Wow that ferris wheel is the most crass use of advertising ever, its despicable.

This has been under the radar for a while, but just heard this is on hold now indefinitely...more details later.

I hate to hear that....seemed like a good idea to me... I also hope they find a way to keep the IZOD Center up once the Nets depart for wherever.. It may not be the best but I hate to see any NBA arena get torn down... Not to mention there were Finals played there among many other things..

If the ferris wheel is up yet, did they change the pepsi logo to the new logo? Personally I like the idea of the Pepsi logo....keeps it from looking like all the other ferris wheels and it generates profit for this project.

Not a surprise. A mega-project originally scheduled to open in 2007, now at least 2 years behind schedule.

Last month from the highway

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17...r/IMG_2858.jpg

Here's are two shots from March. (Nothing has really changed much since then)
http://imgur.com/HU7NM.jpg
http://imgur.com/SSiyf.jpg

This place is absolutely hideous, I've driven by it several times having no idea what it is... why would they ever do such a thing?

I live pretty close to the complex and I drive by it alot on my way to work .. I remember seeing a quote in the paper one day from an executive of the project and he said... "Dont judge the colors just yet, let it sit in for a while...When its done youll appreciate the clash of colors." .. I"m not appreciating anything


Obviously the interior of this place will be the end all - be all of this construction project / idea, but my goodness.....The Plaid colors on the outside of this place are just so ridiculously hideous. I mean I just dont understand what was going thru the minds of the designers when they said... lets make it look like something from the 70s show.

I don't know what they were going for. Maybe when it finally opens (who knows when) and develops its own atmosphere it won't seem as horrible. But its pretty horrible looking now.

Hahahaha I just realized something. I remember going on a rant about this shitty Pepsi wheel last year (bottom of page 1 of this thread) but now that Pepsi has changed it's logo...I think it's time for an updated rendering. :haha: ....and which logo will they use, now that it's varied. The main logo? the diet logo? I like the Pepsi Max one the best because it's got the biggest smile. Maybe it can hypnotize people into smiling when they see the outside of the mall itself. :P

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/ny...AZ60taNwAIVZ8A

Possible Second Life for Stalled Xanadu Project? Consider Trip to ‘Jersey Shore’

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...ticleLarge.jpg

By PETER APPLEBOME
January 24, 2010


There’s a new governor, Christopher J. Christie, who took office on Tuesday, but otherwise the news from New Jersey last week had that familiar ring.

Guy Catrillo, a former Jersey City Council candidate who took $15,000 in bribes, received 18 months in prison in the first sentencing to grow out of the largest public corruption sting in state history. Leonard Kaiser, a longtime North Arlington mayor and a former freeholder and member of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission, pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges on Thursday in connection with campaign funds converted to personal use.

The reality show “Jersey Shore” finished a triumphant season of redefining contemporary courtship etiquette. (Thus saith “The Situation”: “I necessarily didn’t want to bring home any sort of zoo creatures whatsoever. These broads just smelled the food at the house.”)

And just when it seemed ready to recede into the New Jersey Turnpike permanent landscape, the Meadowlands Xanadu project resurfaced as the state’s other misbegotten reality show. First the chief executive of the sporting goods-outdoors megastore Cabela’s, the project’s anchor tenant and an indispensable attraction, said it was unlikely ever to open a store there. And on Friday, a report prepared by the Christie administration’s transition team said that Xanadu “appears to be a failed business model” and that New Jersey needs to tell the owners to “open or surrender the property.”

It concluded: “There is no leasing plan making material on-site progress. The physical activities of construction are at a standstill, if not abandonment. The construction loan is out of balance. There are no monies readily available to finish construction of public areas or tenant improvements. Most, if not all, of announced major tenants have an ‘escape clause’ solely dependent on leasing — or lack thereof.”

Officials with the project say its business model is sound and it has been delayed because two of its lenders went bankrupt.

Mr. Christie has been a critic of the stalled $2 billion project. But with a new administration, there will almost certainly be new attention to what can be done to forestall what could be perhaps the worst retail failure ever.

Well, O.K., everybody’s a critic now. It might have seemed peachy back in the McGreevey era to contemplate a multibillion-dollar shopping and entertainment center with a 16-story indoor Snow Park, 286-foot-tall Pepsi Globe Ferris wheel, a simulated sky-diving contraption, a MagiQuest virtual-reality game and the rest. But no one — at least no one not smoking however much opium it took for the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to envision the original Xanadu — would propose one now.

So what to do? The options are not attractive: hunker down and hope the project makes more sense in a year or two (or four or five), have the state sue the developers to take back the property, find a really rich new developer or knock it down and forget it. And there’s certain to be consideration of alternative uses. One already circulating on a hypothetical level (and certain to face gargantuan hurdles) is to consider allowing existing Atlantic City casino operators to make it a casino, in an effort to keep some North Jersey gambling dollars out of New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

Yes, there are already too many casinos, but there aren’t that many appropriate uses for something that looks like the world’s biggest air vent covered in Play Doh. Still, there must be other thoughts out there.

So, capitalizing on the state’s most conspicuous success over the past year, here’s mine — “Jersey Shore” Meadowlands: The Mall and Fitness Experience.

Turn the indoor ski slope into surfing waves, retrofit the place for housing that can be turned into share houses (year round!), put in a boardwalk to give the retail that “Jersey Shore” je ne sais quoi. The Situation, one of the show’s savants, has said he’d like to open his own fitness studio. Well, here it is: Make it the world’s biggest gym, tanning salon and academic research center into abs enhancement and state-of-the-art hair gel technology.

Is it a certain winner? Nothing is. But you take a white elephant that’s dead in the water and replace it with one perfectly aligned with the all-important youth demographic, with instant brand identification, an international audience of millions and potential for unlimited old-fashioned, interpersonal interactivity: Martial arts classes! Duck phone kiosks! Mass fist-pumping celebrations!

It’s true the “Jersey Shore” phenomenon could have a short half-life, but it beats Xanadu’s current no life. If you have a better idea of what to do with the site, please let me know.

Otherwise, we await bold new leadership. “We have the tools for a brighter future, if we change direction,” Mr. Christie said at his inauguration last week. Exactly. Sir, your new road to Xanadu starts here.

http://hudsonreporter.com/view/full_...es_left_column

New life for Xanadu?
New York developer may jump-start stalled project

by E. Assata Wrig

Is that Xanadu??

Unfortunately, yes.

:tup:

http://imgsrv.wcbs880.com/image/DbLi...jpg?1279761075 http://imgsrv.wcbs880.com/image/DbLi...jpg?1279761069 http://imgsrv.wcbs880.com/image/DbLi...jpg?1279761093

WCBS880

it is without question one of the ugliest things in the US..though i still wanna go as soon as it opens :D

http://therealdeal.com/newyork/artic...ated-companies

Lenders take the reins on Xanadu

August 11, 2010

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...#ixzz0wJ0KCz3o

Waste of money
 

As we say in the old neighborhood - Watta a disasta......

Four more years for a project that already looks complete on the outside? Yup, disaster!