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WPCNR Common Council Chronicle-Examiner. By John F. Bailey.
INTERNATIONAL VISITOR: Ruben Coors Gil presents masterfully, enthusiastically to the Common Council Wednesday evening. Photo by WPCNR News
La ciudad de los ninos, Cors’ company, is willing to make
COLORFUL SLIDES DEFINED WHAT KIDS CITY IS: Kids enter, “fly” to a destination, enter scale-down replicas of buildings where they participate as adults would in making a living activities, such as operations. Photo by WPCNR News.
Cors predicts his center, open 10 A.M. to 3 P.M., originally intended to go into the Palisades Mall in Rockland County, will bring 900,000 visitors to White Plains a year, that works out to 2,400 visitors a day to the White Plains downtown. Tony Nardozzi (of Silverman Realty Group) said more of those visitors would probably come on the weekends. Cors plans to charge $25 for Children and $18 per Adult (since it is a
Tony Nardozzi, a Silverman partner, told WPCNR that Silverman is attempting to finance the project by assembling investor/tenants to construct and apparently own each floor of the three-story Downtown Crossing project, originally pitched to the Common Council last fall.
Cors is the first investor to be attracted. Terms of Mr. Cors’ engagement did not come up in the discussion in the hasty news conference after the presenatation. Mark Weingarten, of DelBello, Donnellan & Weingarten, attorney for Silverman, said other investor developer partners were being pursued. Downtown Crossing is seeking to attract a major retail anchor for the first floor and a sports academy for the third floor.
Cors said he did not have an idea yet when the project would be completed speculating it was at least three years away.
Kids Cityt attracted 762,000 visitors in its first year, when Mr. Cors had projected 400,000, In 2000, it attracted 789,000, and in 2001 it had reaced 830,000 visitors a year. In a metropolitan area of 20 million people.
Named “the Best New Business” by Expansion Magazine, in 1999, the leading business magazine in
MR. CORS’ PRESENTATION set a new standard of enthusiasm and fact presentation, with slides and a 10 minute movie. It is easily the best developer pitch delivered to the Common Council since yours truly has covered the council (five years). The media kit shown above, given each Councilman included DVD, sample credit card, CD, and play money children are given to “spend” in the Kids City pavilion. Photo by WPCNR News
The council gave a consensus swell of enthusiasm which means that planning for the project will now begin, according to Weingarten.