Dive Brief:

• A Florida developer has submitted plans for a $4 billion, 618-acre, Disney-style theme park just one hour south of Phoenix, according to the Phoenix Business Journal.
• The Dreamport Villages complex in Casa Grande, AZ, would feature an extreme sports park, an indoor water park, retail space and a resort. If the project comes to fruition, it would be the first large-scale theme park in Arizona.
• The entire parcel is 1,500 acres, and developer Block Sports Company said several hundreds of acres would be set aside to build commercial space, a residential development and even a school, KTAR News reported. The first amusement-park phase would take an estimated 10 years to complete.

Dive Insight:

Miami-Dade could also be getting its own retail-focused amusement park, which would directly challenge Orlando's Disney World for business. The $3 billion American Dream development — modeled after the Mall of America in Minneapolis — would be built along the busy Florida Turnpike and feature more than 6 million square feet of commercial space, 2,000 hotel rooms, 3.5 million square feet of retail and more than 1 million square feet of entertainment venues and spaces.

The project has a lengthy review process ahead of it, but, if approved, it could generate as many as 32,000 construction jobs and 14,500 permanent ones, as well as provide an economic boon to the county to the tune of $230 million. However, critics have argued that the project will put even more pressure on county emergency services and add to the traffic jams on surrounding roads.

In its 2017 Outlook report, Dodge Data & Analytics forecast a 13% increase in starts in the amusement and recreational building sector this year, primarily driven by the construction of new sports venues.