SAN JOSE, California -- Silicon Valley's high-tech cowboys may have gone from boom to bust in the dot-com meltdown but are about to get a chance to play the game all over again -- on the world's largest Monopoly board.
On giant granite spaces, using life-size playing pieces and dice the size of television sets, players can wheel and deal in a game of fortune and fate.
San Jose Beautiful, a civic group in the city that calls itself the capital of Silicon Valley, has secured funding to set up the mammoth game board in a city park. Players will walk from space to space, buying houses and hotels, charging rent and -- on occasion -- going to "jail."
"We have jailbird costumes for them," said Jill Cody, a superintendent for the city's department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services.
The push to set up the world's largest permanent Monopoly board began some 10 years ago after a local landscape designer commissioned a number of large, granite Monopoly "spaces" from a local tombstone maker.
San Jose Beautiful got word of the project and began a campaign to set up the board in the city's Guadalupe River Park. After years of bureaucratic red tape and fund raising, ground-breaking for the new board will be held on Thursday and it should be ready for play by February.
Cody said the project, which will cost an estimated $500,000, will begin with installation of the board and will eventually include an amphitheater, a donors' wall and other elements. A number of companies and organizations have already donated to reserve particular spaces on the board.
"IBM bought New York Avenue," Cody said, while the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk scooped up "Boardwalk," the most expensive property on the board.
The California Water Service purchased "Water Works," and the Santa Clara County Department of Correction has stepped in as sponsor of the "Just Visiting in Jail" space.
City officials say the game will be played in much the same way as the popular board version.
Players will move around life-size versions of the game's famous tokens -- the top hat, the wheelbarrow, the dog -- which are being created by a craft master at the American Musical Theatre of San Jose. They will buy plastic houses and hotels for their properties and take turns hurling huge foam dice.
The money will not be supersized, however. Instead, players will be given special aprons in which they can hold standard-issue Monopoly money, as well as the "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards they draw during the course of play.
Cody said early practice sessions of the large-scale game proved entertaining.
"It is so funny to watch people play this. The dice are so big so they've gotten into 'slam' dicing, throwing the dice at each other. They end up bouncing about 15 feet in the air."
Along with teaching children lessons on good sportsmanship and money management, the giant Monopoly game can also be used as a team-building exercise by corporations or as a diversion for local conventioneers, Cody said.
Monopoly's maker, Massachusetts-based Hasbro Games, rarely licenses large-scale game boards except for temporary occasions. But the company felt that San Jose's plan stood out from the pack.
"Monopoly is a valuable trademark. We have to limit its exposure," Mark Morris, the company's director of public relations, told the San Jose Mercury News. "But this one was certainly a worthy project because it was executed in such a classy way."
Cody said she felt there would be a ready cadre of eager players in Silicon Valley, where sky-high rents, business empires and financial disasters are par for the course.
"What better city than San Jose to have the largest Monopoly board in the world?" Cody said. "We are the heart of Silicon Valley and (with) all of the entrepreneurial competitiveness ... we thought it was very appropriate."
