American cartoon company Nickelodeon has agreed a deal to open a new branded theme park just outside London, in its first tie-up with a UK shopping centre.
The new centre will be attached to FTSE 100 company Intu’s Lakeside shopping centre in West Thurrock and will open in 2018. It will contain rides and activities based on some of Nickelodeon’s most popular characters, such as Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants.
Spread across a one-acre site, the theme park is expected to bring thousands more people to Intu’s shopping centre each year.
Intu’s development director Martin Breeden said: “The strength of Nickelodeon is the variety of brands it has. It means it can adapt and evolve the park as time goes on.
“This will give people another reason to come to the centre, and we think will bring people in from further away.”
The move is part of a wider initiative between Nickelodeon’s parent company Viacom, which also owns Channel 5 and MTV, and Spanish leisure park operator Parques Reunidos to roll out Nickelodeon’s brand across Europe.
The Intu Lakeside site will take Nickelodeon’s presence in Europe to three parks: it already has a theme park at Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach, as well as a presence at Movie Park in Bottrop, Germany. It briefly had a number of rides at Alton Towers in the 1990s, before they were closed.
This is its first shopping centre destination in the UK, although not its first in the world. In 2008 it opened in Mall of America in Minnesota, the second largest shopping centre in the United States.
The company’s television programmes are broadcast across the world, and it also owns a number of special events, books and feature films.
Gerald Raines, senior vice president of global recreation for Viacom, said that "family entertainment centres" are an important element of Nickelodeon’s recreation strategy.
“Our goal at Nickelodeon is to be everywhere kids are, and we’re excited to diversify our portfolio,” he added.
