Las Vegas: Will Gordon Brown and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad soon be holidaying together? A purposebuilt hotel aimed at the most niche clientele in the world — presidents and PMs — is to be built among the pink rocks of America;s Nevada desert.

Called The Universitas Leadership Sanctuary, it is the brainchild of Donna Vassar, a member of the family who founded the Liberal Arts college of the same name.

Donna is attempting to raise £150m from private donors to fund the building. The ground floor ‘four-storey globe’, will house a library and the first floor a debating chamber, while on the second floor will be technology to help make the building energy efficient.

At the top, under a dome of glass, will be the spiritual heart of the development — the contemplation space where leaders will be encouraged to sit in silence.

It will include libraries, contemplation spaces, and debating chambers. It will even boast a garden where world leaders will be encouraged to cultivate plants and till the soil together as a means of achieving greater communion and understanding.

The Universitas Leadership Sanctuary is intended as part monastery and part conference centre where the most powerful people on the planet can get away from it all with a combination of reading, contemplation and even a spot of gardening.

To remind them of their role as leaders of the planet, the sanctuary will be built in the shape of a four-storey globe on the shores of Lake Las Vegas, a privately-owned lake in the Nevada desert.

Vassar intends to recreate a monastic existence which means entourages of press officers, policy advisers and secretaries which routinely support world leaders will be banned.

There will even be a garden to provide food for the sanctuary tables, raising the prospect of future world leaders tilling the soil together while ruminating on the direction of the latest round of world trade talks.

“It will be a centre specifically created to embrace and challenge leaders,” says the vision document.“We will create an individual journey leading to the highest place within, enabling leaders to reconnect with their purpose in life. They emerge — renewed, with clarity, and reflecting true transformation.”

Source : DNA