Daphne Sashin

Orlando Sentinel (Florida)

November 8, 2007 Thursday

Daphne Sashin, Sentinel Staff Writer

LOCAL & STATE; FLORIDA; Pg. B1

KISSIMMEE — The Forbidden City is in ruins. Weeds grow above the crumbling Great Wall of China.

Ceramic tiles once meticulously put together by Chinese craftsmen lie scattered on the ground like pieces of a child’s board game.

When the Splendid China theme park closed four years ago, many of its miniature artifacts found new homes in Central Florida backyards. But the outdoor museum’s other remnants, too much trouble or too expensive to remove, sit abandoned.

The owners are still deciding what to do with the 76-acre property and hundreds of acres next to it, but there are no plans to open a Chinese theme park. What’s left of the attraction will be torn down — in spring of 2008 at the earliest, said Chip Bryan of the Falcone Group, which bought Splendid China last year from the investors who purchased it in 2005.

While there is a fence around the park and security on site, its contents have made it attractive to trespassers. Since January, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Department has responded to 17 calls at the property, four of which were burglaries.

“As long as this stuff is out there, there’s more opportunities for vandals,” said John Adams, a Kissimmee planning consultant for the South Florida development company.

The $100 million theme park featured more than 60 replicas of China’s scenic and historic landmarks crafted with painstaking detail by skilled laborers. Owned by the Chinese government travel agency, it periodically drew protesters who complained the park was being used to perpetuate communist propaganda. In the end, Splendid China never had the appeal of Orlando’s other attractions and closed in December 2003 after just a decade.

“It really was a neat place,” Adams said. Likely, he said, the land will be used for some combination of homes, hotels and shops.

Adrian Freeman, a Clermont man who purchased at auction in 2003 the theme park’s main attraction — the half-mile model of the Great Wall of China, built to scale with millions of tiny bricks — had 90 days to remove the structure but was unable to do so.

A Lake Mary marketing consultant, who later purchased rights to the wall before ownership reverted back to the property owner, says he is still determined to save it.

Steven Phillips has spent the past few years trying to raise the $50,000 he estimates he would need to saw the wall in 200 pieces and haul it to a friend’s property. So far, he has generated a couple thousand dollars by selling tiny chunks of the wall on the Internet. He has spent about $20,000 trying to save it, including $140 per month to store the tops of several miniature houses he pried from the wall. Now he has a plan to raise more money by selling books he bought from the theme park.

Phillips, 54, estimates that 85 percent to 90 percent of the wall remains on the site off U.S. Highway 192. He said he has been trying to reach the developers since they bought the property for an undisclosed amount.

“I thought it was such a magnificent reproduction that I felt it should be saved,” Phillips said of the wall. “I’m not alone. A lot of people that have written me, that have seen it . . . say, ‘We thought it was incredible.’ ”

Jeffrey Scott of the Dr. Phillips area agreed. He said he loved Splendid China and dragged anyone there who came to visit. When the park closed, he bought four miniature pagodas.

Scott wrote to Osceola Commissioner Paul Owen in July to find out the status of the property.

“It would be terrible to have the Great Wall or other of the miniature buildings demolished and lost forever,” Scott wrote.

“I was always a great fan of the park and felt terrible when it closed.”

Adams acknowledged the wall was “gorgeous” when the park was open. But it’s not the real Great Wall of China, he said.

“It’s not an artifact. Some people get emotional about this, but it’s just a toy. And it is private property,” Adams said. “For someone to be emotionally attached to this is a little stunning to me.”