Rhodri Morgan: Has approved the plans

The overwhelming majority of assembly members in favour of the scheme - 47 backed it, two were against and one abstained in the vote on 22 January - is unlikely to end the controversy around the project but it will at least see it come off the drawing board.

It has ended more than three years of political wrangling which reached high point in April 2001 when, after a thorough re-costing and re-design, the Welsh Assembly gave it a cautious green light.

The centre was planned as the phoenix which would rise out of the ashes left after plans for an opera house in Cardiff Bay were razed to the ground in 1995.

The Wales Millennium Centre was designed to be all embracing after accusations of elitism scuppered the original scheme of an opera house, designed by internationally-acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid.

The design should now come off the drawing board

That scheme collapsed in 1995 after it failed to secure funding from the Millennium Commission.

The commission's board felt the project was not economically viable - a conclusion made rather ironic in the light of the Dome fiasco.

The WMC plan emerged from the rubble of the Cardiff Opera House debacle and a second international design competition saw the Percy Thomas Partnership selected to draw up the plans.

Plans for the new centre, included a permanent home for the world-class Welsh National Opera and a 1,700-seat concert hall, as well as providing a home for Wales's premier dance company, Diversions.

Rubble

Jonathan Adam's distinctive armadillo design and pledge to create a building Wales could be proud of engendered fresh excitement within the arts world in Wales.

It promises to be unmistakably Welsh and internationally outstanding, using materials such as slate to reflect the landscape from which it will emerge.

The Wales Millennium Centre will be cost effective, open to all and a shining beacon for the new Wales and a thriving arts industry, is the boast that has seen the plans win the backing of the assembly.

Originally costed at about �75m, the centre is be funded by the Arts Council of Wales, Europe, the Millennium Commission, the National Assembly for Wales and private finance.

Rescued

Even so, not a brick has yet been laid on the proposed site of the centre close to the waterfront in Cardiff.

In fact the plot had to be rescued by the local authority in November 2000 after the developers Grosvenor Waterside, tired of the delays and lack of progress, put the land back on the market.

The birth of the National Assembly, far from aiding the scheme, seemed to drag the project down further with the revolving-door arrival and departure of first secretaries further stalling the centre.

The lack of progress at the centre at one point led to a whispering campaign that the project had failed to secure enough private finance to get off the ground.

A damning report in October 2000, commissioned by the Welsh Assembly, concluded that the centre had never been on course to meet its budget and if further funding was not made available, it would have to be wound down.

Redesign

First Secretary Rhodri Morgan threatened to pull the plug on the scheme unless costs, which jumped from an initial �75m to �100m, were brought down.

The former Welsh Develpment Agency boss, Sir David Rowe-Beddoe, was brought in to steady the ship and steer it through to calmer waters.

The chemistry behind that formula seems to have worked.

Even if the costs are again back in three figures - expected to be �104m - more than half the �20m from the private sector has been secured and investors have confidence that the construction will not see a repeat of the spiralling budget which made London's Dome such a figure of ridicule.

The drama of the Wales Millennium Centre will have lasted almost a decade by the time the first paying patrons step through its doors, probably some time in 2004.

But only time will tell what people make of the story.