PROFILE
The attraction would include three areas: one explaining the history of the Venetian Laguna (Lagoon), the second a celebration of the history of Venice in the past centuries and the third, a year round Mardi Gras – the classic masqued Venetian festival
The project must be self-financing, so will include paid-for leisure attractions along with the heritage and museum elements, with ticket prices yet to be set. Phase two of the scheme – another
carrot for the planners – will involve the redevelopment of a nearby area of wasteland as a garden: “In Venice there’s a lack of places to relax that are green and beautiful,” says Zamperla, “We’ll rent the land from the state, cre- ate a garden, take care of the security and cleaning and open it for public use. Running a city like Venice is very expen- sive and the city’s only park is dirty and badly run. Ours will be beautiful.”
UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIP With so much historical accuracy required to realise the vision, Zamperla turned to academia for support, agree- ing a partnership with Professor Carlo Carraro, the magnifico rettore [chan- cellor] at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The project is a joint venture between Zamperla and the university. This tie-up gives the scheme heavy-
weight backing, which it appears will be necessary as Zamperla prepares to do battle with those who are set against it: ”Objections are coming only from the intellectuals,” he says. “After we went public, those organisations whose aim is to keep traditions alive and to stop things changing came out against it – but we’ve also had good support for the project, so we’re going to press on and present it.” The scheme is well advanced for this
reason: “I had the vision two years ago,” says Zamperla, but we had to keep it a secret, because we didn’t want to give our enemies time to attack. Politicians
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are not brave, they wait for the opinion of the public – it’s frustrating.” I ask if the project has a champion within the government? Zamperla says it does, but would rather not give names, although the fact it’s estimated to have the potential to create 500 jobs and involve an investment of €80m (US$110m, £66m) may go some way towards persuading them.
PLANNING PERMISSION “We’re building this cosmopolitan centre in an area that was a dump – a brown- field site,” says Zamperla. “Under the city’s zoning I can create an amusement development there and it will improve
Venice is one of the only cities where planners could contemplate
delivering half a million trips a year by water taxi
the area. We don’t need planning per- mission to do that, just a building permit to go ahead with it.” The biggest potential obstacle is the
unknown nature of the ground and the not insignificant matter of the cleanup costs: “At the moment, we’re check- ing how much cleaning we need to do and how much weight we can put on the land,” says Zamperla. “As I said previously, we estimate it will cost €8m just to clean the ground, but if we dis- cover it’s going to be more than that, unfortunately that will scupper the project and we won’t be able to do it.
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“We’re getting on with construction
drawings,” he says. “We want to push on with the scheme and do it quickly. The plan is to open for Mardi Gras 2017 if things go well, it would be a two-year project – a year to create the plan and a year to build it, because construction takes longer here, for obvious reasons.”
HOW MANY VISITORS? Zamperla’s estimate of 500,000 visitors a year will be based on all transportation being done by boat, given the island’s proximity to Venice’s transport hub: “Over 20 million tourists visit Venice each year,” he says, “three million of these come by cruise liner and will disembark 300m from us, so 500,000 visitors isn’t a big percentage of that total. We believe it’s achievable.” Venice is one of the only cities in the
world that could contemplate delivering half a million return trips a year by water taxi, and Zamperla has done a deal with the water ferry operator: “We have an agreement with them to bring people by boat – this is the company from the municipality that’s in charge of water transportation,” he says. “They’re happy with the deal, as it will help them optimise their capacity and yield.” I ask Zamperla how disappointed he’d be if the Venetian project doesn’t go ahead and he’s both philosophical and realistic, saying: “I passionately believe in the project and it would be a dream to make it happen, but I’m also a realist, and if at any time it becomes unviable, we’ll walk away from it.” Whether the project goes ahead or not, it's exciting to see attractions industry businesses stepping up with such ambitious ideas and not being afraid to go after them. l
AM 1 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
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