MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2002
Vivendi Universal to build theme park in China
AFP
SHANGHAI: Vivendi Universal SA of France signed a deal worth as much as $1 billion to design, build and manage a theme park in Shanghai, Vivendi Universal officials said on Saturday.
Universal Parks and Resorts, Vivendi's theme park subsidiary, and its two municipally owned Chinese partners will begin building the Hollywood-theme amusement park in early 2003 with a targeted opening date of 2006.
The contract, however, is still subject to approval by China's central government, said Hu Wei, deputy secretary general of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government.
The news follows months of speculation surrounding separate negotiations by Vivendi and Walt Disney to build a theme park in the eastern metropolis.
Disney is already building an amusement park in Hong Kong, which is due to open in 2005-2006 and has remained vague about reports that it had signed a letter of intent with the Shanghai government.
Vivendi officials refused to give the exact value of the tie-up, but said the Shanghai park would be modeled on Universal's Japan, Osaka venue, which cost more than one billion dollars to construct.
"It (the company) has to qualify as a joint-venture, so let's just leave it at that we'll have at least 25 per cent," said Glenn Gumpel, president of international and global business affairs of Universal Parks and Resorts.
Gumpel said the dollar value of Vivendi's equity stake was also uncertain because the company is still in the process of designing the park.
Neither was it made clear what per centage of equity Chinese partners, Waigaoqiao Group and Shanghai Jinjiang (Group) Holding, would hold.
"They may have more or less depending on how we resolve that," said Gumpel.
Further details are expected to emerge in two months' time, he said.
The Vivendi deal is one of a string of recent victories for China's largest and wealthiest city, including the announcement Tuesday that it had won the right to host the 2010 World Exposition.
in 2003, the city will hold its first Formula One motor race and in 2007 it will host the Special Olympics.
While the Shanghai locale will be the first major amusement park in China, Beijing, which earned the right to hold the 2008 Olympics in 2001, could also be in line to ink an agreement of its own in the near future.
"China is a very, very large country and everyone understands that perhaps some day in the future Universal may have another theme park in China," Gumpel said.
The Shanghai Universal theme-park will encompass 80 hectares in the first phase of development in a designated area totaling 250 hectares, only a few kilometres south of the proposed Expo site in the city's eastern Pudong district.
Officials were sanguine about the park's potential contribution to the city's future, predicting eight million visitors in its opening year, as well as the creation of thousands of new jobs while adding billions of dollars to the local economy.
"The Shanghai theme park will contribute billions of dollars to Shanghai's economy during the construction phase and will add nearly an additional billion dollars to the city's economy during its first year of operation," said Gumpel.
He said, the park "will create tens of thousands of new jobs during the time the park is under construction and once the park opens will also create a similar number of employment opportunities."
Although the park will tout Universal Studios' traditional American movie themes such as Jurassic Park and ET, the company promised to incorporate more aspects of Chinese culture.
"We are not arrogant people, we are humble, we are coming here to China and we know its our job to have a great deal of the Chinese culture placed into this park," Gumpel said.
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