Universal To Spend Next Two Decades Supersizing Studio And Tourist Trap Facilities
There is little we find more scintillating than news that a moviemaking concern is planning on sinking billions of dollars into the more efficient development of an underexploited, extremely valuable parcel of land in its control, so we note that NBC Universal has announced that it intends to supersize its local production facilities, office space, and overrated theme park over the next 12-25 years, a massive project the company says will create tens of thousands of jobs and usher in an unprecedented, Universal-branded era of prosperity for all citizens of Los Angeles. Among the upgrades in store for Universal City, if neighbors expecting to be inconvenienced by untold years of constant construction don't first burn down the lot:
-A "refreshed" Universal CityWalk and Universal Studios Hollywood theme park. CityWalk would get a 100,000-square-foot, live-production studio "where guests become part of the action," and the theme park would gain 80,000 square feet in new and enhanced retail and dining facilities.
-A 124-acre residential development on part of the current studio backlot, offering apartments, lofts, townhouses and condos. A "town center" would offer residents retail and dining amenities.
The planned improvements to CityWalk will nicely complement their visionary expansion plans; while the parents of large families visiting from foreign lands are distracted by either "refreshed," 300-foot-tall neon gorillas and electric guitars or roles in interactive, all-tourist productions, their able-bodied children can be spirited off and immediately put to work building luxury condos and new office buildings, slave-labor contributions that will eventually earn them citizenship in the completely self-sufficient Universal City-State that will officially secede from America sometime in 2031.
