprepossessing house in a quiet cul-de-sac in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. In the ramshackle living room which is the nerve centre of the
operation, there's a flag of New Utopia on the wall (blue, with a white
star surrounded by gold laurel leaves), and beneath it sits a computer,
which for the moment is the only means of reaching the principality of
New Utopia. It currently exists simply as a web site, a virtual country
floating in the ether of hyperspace, but any day now, if everything goes
to plan, it will start to become a physical reality.
quot;Pioneers have always ended up either full or arrows or with a
lot of real estate," the 66-year-old Prince told me as he sucked on his
pipe. "I've done both in my time, but this time I'm gonna end up with all
the real estate. I'm pioneering something I can be proud of. I hope to
have a lot of fun. I've had a lot of fun so far in putting it together,
and at my age it's the sense of achievement that's important, not the money." |