"People come to us because of our reputation," says Steve Rhys, Senior Vice President at Forrec. "Ninety percent of our work is built offshore. With all of our experience in planning and design, we know the issues our clients face no matter where the project is built."

Photo: Aqua Dunya in Dubailand is one of a dozen projects Forrec is currently designing for clients around the world.

Started as a landscape design company in the late 1950s, Forrec moved into its current niche by designing the La Ronde amusement park and several pavilions for Expo 67 in Montreal. That work led to the company's first full-fledged theme park at Canada's Wonderland in the late 1970s, followed by projects at the West Edmonton Mall and Woodbine Centre north of Toronto.

"We were doing a lot of design/build work, where we aligned with a contractor," says Rhys. "In the early 1980s, we saw a real opportunity for this business. People would hear about our work and contact us to see if we thought their idea would fly. We walk them through the process, and gather information on feasibility and market potential. We still do that, and now also get a lot of work from industry leaders like Paramount, Disney, and Universal, where they are very experienced and have a clear idea of what they want."

Located in Toronto's Liberty Village district, Forrec now has a team of over 100 professional designers with decades of experience in all facets of the themed attractions business, including expertise in theme, urban, architectural, landscape and interior design.

Forrec is currently working on three theme parks in Dubai. The company's ability to take a "blue sky" concept and make it reality is best illustrated by two projects there.

"One project is a theme park based on Formula One auto racing," says Rhys. "The CEO of Formula One had an idea that their brand could be developed as a theme park. He saw us at a trade show, and hired us to develop the content. We developed characters, conceived a roller coaster that illustrates the history of Formula One racing, and came up with designs for the race cars of the future. Now they will have content based on their brand."

Forrec is also working on Aqua Dunya ("water and sand"), a 75-hectare water-based theme park now under construction in Dubailand, billed to become the world's largest entertainment complex. Aqua Dunya started as a simple (and familiar) water slide park. As is often the case, the client's initial concept was expanded to become a unique destination, which in this case is the "Desert Pearl", a 400 room hotel fashioned as a 19th century ship.

"We advised them to build a bigger project on the same theme," says Rhys. "We stayed with the water park idea but added new water-based rides, a roller coaster, driving vehicles, and three beautiful beaches. Eventually, there will be another luxury hotel, 770 vacation apartments and about 3,000 residential units."

As Rhys points out, theme parks don't stand alone in today's tourism and recreation industry. If developers are to stimulate economic growth, theme parks become part of a mixed bag that includes golf courses, second homes, and resort hotels. With government policy aimed at boosting tourist visits to Niagara Falls levels by 2010, Dubai is a hot market for new development.

"We've learned that it's best for us to align ourselves with other Canadian firms and take advantage of government programs to put together a complete package for offshore customers," says Rhys. "We're partnering with NORR Limited on the Universal Studios theme park in Dubai, and with ZAS Architects on the Aqua Dunya project. And the province of Ontario has good representation in the region with (International Marketing Consultant) Al Hinton. He's helped us on several occasions with local legal and accounting issues, and he's always promoting us in the region. It's always good to have endorsement from government, especially in the Middle East markets."

Website: www.forrec.com