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Reprinted from North County Times

A proposal to build a 254-room, Lego-themed hotel at the Legoland California amusement park won the support it needed Tuesday from the Carlsbad City Council.

The state’s Coastal Commission also is expected to soon sign off on the plans, but when construction will begin is uncertain, project backers said, adding that it depends on national economic conditions.

“We need to see signs of recovery first,” Legoland general manager Peter Ronchetti told the City Council.

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Reprinted from Star-Telegraph

A $12 million Legoland Discovery Centre, an attraction centered on the popular children’s building blocks, will be coming to Grapevine Mills mall, the city said Tuesday.

The only other U.S. Legoland Discovery Centre opened last year outside Chicago. Legoland Discovery Centre and the Legoland theme park in California are developments of U.K.-based Merlin Entertainment Group, reportedly the world’s second-biggest operator of visitor attractions.

The Grapevine City Council and the board of the Tax Increment Financing District No. 1, which was established several years ago for the mall, approved a two-phase, $1 million incentive package for the project. Merlin Entertainment will receive $500,000 when it completes the facility and $500,000 when it completes an accompanying 10,000-square-foot miniature golf facility made from Legos.

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Reprinted from The New York Times

The Walt Disney Company, with the help of Steven P. Jobs and his retailing team at Apple, intends to drastically overhaul its approach to the shopping mall.

At a time when many retailers are still cutting back or approaching strategic shifts with extreme caution, Disney is going the other way, getting more aggressive and putting into motion an expensive and ambitious floor-to-ceiling reboot of its 340 stores in the United States and Europe — as well as opening new ones, including a potential flagship in Times Square.

Disney Stores, which the media giant is considering rebranding Imagination Park, will become more akin to cozy entertainment hubs. The chain’s traditional approach of displaying row after row of toys and apparel geared to Disney franchises will be given a high-tech makeover and incorporated into a new array of recreational activities. The goal is to make children clamor to visit the stores and stay longer, perhaps bolstering sales as a result. Over the next five years, analysts estimate that Disney will spend about $1 million a store to redecorate, reorganize and install interactive technology.

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Sindibad Parc, the only theme park in Morocco, has been closed for close to 2 years. But now there is new life for the park. After a year and a half of proposals and negotiations the Ministry of Culture in Morocco has chosen a developer for the closed Sinbad Park in Casablanca.

A group of five companies, including Compagnie des Alpes, will invest DH2.3 billion (US$300 million) to redevelop the park. Plans for the 70-hectare (173-acre) site include an amusement park, zoo, hotel, commercial park and residences. As part of the project, the developers must agree to set aside land for an archaeological museum and preserve excavated areas.

The redevelopment will be built on 24 hectares (59 acres), with the remaining 114 acres likely going towards the archeological museum and excavation sites. The excavation sites and archeological museum are intended to be working archeological sites simultaneously servings as a sort of open-air museum for visitors.

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Over the past few decades we have seen the evolution of many trends in the national restaurant scene. In the early to mid 1990s the rage in dining was the themed restaurant led by Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood. In these restaurants, the decor primarily consisting of rock & roll and film memorabilia became the attraction and not the food. Soon, it seemed like every celebrity wanted their name associated with the newest “you-name-it-café”. The pinnacle of this culinary bubble was the opening of Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney where sales quickly realized an annual volume of $50,000,000 to become the highest producing restaurant in the world.

However, in recent years the American culinary marketplace experienced a momentous change in the way people eat, cook and dine. As such, five primary factors have changed food and the way we consume and experience it.

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Reprinted from CrainesNewYork.com

The Limited’s SoHo pop-up shop, doing brisk business, will stick around through the holidays.

More than just a limited engagement, trendy apparel retailer The Limited is extending its four-day pop-up shop in SoHo through the end of December, the company said Thursday.

Last week, Limited opened a temporary, store at 134 Spring St., between Wooster and Greene streets, after a decade-long absence from the New York market. But executives of the Columbus, Ohio-based firm were “pleasantly surprised, as it performed at the same level as one of their top-tier stores,” according to a spokeswoman. Sales, which were not disclosed, were high enough to persuade the company to extend the 3,400-square-foot shop through Dec. 28. It’s a sign, retail brokers say, that the retailer might be closer to taking a permanent location here.

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National economists have often stated that expenditures by U.S. consumers make up 70% of the national GDP (Gross Domestic Product). In brief, the GDP is the total market value of domestic goods and services produced and consumed in the U.S. within a 365 day period.

However, a recent headline in USA Today proclaimed that consumer spending had grown to 71% of the GDP in the second quarter of 2009. On the surface this could be viewed as another positive sign of an improving economy, but in reality it is not. The real fact is that consumption as a percentage of the economy typically increases during a recession because output in manufacturing, construction, and business expenditures almost always drop first and at a higher percentage than consumer purchases. The result is a smaller basket of economic variables with the consumer taking a higher percentage of the whole.

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Reprinted from Ameinfo.com

With events such as The Formula One Grand Prix on the docket, Abu Dhabi is rapidly emerging as a world-class tourism destination and is threatening to overtake Dubai as the top tourism hot spot in the UAE.

The capital of the UAE has long taken a back seat to Dubai on the tourist map, preferring to take a more low-key approach and focusing on business tourism rather than the leisure market.

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