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Tuscan River Parks Deliver an Ideal Blend of Leisure Activities

AUTHENTIC SOCIAL NETWORKING

Tuscan River Park Properties Are Designed to Bring Families and Friends Together in a Spirit of Adventure and Fun While Celebrating Their Appetite for Life

The Tuscan River Parks are conveniently located properties that offer an integrated leisure experience uniquely driven to serve families and friends. The typical Park includes table-service restaurants, a mix of convenience and leisure retail experiences, a multi-screen cinema, an indoor recreational sports facility, and an indoor amusement pavilion. Over 500 properties will ultimately be built in the United States.

The four Park table-service restaurants will serve a variety of cuisine based on a theme established for each, and will all serve meals priced comparably with casual dining restaurant chains. The goal is to provide Guests with a choice of affordable family dining options in a single, convenient location. A quick service dining option is also available within the indoor amusement pavilion.

A $110 MILLION MICROECONOMY

Why Tuscan River Parks Directly Influence $110 Million of Local Annual Spending

Each property will generate between $55 and $60 million in direct spending by Guests on products and services. Through promotional incentives for purchases of products and services affiliated with Tuscan River, each Park is expected to influence a similar amount of off-property spending in its trade market, creating a total direct economic impact of $110 to $120 million of spending. In many respects, the Parks may appear similar to a small lifestyle shopping center however there are many important differences.  Tuscan River is focused on creating a total Guest experience that is very different and much more engaging. The properties provide amusements and entertainment venues for customers. The family-scaled amusements are located in an indoor theme pavilion for year-round enjoyment in any climate. Outdoor attractions are also included in the Parks. Vehicle parking is carefully screened from the storefronts and amusements, to establish emotional separation between the Park environment and the outside world.

THE BIG SCREEN

The First Tuscan River Big Screen Motion Picture is in Development

Tuscan River: Portal to the Edge of Time is the working title for the first of a series of stories with themes that correspond to the architecture and places featured at the Parks. A novel version of the story has been drafted and motion picture and television veteran Pat Corbitt has developed a motion picture screenplay based on the engaging family-oriented story. Plans are also being developed for video game and other collateral media content based on the series.

All venues and landscape features in the Park properties are themed to correspond to these stories. The value of integrating this adventure oriented theme into the Park venues is that it strengthens the emotional bonds Guests will develop for the Park, increasing both their enjoyment and their patronage of the Park’s stores and restaurants. The distinct architectural character of the Park properties offers a pleasing contrast to competing local leisure time destinations.

The unique Tuscan River themed restaurants and stores in the Parks will each make appearances in the Tuscan River stories, as to be experienced in the Tuscan River motion pictures. The entertainment content thereby establishes a fan-based relationship with the Guests that regularly visit the Park properties, anchoring in their minds the idea that the closest Tuscan River Park is their first choice as a destination to relax, shop and play. 

LEADERSHIP

An All Star Team is Developing Tuscan River

Tuscan River has assembled a seasoned team of professionals to lead the Company through its initial growth stage. These individuals are leaders of firms with resources that provide Tuscan River with the ability to execute its development plan in a way that benefits all its Partners. The professionals engaged on the Tuscan River team included the most talented minds in their respective fields. This team includes Carl Yankowski and Pat Flaherty, who together were responsible for the marketing strategy that introduced the initial PlayStation game player and the VAIO computer for Sony; and later developed the turnaround plan implemented by Reebok in the late 1990s. Leading the team’s property staff recruiting and training effort are Grace Andrews and Jackie Sonnabend, whose hospitality clients have included Sonesta International Hotels, the Trapp Family Lodge, Le Meridien Hotels, and Ritz Carleton. The company’s retail sales implementation is led by Doug Fleener, who as Bose Corporation’s retail store director built the company’s retail group from 4 to 100 stores and now has appeared on MSNBC as a retail industry expert.

WANT TO BE INVOLVED?

Consider How the Tuscan River Parks Can Work for You and Your Organization

We are out to shatter the market’s current notion of what constitutes an engaging shopping, dining and leisure time experience. If you sense that being a part of the Tuscan River Park network may enrich your business and improve the lives of those you serve, contact Tom Richert (978.808.4668 or tom.richert@tuscanriver.com) to learn more about working with Tuscan River.

Art, Play & Ritual

Here's an interesting quote from Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. "Art, play and ritual probably occupy more time and energy in most cultures than work. While these activities may serve other purposes as well, the fact that they provide enjoyment is the main reason they have survived."

