they just announced this today.
Universal City Hilton Plans 15-Story Expansion | Urbanize LA
Now if they can just have an entrance door on the side that faces the park.
they just announced this today.
Universal City Hilton Plans 15-Story Expansion | Urbanize LA
well what does this imply for ush
This is why theme parks who wait to announce things always lose. First Disneyland's eastern gateway project, now the hotel drama at Universal.
The way I see is, there are three major areas where we could see movement in 2018:
- Sound stages 22-25, 28 - Approx. 3.5 acres - Long reported to be the future site of the Secret Life of Pets ride, this area has not seen any movement for several months. Soundstage 28 was cleared out and demolished in 2014, with the other four stages demolished earlier this year. Since then, the area has been paved over and used as studio parking/storage. In this Variety article from June 2016, those soundstages (along with stages 33-37, 41-44, and a rehearsal hall) are all marked for removal over the next few years for "for future theme park expansion." The 22-25 area already has a project number, P168, but the former site of 28 still has a building code "3271". The nearby stages 29 and 31 are also listed as being on the chopping block (31 is already gone, but 29 still stands), although that project is listed as "ongoing". It is unclear what is preventing the removal of 29, but when the new soundstages by park lake open in early 2018, we are likely to see 29 go shortly after.
- Fung Lum Restaurant - Approx. 0.75 acres - Demolished in 2014, this has been marked as part of the Evolution Plan as the potential site of a new hotel. This would be the first hotel actually on Universal property. While, to me at least, this seems like an ambitious goal to fit a hotel in less than an acre, the main part of the Sheraton and Hilton hotels comprise less than half an acre each, so it's not totally out of the question. The land technically lies inside the City of Los Angeles, as opposed to Universal City, and there may be some red tape that's preventing development. For the time being, it is a parking lot.
Those are, I think, the biggest potentials for new construction in the new year.
- South-east of E.T. Parking - Approx. 3.5 acres - It was a set of baseball diamonds until a few years ago, when it was paved to allow guests to move more freely around the construction site for the ET parking structure. I never noticed this area until the recent IU article about revisiting the Evolution plan. That area is highlighted as "Entertainment," referring to Theme Park use. It could be a new hotel, but it also could be another parking structure as there appears to be a bridge of some kind connecting it to the ET structure and the existing open air parking lots are marked for replacement by buildings as well. Not to get too far into the realm of the hypothetical, but if they unified their parking and moved it to the far end of Citywalk, they could then move their security checkpoint to that area as well, freeing up more space near the entrance of the park and allowing more space for a potential hotel. This is the layout that Orlando uses, with their parking structures linked together linearly and the security checkpoint being between parking and Citywalk. For now, it is walled off and used as storage and parking.
hopefully they announce the hotel
they need one fast
And with that, especially if they start work on Nintendo before Mummy closes (shuttering the Soundstage/Rehearsal cluster), that means they will be losing quite a few indoor productions for the time being, until all 12 are completed.
So they're putting more stages on the lot?