Is it necessary to already register for a job in Gran Scala? Like it is also necessary to look out for luck sometimes, some people have started called to the City council of Ontiñena to be first in the list of possible employees. The telephone never stops ringing since they have been speaking about opportunities. Gran Scala was announced to launch in 2012 with 26,000 direct job opportunities. Already there are many companies that have shown interest to settle down in the neighborhood of Low Cinca, where the construction of the great complex of leisure and gaming is predicted to occupy more than 2,000 hectares.

At the moment, there is no possibility to register for a job in the future leisure and luxury casino complex. However, in the presentation that the developer of Gran Scala, ILD, gave on the 25th February, the neighbors of Ontiñena did not solely listen to the possible number of employees these jobs will create in Gran Scala.

According to one attendant, of the 26,000 employees needed, the majority will work in the hotels and casinos (7,000), in the rooms (5,000) and the bars and restaurants (4,000). This number will get up to 65,000 in 2022, when the Gran Scala project will be finalized. In addition to these, 135,000 more can be added indirectly before that specific date. ILD affirms that experts consider a coefficient multiplication of 2.1 over the direct jobs to estimate indirect jobs.

Registration for jobs is expected to start this June

Until then, it will be a long time before it is actually necessary to hire employees for the complex’ construction. For this reason, one of ILD’s partners, Europtime, is going to create a registry with all the Aragonese companies that have the capacity to work in the construction of the Gran Scala complex as of June of this year, since it is anticipated that the works begin before the year end of this year. However, they also emphasized that “external (international) companies will be only contracted when local companies don’t have the power to realize specific special and technical assignments”.

They clarified that each operator is going to have his own process of hiring employees, but that ILD is going to centralize the majority of the processes, giving people within the neighborhood priority. In addition, they also aim to subscribe the necessary agreements with organizations and unions from and around Aragon.

The mayor of Ontiñena, Ángel Torres, assures that he has proposals on the table and that many industrialists have been invited for meetings to estimate the possibilities that have become available for the community. “But it is still too early to speak about these matters”, he noticed. Now, the popular Ángel Torres has finally found a moment to breath, after four intense months of work since the announcement was made on the 7th of October that they chose for an option which lasted until the 10th of February, to sign the first options to purchase thousands of hectares of land from individuals in Ontiñena.

At the moment the people are requested to be patient as a registry to apply for jobs does not yet exist.  According to the mayor, the majority of people that have shown interest are related to construction and the earthwork. Torres also emphasized that another sector, a theme attraction park, has shown serious  interest in opening a park in the area. Various industrialists and companies have called to ask about the possibilities of participating or to open their business within the enclosure of Gran Scala.

Banking organizations

The lottery did not affected anything. It seemed like the whole world came to town on the 10th of February when the signing of contracts to purchasing options started. Banking organizations obtained checks from respective organizations. It was about 4% of the the total value of the property (8,000 Euros per hectare), that ILD, the developer of Gran Scala, paid to each proprietor, with a total of 320,000 Euros paid. It took banking organizations all day to confirm and obtain the checks.

Money makes money and for that reason banking organizations also want to settle down in Ontiñena. Until this moment, Ibercaja, Multicaja, Banco Central and BBVA have shown interest to open offices. Because of the last case, about banking organizations, Ángel Costa, who is one of the persons who has signed to purchase an option, assures that his organization wants to open an office. In fact, directors of other businesses from near locations accompanied him that day and started inspecting local commercial companies.

Another banking organization, one already present in the nearby area, noticed that they still hadn’t considered expanding, because it is simply still too early to decide. This was said by mayor Ángel Torres, but on the other hand he noticed that many people still call him for information.

• A 60 hectare theme park, multi-day Mars Experience and a Space Camp
• Two hotels and an international convention center
• Tourist condos, and wellness center
• Restaurants and retail

SpacePortGranScala will include two space-themed [Year2100 and Year3000] casinos each on a 9 hectare site, and each with a hotel and mini cultural museum.

The underlying core offer of SpacePortGranScala will be “Explore”, “Experience”, “Innovate” and “Live”, themes that will be carried throughout SpacePortGranScala’s theme park, hotels, retail, and lifestyle real estate.

Using space as a theme together with our human desire to explore, and with technology as the enabler, SpacePortLeisure will provide intelligent, stimulating, and fun-filled lifestyle, entertainment and learning experiences that will give freedom to transcend language and culture, thus creating dynamic new ways of learning and of building new communities across the globe. Our creativity will be as expansive as the Universe.

