Filling the void in Iraq’s underdeveloped amusement park industry

Quick quiz: what does Iraq really need? If you said “political reconciliation” or “a functioning infrastructure,” you’re not thinking with the kind of outside-the-box creativity that Llewellyn Werner is.

Llewellyn Werner admits he is facing obstacles most amusement park developers never have to deal with – insurgent attacks and looting. When you are building an amusement park in downtown Baghdad, those risks come with the territory. Mr Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland. “The people need this kind of positive influence. It’s going to have a huge psychological impact,” Mr Werner said.

Um, yeah. If you say so.

Baghdad’s “Entertainment Experience” will reportedly occupy (no pun intended) 50 acres adjacent to the Green Zone. (It is the site of the old zoo, which was “looted, left without power and abandoned after the American-led invasion in 2003.”)

Werner’s project, which includes a 50-year lease, will cost a half-billion dollars. Iraqis will manage the facility, and he’ll “retain exclusive rights to housing and hotel developments.”

What could possibly go wrong?



Well, Jonathan Stein did raise one concern:

Sure. A massive Disneyland-style amusement park, operated for American profit, plunked in the middle of Baghdad — that won’t be a target for hostilities. Not at all.

As for Werner, his motivation is not entirely altruistic. He noted that the children of Sunnis and Shi’ia alike can enjoy the “Entertainment Experience,” but he has profit to consider.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t making money,” he said. “I also have this wonderful sense that we’re doing the right thing – we’re going to employ thousands of Iraqis. But mostly everything here is for profit.”

Stein wondered whether that same quote might be attributed to officials in the Bush administration.