How do you think we'll all feel about the Dome in 2022?

Will it still be the monstrous white elephant, guzzler of public money, political embarrassment and destroyer of reputations that, for most people, it is now?

Or will it have found a new image as a concert and sports arena attracting 20,000 people a night, surrounded by waterside restaurants, shops and walks, just 15 minutes by Tube from the centre of London?

I hope it will be the latter, and I believe it just might.

But then I've always been an incurable optimist about the Dome, even at its darkest moments when its chief executives were being fired, its finances were going pear-shaped and ministers (usually Lord Falconer) were fending off all the entirely legitimate criticisms of the project's mismanagement.

Meridian line

Perhaps it was because I've been following the story since long before anyone had ever heard of the Dome.

The Dome has already hosted New Year's Eve concerts

Indeed I broke the news that the Dome was to be built.

At that stage, the Conservative Government's plans to hold a national exhibition to celebrate the Millennium were already in trouble.

No one was at all clear what form it would take or whether it should be run by the public or private sector.

The one thing that had been agreed (to the outrage of Birmingham MPs) was that it should be held in Greenwich, on the Meridian line.

James Bond

And then they showed us the plans for the Dome, perfectly situated by the Thames on the curve of the Greenwich Peninsular.

Many people (including me) began to believe that the spectacular-looking building could be the catalyst for a great exhibition and for the regeneration of the whole Peninsular.

The contaminated British Gas land that had kept the site a desert for thirty years had been cleaned up and the new Jubilee tube line was opening up that whole area of south-east London.

That belief received a boost with the launch of the 1999 James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough.

Its opening sequence showed speedboats racing round the curve of the Thames towards the Dome and the airborne shots - watched around the world - emphasised its spectacular setting.

But that was on the outside.

Financial disaster

Things on the inside were going badly awry.

Some elements of the exhibition were of high quality and would prove rewarding and popular when the Dome was finally opened.

Lord Falconer routinely defended the Dome

But many others were ill-conceived and inadequately-funded - and there was no overall vision pulling the whole "Experience" together.

Though most of the six million people who went to the Dome enjoyed their visit - and many absolutely loved it, particularly the children - it wasn't as good as it should have been and it proved a financial disaster, requiring several bail-outs from the National Lottery to see it through till the end of the year 2000.

Heads rolled - chief executives and chairmen and others lower down the management chain, though not, it turned out, government ministers.

Proper investment

Then the government couldn't even sell it successfully.

Two preferred bidders came and went.

Now at the third attempt it's struck a deal, albeit one in which it will receive no money for the Dome up-front.

Instead, it will take a share of the profits of the companies that will occupy the new Dome Arena and the Dome Waterfront, where there'll be cafes, restaurants and shops.

Could it be that the new Dome will do for the area what the original scheme was meant to do?

Without having to pay back its costs in a single year - as the Millennium Dome was required to do - the new arena and waterfront can have business plans structured over 20 years, allowing proper investment.

And in 20 years time, the government - on today's projections - should have received more than �500m from the Dome and its surrounding land.

When it's hosting crowds of 20,000 a night for top concerts and sports events, will we all learn to love the Dome?

And with millions of schoolchildren looking back on their "amazing day" in the year 2000, might it even be viewed as fondly as the Festival of Britain?

We'll have to wait till 2022 to find out.