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Kent, England | The London Resort | Entertainment Complex

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
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Wonder if it's getting to the point where the expenses and outstanding bills of the project make it unfeasible even if other factors suddenly made it favourable? Where you need to put so much money in it just to get back to zero that nobody would touch either it or the site, apart from the occasional future debt vulture?

I can't think of any theme park projects having gone that way before, but there certainly are building projects like that out there. My personal favourite example is Dubai Pearl, a planned skyscraper in Dubai whose construction began in 2004. Then shortly after, it was halted, what was built was torn down, the tower was redesigned, construction started anew, it halted again, and nothing has happened on the site since 2009 or so. That is, unless you count the dismantling of the last cranes in 2016.

The construction site is in an absolutely top-notch prime location in Dubai. Close to the city's main highway, close to two metro stations, with a view right down the "trunk" of one of those spectacular palm-tree peninsulas they built down there. A perfect place to build what was planned there. But after thirteen years of problems, the project has racked up a debt of USD 2.2 billion, the constructions that were abandoned in 2009 would have to be torn down, and ground works possibly done over again. Just to get the site back to square one would cost 3-4 billion dollars, and that's the minimum investment required to be able to do anything with the plot whatsoever. They went from having nothing, to having started something, to not being able to continue, and now they have several billion dollars less than nothing. A building there would probably make tons of money, it has a very good location in the middle of a booming city, but it wouldn't be able to recuperate both the investment cost and the getting-back-to-zero cost. As such, one of the most lucrative construction projects in the world is currently completely unfeasible, and it has been passed from owner to owner over the years without anything done on site.

I don't think The London Resort has racked up quite those levels of debt yet, but I bet its baggage is already starting to shave the potential profit margins. It's hard enough to convince investors that a park will begin to make money in ten years' time. But if that number is increased to twenty years to account for debt that needs to be serviced, most interested people would begin to look for better projects to place their money.
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
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What?! I have to change my flights again?!

Sent from my Redmi Note 4 using Tapatalk
 

spicy

Giga Poster
Amazing, £45 Million and not even a single brick has been laid.

The accounts also reveal the company spent £337,500 on the salaries of its four staff

Wow. Like, what do they even do all day?

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I’d be grinning too.
 

Matt N

CF Legend
You can tell that they are trying to get this off the ground, and if they try hard enough, then this will happen. I'm optimistic that the investors won't give up until they get rejected planning, if they get rejected. Even if this project is delayed until 2054, I think it will eventually happen. Note the word eventually, though.
 

davidm

Strata Poster
There is a pylon there I believe? ;)

(and yeah, there are tons of places near London with existing infrastructure that could just be magically turned into a theme park, why has no-one ever thought of that before?)
 

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
The only thing nearby is Bluewater shopping centre which is limited in space by the fact it's inside a chalk pit.

I would think, anyway, that any new project would want it's own new pitch. It's often cheaper and easier (I'm guessing) to build from scratch and you don't have to pay anyone else along the way.

This isn't happening though. Companies pitch ideas all the time that never happen. This stinks of can't be arsed. If they'd meant business, something would have happened by now. Someone's made a pitch, drummed up some investment, drew up some cheapo plans, purchased a Merc off the back of it and gone nahhh, won't work. It was obvious years ago that it wasn't happening. Welcome to the world of business.
 

vaugc002

Mega Poster
The only thing nearby is Bluewater shopping centre which is limited in space by the fact it's inside a chalk pit.

I would think, anyway, that any new project would want it's own new pitch. It's often cheaper and easier (I'm guessing) to build from scratch and you don't have to pay anyone else along the way.

This isn't happening though. Companies pitch ideas all the time that never happen. This stinks of can't be arsed. If they'd meant business, something would have happened by now. Someone's made a pitch, drummed up some investment, drew up some cheapo plans, purchased a Merc off the back of it and gone nahhh, won't work. It was obvious years ago that it wasn't happening. Welcome to the world of business.
This makes me sad because I think you may be right.
From when this project was first announced to present day, the theme/ amusement park industry hasn't exactly been booming so that probably hasn't helped with this project.
If this was pitched five years before the Olympics came to London then maybe the investment could have been more quantifiable...
 

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
It's not even timing though. Right off the bat you could see they couldn't be arsed. They didn't even know if they wanted to build a theme park or hotel complex, spa, shopping centre or water park. That means they were disorganised and had done zero market research. My bet is they were just hoping for some government investment because of the area it's in and thought 'we'll worry about the details of what it is we actually want to build later'. Cretins.
 

Efan

Mega Poster
Yep, someone probably saw "10 March" and thought it was this year. Either way, it's The Sun so it'd be wrong anyway.
 

Sandman

Giga Poster
I swear there are now more theme park facebook pages than theme parks. All simultaneously regurgitating the same articles that they haven't bothered to read first.
 
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