While the National Conference Centre project has grinded on at an agonisingly slow pace, Leopardstown Racecourse has quietly gone about its plan to make the south Dublin venue a centre of corporate and family entertainment.
Its planned 20,000-sq-ft conference centre will not match the North Wall's extravaganza, but with a racetrack, golf and health club, nightclub, eight bars and 300-seat restaurant, Leopardstown has its attractions.
Add to the list a Kilkenny Design Centre retail shop coupled with a location close to the proposed C-ring motorway which will put Dublin Airport a half hour away.
Mr John White, the course general manager is coy about the other ace in his hand. It's a restaurant/bar/entertainment section which the operator, Baileys, is reluctant to define before March's opening.
"Not a Johnnie Fox's", according to Mr White's briefing notes, in a reference to the popular Co Dublin bar and restaurant venue. Nor is it being flagged as a multi-media space. But it will presumably be another reason for somebody not knowing one end of a horse from the other to spend a day at the races.
Leopardstown, a 110-year-old track is, along with Navan and Tipperary, owned by the Irish Horseracing Authority, the State-appointed board which has responsibility for funding and administration of the industry.
"Race tracks cannot survive on racing alone. Essentially we are a 180-acres farm, a valuable State property," Mr White says.
The "farm" currently has a £4.25-million turnover based on an annual attendance of 163,000, but Mr White says most tracks find breaking even difficult. High fixed costs and, in the case of Leopardstown, just 23 race days make non-race-day revenue an obvious growth area. His target for next year is to increase the annual attendance by about 20 per cent, to 200,000.
The changes at the complex have been underscored by the Budget announcement that the on-course 5 per cent betting tax will be abolished next summer. Although it means loss of revenue (race tracks receive 0.5 per cent of proceeds), Mr White believes that overall, it will give a competitive edge to the industry by enticing "the big punters" from the bookies, where the tax was halved to 5 per cent, to the track.
He defends the industry against the charge of favouritism by the State. Including franchise operations, Leopardstown employs more than 200 plus 500 part-time staff. It has matched a State grant of £1.75 million with £11.25 million for its five-year capital plan. This plan is an integral part of Mr White's approach. He was selected for the job 21/2 years ago, he believes, because of "my ability to do a strategic plan for three to five years almost on the back of a stamp, and being able to see the key things that needed to happen".
Leopardstown's plan is to become profitmaking, adding "about £1 million to the bottom line".
"The old profile was male and over 40. What we have been tackling very much in Leopardstown is the younger set," he says.
From Lorrha, Co Tipperary, Mr White went to St Molassis College, Portumna, going on to do a marketing degree at night at the College of Commerce, Rathmines, in Dublin.
He spent three years with Irish Ropes, selling baler twine before moving into animal health, and working in that sector for the next 25 years.
He began with Wellcome but as the industry merged and consolidated over the years, he counted six name changes the company underwent. And there wer e million-pound marketing budgets, he recalls. "Most of the big medical drug companies in the world have all had an animal health division. It is a good servicing ground for drugs which will eventually be used in human medicines," he says.
As a marketing manager, one of his successes was to bring in Mr John Cawley, who played the character of Tom Riordan in the television series The Riordans, to TV advertisements for Systamex, the worm drencher.
Mr White also introduced sponsorship to the All-Ireland in the shape of Pitman Moore on Co Kildare jerseys.
Nowadays his tasks include overall responsibility for co-ordinating the strategic plan for Navan Racecourse.
He lives in Newbridge, Co Kildare, and is conscious of working in a leisure industry which involves he and his staff working while "everybody else is at play". "I will leave home on Christmas Day after dinner and I will be gone for 4 1/2 days, and very much gone 16 hours a day," he says.
The Christmas race meeting will run from St Stephen's Day until December 29th and will have peak daily attendances of 20,000 people. That is, if there is not a frost which would cancel the event.
Mr White is also arranging for a 10 a.m. breakfast with tipsters and celebrities to encourage early arrivals. "It becomes a big operation on race days. When you include the catering staff, the car parking staff, the police, the `white coat' brigade that man the place for us, and all the services."
He says he is impatient and long meetings in a job where meetings are essential make him angry. Running Leopardstown means negotiation on everything from a container load of toilet rolls to "will we have the police chopper and horses?". At the Christmas meet, incidentally, a point of interest will be the presence for the first time of mounted gardai.
"I tend to read the script fairly quickly and go to the back page. . . I hate indecision. I just like to get on and do it. That sometimes causes me problems. I think if you are a decision-maker, that is an inevitability," he says.
He reminds himself to listen more and see other people's point of view. "I am a poor listener, I have always been a poor listener."
But he clings on to "an ability to deal with many hats" and to being able to switch off completely when he is not at work. A free weekend involves enjoying a few pints, "the odd game of golf" and watching GAA matches. In between, he smokes Pikeur cigars, about 10 a day, although a New Year's resolution is threatening to put paid to that.
