What the Legoland workforce will look like

BY ERIKA NORTON
GOSHEN — Legoland New York's developer says the theme park will create 1,300 ongoing jobs, plus 800 construction jobs over two years.
Local residents want to know what the workforce will look like at the seasonal park proposed for Goshen, said Phil Royle, Legoland New York Head of Project and Community Relations. Out of the 1,300 jobs expected, the developer, Merlin Entertainments, estimates that 500 will be seasonal workers, 300 part-time workers, and 500 full-time workers. The park will be open to the public from April to October.
“When you’re talking about operating a theme park year-'round, it’s very different than operating a seasonal park,” Royle said. “A seasonal park is actually a lot harder. You have this ramp up and ramp down of getting those people trained. But you still have to market the attraction.”
WorkforceThe annual payroll and benefits will be $46.5 million, according to an economic impact review the accounting firm KPMG did for the Orange County Industrial Development Agency, using information provided by Merlin.
The 500 full-time positions will fall into several categories: management and professional positions, including supervisors, senior technical and technical positions; administrative/office positions; and production positions, including area lead/shift supervisors, trainers and between positions.
The largest full-time category is the supervisory positions, with 120 employees. The largest compensation will go to 105 management positions, with pay range of $75,000 to $100,000 a year.
Full-time professional and administrative workers will be paid between $40,000 to $90,000. Production positions would pay $15 to $20 an hour. All full-timers will receive benefits, including health, dental and vision plans, life insurance, profit sharing, various discounts, and a 401K.
Part-time workers will get $15 an hour and seasonal workers $12.50 an hour, higher than the current state minimum wage of $9.70 (to increase to $11.10 by 2019).
Working hours can be flexible, Royle said. Working parents and retired senior citizens are employed at the Florida park, he said, and some residents at the Glen Arden Retirement Community, next to the park site, have already expressed interest in working at Legoland New York.
The Legoland park in California park has 2,263 employees, double the number projected for Legoland New York, Royle said. The California park gets double the number of visitors projected for New York.
The Florida park has 1,574 employees, about the same Goshen will have.
The California park sees about 3.5 million visitors annually, and the Florida park about 1.7 million. The New York park is projected to hit somewhere in the middle, with about 1.7 to 2.5 million visitors.
The Legoland Welcome Center in downtown Goshen has two employees, one from the Village of Florida and one from the Village of Warwick, Royle said. Many visitors sought information at the welcome center during the recent Mid-Hudson St. Patrick’s Parade through Goshen, he said.
What will the park look like in the winter?Winter at Legoland New York will be devoted to maintenance, said Royle. After the season ends there's a lot of work ripping down rides. The 250-bedroom hotel takes more maintenance than a typical hotel because it includes an entertainment space and each room has a lot of Lego-themed detail.
An aquarium to open three years after the park is established will need year-'round workers, he said.
“Running a theme park is truly like running a very small city,” Royle said. “We have absolutely everything there. Plumbers, carpenters, finance people, people who work in human resources, people who work in marketing, people who work in trade sales, people who work in PR. And you have everyone there to keep this huge machine operating.”
Opportunities for advancement?Chris Miele of the main Legoland New York opposition group, Concerned Citizens for the Hudson Valley, is unimpressed.
“In general, amusement park jobs are way down on the totem pole because the way jobs are weighted as for desirability would be room for advancement, room for promotion," he said. "A lot of these jobs are seasonal or part-time. Many of the jobs are minimum wage jobs, so there’s not a tremendous amount of room there for advancement. The top level salary is $100,000 for an executive salary, and that just doesn’t seem like a whole lot of compensation to me.”
But Maureen Halahan, president and CEO of the Orange County Partnership, said she likes the diverse portfolio of jobs projected at Legoland New York, from high-end, full-time jobs, to construction jobs, to jobs for young adults, and part-time work for teenagers who struggle to find jobs over the summer.
“The reason why I love their business model is because they train so many entry-level positions to go up and up to a new level, and they continue to bring other people in,” Halahan said. “There are many of the top-level executives that I’m working with right now from Merlin that literally started at entry-level positions, ride operators or in the administrative offices. So they really do develop their company of people from the inside they have a culture of that."
Royle has been with Merlin for 16 years. He started at the Legoland park near London, England, as a ride operator when he was 16 years old. He continued working there through college, moving up to his present position.
Build-outRoyle and Halahan both said a company of this caliber will attract other companies to the area, like hotels and restaurants, opening up even more local jobs.
Michael Sussman, the attorney for Concerned Citizens, disagrees. The project is intended to be self-contained, and Merlin is building numerous restaurants at the park to keep visitors on-site.
“The spinoff to other businesses will be minimal, and that is the company’s design, he said.
Miele said restaurants, gas stations, and hotels won’t be able to build around the park because there won’t be enough water, a problem Goshen has long struggled to overcome. She said she is also concerned that the Town of Goshen will become associated with Legoland since it is such a large development.
“The image of Goshen right now is this quaint, historic, kind of sleepy town,” Miele said. “It will soon become known as Legoland. It will lose its Goshen identity, and that does impact other businesses coming in.”
Sussman and Miele said Goshen needs to look out for itself and do its own cost-benefit analysis.
“I would have hoped that Goshen would have requested the advice of an economist and a planner to fully understand the implications of a development of this magnitude,” Miele said. “This is unprecedented in Goshen, and it requires things that haven't done before, and it requires things that are probably not within their normal realm of business.”