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This seems to be at least a partial acknowledgment by rain forest promoters that their difficulty in raising the additional $90 million has something to do with their lack of focus, plans, and budgets. (Whatever the reason, so far as public disclosures have revealed, there has not been one additional dime raised during the past year.)

Because no contract terms between KUD and the project have yet been drafted (as of June 23), let alone agreed to, informed commentary is difficult to impossible at this time. However, the following can be said (or asked).

It is not clear how the presence of KUD assists with most of the problems that have dogged this project from its inception:

• "the elephant in the rain forest" remains: this $180 million project is still $90 million short

• it's still not clear what the focus is to be (e.g., tourist attraction, teacher training facility, national scientific research center, environmental conservation product demonstration site, etc.); as State 29 has said, "It's a floor wax. It's a desert topping. . . . It's whatever they want it to be."

• given the lack of focus, there are of course no detailed plans for construction, operation, staffing, etc.

• and, given the lack of detailed plans, there can be no detailed budgets

• but, whatever those budgets may someday turn out to be, there's no credible basis for predicting what the ongoing operating costs (and sources and quantities of income) will be

They represent that they have a record of bringing in projects on time and on budget. Given the continual slippage in the rain forest's timeline this is also good news.

While the overwhelming proportion of the projects they've managed are business buildings for corporations, KUD's site refers to three aquarium projects it has assisted with that bear some similarity to the rain forest project: the Florida Aquarium, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, and Biota! ("the aquarium at Silvertown Quays") -- budgeted at $20 million (public funds), $118 million and $200 million (charity funding) respectively.

While it seems a little unusual that, after thinking about it for nine years, the rain forest promoters need to bring in outside consultants to tell them what kind of programs to put inside the shell of the rain forest, it's clearly an improvement over the focus drift of the last four years. (As I said in the context of the Iowa City Community School District's refusal to address the kind of educational methodology and space utilization it wished to use inside its new $40 million worth of school buildings before asking for architectural plans, "Normally you know before you talk to the architect whether you want to build a courthouse or an outhouse.")

It remains to be seen whether a group of consultants as well organized and disciplined as KUD appears to be will be able to work with the rain forest promoters or not. Indeed, at this point in time it's not even known whether a mutually acceptable agreement can be hammered out and embodied in a contract or not.