Boardwalk can't be paved. Park Place is delayed. And the tracks for the B&O Railroad aren't getting laid.

In downtown San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley, a redevelopment snafu has hit Monopoly Town.

What will be the world's largest Monopoly board couldn't pass go on schedule because an out-of-square concrete foundation wouldn't allow the oversized board pieces to fit.

"We were all ready to lay the granite board pieces into the concrete slot frame and we discovered the subcontractors did not make it square. It was a parallelogram," said Jill Cody, a superintendent with San Jose's Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services.

"Everything, 4,000 square feet of concrete, got jack hammered out. So now they are regrading it and they'll have to start over. All you can do is laugh," she added.

The contractor wasn't laughing, but it didn't go straight to jail. It was a subcontractor who installed the out- of-square concrete slab and is footing the bill for the correction -- but not with Monopoly money.

San Jose's $240,000 Monopoly In The Park (the real board game retails for about $15), a 930-square-foot granite replica, 200 times the size of the famous Parker Brothers real estate game, was scheduled to open this month at Discovery Meadow in front of the Children's Discovery Museum in downtown San Jose, but the construction error will put off the first game until July 20 -- tentatively. The board has been under construction since Nov. 8, 2001.

In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, PA unveiled the original real estate-themed game for the first time to Parker Brothers executives who, like San Jose officials, also rejected it due to design errors -- 52 of them, back then. The undaunted and unemployed Darrow produced his own version, sold 5,000 handmade sets (which have now likely appreciated better than real real estate) that became so popular demand exceeded supply (another familiar real estate refrain). A year later, Parker Brothers knew a good real estate deal when they saw one -- the second time around -- and began mass producing the game.

Since then, the game of real estate leverage has become the world's most popular board game, with more than 200 million sales, 500 million players and more than five billion little green houses "built," according to Hasbro, Inc. which now owns Parker Brothers.

When the San Jose alfresco version opens as the largest Monopoly game board in the world, theme-costumed docents will host life-sized games with 2-foot dice at the only permanent Monopoly board in the world.

The two-phase project eventually will include spectator seating and picnic areas and it will be available for rent for company team-building events, parties and other group gatherings. It may be the only real estate some residents can afford in the high-cost Silicon Valley area.

To help pay for the special Monopoly version, local companies, government offices and agencies are spending advertising dollars to lease locations on the giant game board for $5,000-a-year to $20,000-for-five-years deals. For the money -- again, not Monopoly money -- advertisers get their name etched on the board or game pieces.

Naturally, the Santa Cruz, CA Beach Boardwalk company has already rented Boardwalk, Park Place went to the owners of the restored art deco Hotel de Anza, the Water Works lease went to the California Water Service Company, San Jose's Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services snatched up Marvin Gardens, and the San Jose Police Department leased, what else, Go To Jail. Most board spaces remain available including Atlantic, Virginia, Oriental, Mediterranean, all four railroads, three Chance spots, Pass Go and Free Parking, among others.

San Jose Beautiful and Friends of San Jose Beautiful designed the 3/4 acre "Monopoly in the Park" theme garden to house the granite board. Board pieces were produced by San Jose's Cypress Granite and Memorials. Rents collected from the leases will supplement funds used for San Jose neighborhoods' and communities' beautification projects. NUVIS, a Costa Mesa, CA-based firm, designed the board and Blossom Valley Construction is building the project.

For more information about lease-sponsorships, docent volunteering and game date reservations visit Monopoly In The Park online.

Published: April 25, 2002

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.