Only a privileged few will be able to experience a real flight into space. In conceiving the SpacePortLeisure concept, the goal is to give visitors and residents alike, an experience of “Stepping into Space” at our SpacePortGranScala. (more…)

Aquantica will be developing the Gran Escala water amusement park. Although I could find a lot of information about this park to be build, I could not find anything about the company behind it.

Novomatic Holding is an integrated global gaming company and producer of high tech gaming equipment. Their main office is located in Austria.

SpacePortLeisure, a South African company headquartered in Cape Town, develops world-class “next generation” space, science and technology theme parks, hotels, and mixed used lifestyle urban city destinations, which provide a “space tourism experience” on Planet Earth for those unable to travel into space. The evolving global business, with a focus on China and Western Europe, where it is building significant footprints, spans these lines of businesses.

The Spyland concept, as will be seen in the Gran Scala project in Zaragoza, started in 1996 as an interactive museum. In 2001, it turned into an amusement park. During the years it developed into a more elaborated project, as it included educational, as well as entertaining factors starting around mid 2004.

Since the conception of this project, the idea which has been the central theme of this project was the creation of “a destination city of leisure for all ages”. It will consist of 32 hotel-casinos, five (5) major theme parks, a conference center, several other hotels, hundreds of retail shops, restaurants, a golf course, a horse race track, an opera, museums, and residential development. Gran Scala is a grand scale project of International Leisure Development (ILD).

This project will be located in Spain and more precisely in the desert of Los Monegros, an hour away by car from Zaragoza, the capital of the autonomous region of Aragon. Aragon occupies a strategic place in Europe in-between 2 zones of high economic development: the Atlantic and the Mediterranean regions. Aragon is a central place of communication that is constantly being renewed due to the intensification of the exchanges in the country. Situated half way between Madrid and Barcelona, Zaragoza is the 6th largest city in Spain. (more…)

Expo 2008 is a planned international exposition to be held from 14th June to 14th September 2008 and coordinated by the Bureau of International Expositions organization which is responsible for sanctioning World’s Fairs.The 2008 expo will be held in Zaragoza, Spain, with the topic of “Water and sustainable development“. The event is being placed in a meander of the river Ebro.

Zaragoza, host city for the International Exposition, is the administrative and financial capital of the autonomous community of Aragon and the fifth largest Spanish city in inhabitants (660,000), behind Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville. Zaragoza was elected the host city of Expo 2008 on December 16, 2004 by the BIE, beating Thessaloniki (Greece) and Trieste (Italy).

The exhibition’s most emblematic buildings will be the Water Tower, a 80-metre-high transparent building designed by Enrique de Teresa to evoke a drop of water, Zaha Hadid’s Bridge Pavilion and the river aquarium. The exposition site will also host several espectacles, including a daily parade by Cirque du Soleil called The Awakening of the Serpent.

Aside from the countries, non-government organizations and private companies will be taking part in Expo 2008, always with the idea of water and sustainable development. The Expo 2008 host committee has estimated that this event could generate 135 million euros in receipts for admission to the exhibition centre.

Source: WikiPedia
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_2008

The casino “city”, to be built on 5,000 acres over the next decade in eastern Spain, will include 32 hotels, five theme parks and, in a Las Vegas touch, may even feature “wedding chapels” to encourage honeymoon tourism. Plans also include a stadium and a conference centre. This being Spain, a bullring is envisaged, too.

One of the theme parks is to be called Spyland, where the world of James Bond will be the dominant motif. Backers plan to invite Daniel Craig and Eva Green, stars of Casino Royale, the latest Bond film, to bring a touch of glamour to the project.

“We intend to approach the owners of the Bond movies to see if we can use James Bond in Spyland,” said Didier Rancher, a French entrepreneur whose company is part of the consortium. He and others involved in it hoped that the development would become the largest casino resort in Europe, with at least 12m visitors a year.

For the moment the name of the casino city is simply Gran Escala, meaning large-scale.

The project will be formally unveiled next month. It sounds extraordinarily ambitious, to say the least: the casinos will cover the sweep of history, featuring cavemen croupiers, Roman centurions or courtiers from the time of France’s Louis XIV – not to mention agents of the KGB. (more…)