City unveils plans for millennial bash

The city's celebration will last from July 1999 to New Year's Day 2001. As the debate rages over whether the millennium begins in 2000 or 2001, city officials recently unveiled a novel solution --Ecelebrating them both. At a City Hall press conference last Tuesday, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell announced plans for an 18-month, city-wide party covering both millennial dates. While astronomers maintain that midnight on New Year's 2001 is the true start of the new millennium, Philadelphia's largest party will be one year earlier, when the calendar rolls over from 1999 to 2000. The event will feature 24 hours of live satellite feeds from cities around the world as local clocks strike midnight -- from Fiji at 7 a.m. Philadelphia time on December 31 to Samoa Island at 6 a.m. the following day. Local performances will reflect the culture of each hour's featured country. The evening's climax will come as Philadelphia ushers in midnight -- and a new millennium. A fireworks display featuring the history of pyrotechnics will be the highlight of s show Rendell described as something "no one will ever have seen anything like." Funding for the festivities will come from mostly private sources, Rendell said. He added that the city hopes to raise $5 million in donations. At present, the effort has yet to raise any money, though Rendell indicated that several national corporations were on the verge of signing up to sponsor the festivities. On December 24, an interactive exhibit billed as the "Bridge to the Millennium" will open at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The exhibit will feature a historical retrospective surveying the last millennium and a speculative glimpse into the next one. It is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors from the area. The festivities officially kick off six months earlier with a July 4 ceremony on Independence Mall featuring people born on each Fourth of July dating back to 1900. Described as "The Photo of the Century," the event will include an hours-old newborn brought over from Pennsylvania or Jefferson hospitals for the event. Those selected in a nationwide search to participate in the event will be flown to Philadelphia for the weekend. Eighteen months later, on New Year's Day 2001, Philadelphia's celebrations will close at City Hall with a commemoration of the landmark's 100th anniversary.