Later, in the same chapter, "One of the most ironic paradoxes of our time is this great availability of leisure that somehow fails to be translated into enjoyment. ..... Opportunites alone, however, are not enough.We also need the skills to make use of them. And we need to know how to control conciousness - a skill that most people have not learned to cultivate."

That touches on an element of Tuscan River that has not been discussed much as of yet - our desire to make the Tuscan River one that enriches Guests' lives on a level that contributes to long lasting enjoyment - an not simply momentary pleasures. Personal enrichment will be a feature of the entertainment parks.

The Arpiann Confederation

I was asked some questions about the Arpiann Confederation the other day. The Arpiann, aka the bad guys, are collectively the antagonist in the Portal to the Edge of Time story. Below is one part of my response.

"The Arpiann are the result of a mistake. A single Arpiann was created with the intent that the creature be an obstacle to be overcome during a portal race. Whether it was created as a living flesh and blood creature, or some kind of robot isn't explained in the book, but my thought was that it was created flesh and blood as part of a fabricated reality." (Tuscan River people fabricate realities and alternate dimensions all the time there was a great program on the Science Channel the other night - Traveling to a Parallel Universe Sci Fi Science - http://science.discovery.com/videos/sci-fi-science-videos/)

"The Arpiann is gender neutral and incapable of producing offspring. The Arpiann creature took its mission to stop portal racers too far. It was supposed to simply capture a careless portal racer and return them to Tuscan River, disqualifying them from finishing that particular race. The Arpiann, understanding its mission as to stop portal racers, grew frustrated that the racers it captured would return to race again, and that it would end up catching the same racers over and over again. It deduced that if it locked them up some place instead of returning them to Tuscan River it would be serving its programming more effectively. That’s when the trouble began. The good people of Tuscan River, realizing their racers were not be returned followed the Arpiann to the world it now created for purposes of imprisoning captives (The Arpiann was given portal technology to facilitate its role in the portal race, which meant it too could create new realities). All the captives were freed once unattended by the Arpiann, who went off to capture more racers. This frustrated the Arpiann even more, and it now determined it had to end portal racing on Tuscan River forever, and prevent portal racing from ever taking hold in other parts of the universe. It realized that this job was too big for one creature – so using the time displacement feature of the portal technology it created many, many copies (billions and billions??) of itself. For example, if two Arpiann were seen side by side, what you really are seeing is the same Arpiann at two different points in the timeline of its existence. They may be a mere five minutes apart in age, or maybe as much as 5,000 years apart. (or maybe 5 billion years?)"

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I'm enjoying a great book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow has some great insights into what makes for the enjoyable and rewarding times in our life. The book examines the process for achieving happiness through control over one's inner world. Not surprisingly adventure plays a role in creating happiness. Although Csikszentmihalyi does not (at least so far in the book) explicity use the work adventure, he observes that by accomplishing meaningful challenges, whether primarily physical, mental or social, we achieve states where we are both focused and happily engaged. I hope that in building Tuscan River we succeed in creating an environment that provides meaningful adventures with the Parks and inspires people to take on desired challenges outside those properties.

Family Fun

As a Destination for Adventure and Family Fun it is certainly possible that people see Tuscan River is a place just for people with kids. And to that end we have done what we can to ensure that the Tuscan River experience is terrific for a parent or parents to share with their children.

By Family Fun we also mean to serve an audience broader than Mom, Dad and the Kids. A Family is a group of people with something in common, and includes groups of adult friends, couples, sports teammates and work colleagues.

One great value of leisure time is the opportunity that strengthen the friendships and relationships that make life enjoyable. That's our goal at Tuscan River. We look forward to building these properties for you.

Tuscan River Planning National Network of Entertainment Parks

Tuscan River Corporation is planning an initial group of Entertainment Parks at up to eight U.S. locations. The Entertainment Parks are conveniently located multi-activity leisure venues, designed to provide Adventure and Family Fun to people seeking to enjoy time together with in a festive community atmosphere. These entertainment parks will provide a balanced and varied blend of venues that include four restaurants, leisure oriented retail shopping, sports recreation, movie cinemas and amusements to create an integrated leisure experience for adult and family Guests visiting the parks. These parks will include themes from the Tuscan River series of stories, beginning with Tuscan River: Portal to the Edge of Time, expected to be published in 2010 followed by a major motion picture release possibly in 2011.
The eight locations will be in regions throughout the U.S., including New England, the New York / Philadelphia corridor, the Great Lakes, North Texas, and Northern California. As the Tuscan River development team continues its efforts specific locations in each of these regions will be determined. In New England, the Company continues to pursue a location in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, at the crossroads of Interstate 84 and Interstate 90.