Carousel Center
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The Carousel Center is a 1.5 million square foot (140,000 m²) shopping and entertainment complex on the shore of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, New York. It has eight anchor store slots - currently filled with Best Buy, Circuit City, Bon Ton, H&M, JC Penney, Kaufmann's, and Lord & Taylor, with The Sports Authority opening soon. In addition, there is a nineteen-screen Regal movie complex and around 150 other retail stores. It opened on October 15, 1990.
The Carousel Center is currently making headlines throughout the country as its developer, The Pyramid Companies is attempting to turn it into the largest entertainment complex in the country, even surpassing Minnesota's Mall of America. Plans, which currently include over 4.5 million square feet (400,000 m²), consist of 20,000 hotel rooms, an indoor aquarium, an indoor re-creation of the Erie Canal, a stadium and performing arts center, three golf courses, and a 100 acre (400,000 m²) glass-enclosed indoor park. This complex is to be known as DestiNY USA, and plans for it were first made public in April 2000. There have been constant struggles with the city, county, state, and federal governments for tax relief and financing to make this project a reality. Construction of a 47 floor, 1,300 room hotel was started in October of 2002, only to be stopped shortly afterwards over a dispute whether this hotel would be considered "leasable space," which is a term used in the payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement between the county and the developer. Pyramid Cos. executives Michael Lorenz and Bruce Kenan have recently announced that construction should now begin by spring 2005, but there is no guarantee that this will happen.
The Pyramid Cos. claim this resort would create around 120,000 new jobs and bring millions of tourists to the Syracuse area; this would be a significant economic boost to the region, which has been hard hit by corporations downsizing or leaving altogether.
See also
External links
- Carousel Center (http://carouselcenter.com/)
- DestiNY USA (http://destinyusa.com/)
- DestiNY USA News (http://syracuse.com/destinyusa)