New Century May See New Paris Skyline

PARIS — Already home to what may be the world’s most famous tower, Paris plans to give itself another--made from wood, and looking not at all like Gustave Eiffel’s graceful landmark in iron--to ring in 2000.

With the new millennium coming closer each day, the French capital has entered an undeclared war with its European neighbors over which city can mark the date in the most sensational, tourist-enticing way. Berlin has scheduled the most dazzling fireworks show in its history, Rome a religious jubilee.

In Britain, plans call for the construction at Greenwich of a vast, flying-saucer-like structure dubbed the Millennium Dome, while in London, the world’s biggest Ferris wheel is supposed to be built across from the Houses of Parliament.

As for Paris, its ambition is nothing less than to be “the meeting place of utopias, of new trends, and the creation spot for new cultural enterprises,” Mayor Jean Tiberi said this month in announcing the city’s menu for 2000.

The centerpiece is the so-called Tower of the Earth, 660 feet high, planned for the Left Bank of the Seine in eastern Paris. Designed to be made from beams of Scotch pine covered in oak, and reinforced with steel at the base, the tower is supposed to be topped with five lacy-looking petals, making it look in an artist’s depiction like a flower or a gigantic television antenna.

Halfway up, four platforms built of assorted woods from all over the world are to house observation decks, restaurants and a media center.

There are also a host of other millennium-related activities and projects in the works here, from a guitar festival in homage to Jimi Hendrix at a local racetrack to the transformation of the Place de la Concorde into the world’s largest sundial, with the Egyptian obelisk at the square’s center serving as the needle.

On New Year’s Eve 1999, plans call for 2,000 drums to thunder as a giant egg descends slowly from the Eiffel Tower, with the shell breaking open to reveal hundreds of TV screens showing programs from all over the world.

“In this competition, we were behind a month ago,” Yves Mourousi, a gravel-voiced former television anchor who is in charge of the Parisian festivities, said recently. Now “we’re leading everybody by a length.”

The Tower of the Earth is supposed to be shorter than Eiffel’s handiwork--which is 984 feet high, and across town in western Paris--and to make a dramatic statement on behalf of the environment in the same way that Eiffel’s 1887-89 structure captured his faith and confidence in the Industrial Age.

*

But does it make sense, and will it be built? One association of French environmentalists has denounced the project as a “promotional tool” for timber interests.

Tiberi, the tower’s patron, is bogged down in messy scandals, and members of the leftist opposition on the Paris City Council have been quick to savage his millennium plan.

“There are no ideas, no money, no projects,” Georges Sarre, a former Socialist government minister, claimed Friday.

Most ticklish of all, there is the matter of who is going to pay for the structure that its architect, Nicolas Normier, claims will be able to stand “for a thousand years.” If the riverside lot, supposed to be donated by the city, is made available by July, Normier has said, the Tower of the Earth can be standing by November 1999.

The price tag, according to city officials, should be 250 million francs, or about $42 million. The cost is supposed to be split evenly between big French firms and a public subscription.