WPCNR Common Council Chronicle-Examiner. By John F. Bailey. March 24, 2004: A forty minute presentation by Ruben Cors, Chief Operating Officer of la ciudad de los ninos of Mexico City, his popular Kids City combination childrens’ amusement center in the Mexico City “Santa Fe Mall” held the Common Council spellbound Wednesday evening. Senor Cors is ready to invest $30 Million with Leon Silverman of Silverman realty to construct a Kids City Pavilion on one floor of the Silverman and Minskoff Grant block along Mamaroneck Avenue opposite the City Center. Silverman is seeking other partner investors for a sports academy and a major retail component for the other two floors.
INTERNATIONAL VISITOR: Ruben Coors Gil presents masterfully, enthusiastically to the Common Council Wednesday evening. Photo by WPCNR News
La ciudad de los ninos, Cors' company, is willing to make White Plains the first United States location for the next million-visitor-a-year center which features a mini city built to kids’ size indoors on approximate 80,000 square feet of the Silverman property which wraps around Mamaroneck Avenue and Quarropas Streets. The design concept has yet to be created. Wednesday evening’s event was to see if the Common Council would buy in to the idea before planning and development money was spent, said Mark Weingarten, attorney for the Silverman Realty Group.
COLORFUL SLIDES DEFINED WHAT KIDS CITY IS: Kids enter, "fly" to a destination, enter scale-down replicas of buildings where they participate as adults would in making a living activities, such as operations. Photo by WPCNR News.
Cors predicts his center, open 10 A.M. to 3 P.M., originally intended to go into the Palisades Mall in Rockland County, will bring 900,000 visitors to White Plains a year, that works out to 2,400 visitors a day to the White Plains downtown. Tony Nardozzi (of Silverman Realty Group) said more of those visitors would probably come on the weekends. Cors plans to charge $25 for Children and $18 per Adult (since it is a Kids City), and parking would be built on site underground on the Silverman block under the former Woolworth’s store.
Tony Nardozzi, a Silverman partner, told WPCNR that Silverman is attempting to finance the project by assembling investor/tenants to construct and apparently own each floor of the three-story Downtown Crossing project, originally pitched to the Common Council last fall.
Cors is the first investor to be attracted. Terms of Mr. Cors' engagement did not come up in the discussion in the hasty news conference after the presenatation. Mark Weingarten, of DelBello, Donnellan & Weingarten, attorney for Silverman, said other investor developer partners were being pursued. Downtown Crossing is seeking to attract a major retail anchor for the first floor and a sports academy for the third floor.
Cors said he did not have an idea yet when the project would be completed speculating it was at least three years away.
Kids City opened at the Santa Fe Mall in Mexico City in 1999. Santa Fe is a district of 8 million people outside Mexico City. Kids City in the Santa Fe Mall has the capacity of over 1,800 visitors at one time, and features 42 pavilions, consisting of kid-scale models of typical city establishments, such as a hospital, television station, fire department, government buildings, etc. It is a runaway success.
Kids Cityt attracted 762,000 visitors in its first year, when Mr. Cors had projected 400,000, In 2000, it attracted 789,000, and in 2001 it had reaced 830,000 visitors a year. In a metropolitan area of 20 million people. Westchester County has 9 million residents but with potential to draw from New Jersey, New York City, Connecticut and Long Island. At the Santa Fe Mall, the most trafficked mall in Latin America, Kids City attracts school groups booked 3 to 5 months in advance, and receives a lot of repeat business.
Named “the Best New Business” by Expansion Magazine, in 1999, the leading business magazine in Mexico, it now seeks its first U.S.A. operation, and has picked White Plains. Kids City was also winner of the 2001 Best New Theme Park by the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA).
