The Walt Disney Company and a leading Israeli cinema chain have announced plans to build a 600 million shekels (168 million U.S. dollars) amusement park and a 25-screen multiplex movie center in Israel’s largest port city Haifa.
“The project, which is still in it’s development stages, reflects our goal of providing quality entertainment for the people of Israel,” Avi Edery, Deputy CEO of New Lineo Cinema said on Monday.
The center will focus on the movie complex, and is not a Disney theme park, Edery added. However, he could not say when the plans were expected to come to fruition.
New Lineo Cinema officials said the 30,000 square meters amusement park and 50,000 square meters of theaters and shops would be built on land owned by a local family, according to the Globes business newspaper.
“This plan expresses our confidence in turning Haifa Bay into a thriving business area,” Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav said.
“In the last few years, Haifa has invested, overall, billions of shekels in upgrading the city’s infrastructure and ambitious development plans,” Haifa Municipality deputy spokesman Roni Grossman told Xinhua on Monday, and noted a recent decision on a new overall development plan for the city.
The city recently completed a 1.5-billion-shekel (421 million U. S. dollars) tunnel, road and bridge project beneath the Carmel Range, intended to divert heavy coastal traffic away from the bustling port area.
Source: Xinhua