No Busch Gardens, SeaWorld for Dubai

original source Orlando Sentinel

Busch Entertainment Corp., owner of SeaWorld and other theme parks, has shelved plans to build four parks in Dubai, making the project the Middle Eastern state's latest casualty amid the international credit freeze.

Worlds of Discovery was announced just a year ago with a media spectacle that included performing killer whales and renderings of the parks on a man-made island shaped like SeaWorld's signature Shamu. Busch Entertainment President Jim Atchison touted it as a "momentous occasion" and a chance to put the Busch brands on a "true global stage."

The setback is one in a string of recent stall-outs for Dubai, often held up as Orlando's chief rival for tourism and as an emerging health-care hub with a development set to outpace Orlando's attempt to establish its own "medical city."

Busch and partner Nakheel PJSC, a state-backed real-estate company and leading developer in Dubai, agreed last month to suspend work because of worsening financial conditions. The two companies will reassess the project sometime this summer.

"As successful as they [Nakheel] are, there's certainly a limit to how far they can extend themselves," said Busch spokesman Fred Jacobs. "It's just a difficult time to start a new project."

The emirate's troubles are being blamed on a combination of downward-spiraling oil prices and real-estate values along with the related credit crisis.

Busch recently reassigned the handful of executives who were working on the Dubai parks and moved them back to its headquarters on John Young Parkway from a nearby satellite office.

The first two parks -- SeaWorld and Aquatica -- were scheduled to open in December 2012. Busch Gardens and Discovery Cove were to follow in 2015.

The parks were to sit on a 440-acre island, part of a cluster of man-made islands by Nakheel. Plans for the other islands connected to the parks called for as many as 56 hotels, shopping and housing for as many as 280,000 people.

Jacobs emphasized that Busch and Nakheel remained committed to the project and would move forward "when economic conditions permit."

Busch's end of the deal involved licensing its brand as well as planning and managing the parks. InBev's 2008 takeover of Anheuser-Busch, the theme-park group's parent company, did not affect the decision, he said.

"We don't have any idea what the future holds," Jacobs told me, and he indicated a scaled-back version of Worlds of Discovery was not under consideration.

The announcement comes as a number of projects planned for Dubai appear to be halted, though a Universal Parks & Resorts spokesman said Universal's Dubailand park is still a go and scheduled to open in 2012, two years later than the opening targeted when the park was announced in 2007.

In addition to the delayed opening of Dubai's second airport and other deferred ventures, Moody's Investors Service said this week that it may cut its credit rating for some of Dubai's top state-backed companies.

That all adds up to bad timing for the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission, taking a group of nine local business people led by Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty on a seven-day trip to Dubai on Thursday.

The price tag for the trip is $79,195, a mix of private and taxpayer dollars, and the goal is to promote Orlando as a business destination as well as introduce local businesses to potential opportunities in Dubai.

On the agenda, in fact, is "Nakheel Day." The group, which includes Florida Hospital Chief Executive Lars Houmann, Florida's Blood Centers Chief Executive Anne Chinoda and Crotty chief of staff George Rodon, among others, is to hear a presentation at Nakheel's sales center and take a boat trip to Palm Jumeirah.

It's possible that during the excursion to the palm-tree-shaped cluster of islands, the group will catch a view of Palm Jebel Ali, the island that was to be carved into a killer whale for the Busch parks.

For now, it remains an artificial swath of desert jetting into the Persian Gulf.