Funworld November 2008

As president of Jack Rouse Associates, Keith James spends about two thirds of his year traveling around the world in search of new projects for the Cincinnati-based design firm. James, now the outright owner of JRA, is one third of the creative triumvirate that’s been shepherding one of the industry’s leading themed entertainment companies; joining him are Chief Operating Officer Amy Merrell and the firm’s namesake, CEO Jack Rouse. Though the trio have known each other for decades, due to incredibly busy schedules it’s rare for all three to be in the same room—or even the same city, state, country, or hemisphere— at the same time.

Earlier this year, however, FUNWORLD managed to corral the group for a few hours in JRA’s beautiful new headquarters in downtown Cincinnati and listened as they did something they don’t get to domuch anymore: talk to one another face to face.

The (Abridged and Oral) History of JRA Rouse: “This all began on a motorcycle trip in 1970 when Keith and I did 15,000 miles in nine weeks, and one of the stops was Disneyland [in California]. As far as I know, that was the first theme park I’d ever been to.”
James: “Me, too.”
Rouse: “This was not a predestined plan for him, at all.”
Merrell: “A freak accident is what it was.”

The JRA trio got to know each other in the 1970s through Rouse, a professor at the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the time, James and Merrell his students. While Merrell was always interested in theater, James grew up thinking he would be an Olympic swimmer, but decided a career in the arts might be more fulfilling.
James: “Once I got into CCM to work in the theater, I never wanted to leave. Up until then, I’d never known what it was. It was fun. The people were fun and unusual—a lot different than the athletes I’d grown up with.”
Merrell: “I think people find what they want to do and love to do, hopefully sooner rather than later. [Theater school] has so many great disciplines in it, involving teamwork and deadlines and spontaneity. All the things you learn doing theater can be applied to any other job. I find it to be very valuable training.”

Prior to the 1972 debut of Kings Island by Taft BroadcastingCompany inMason, Ohio (just outside Cincinnati), Rouse was hired to produce all of the new park’s entertainment; he brought James with him on the job.

James: “I needed a summer job to pay for college … I probably still have the same job I did then, 37 years later…”
Merrell: “The longest summer job in history [laughs].”

In 1974, Rouse and James formed Kings Productions, the entertainment and facility design division of Taft; Rouse ended his teaching career in 1975. Merrell started working for Rouse in 1976 while still in college; she was hired full time following graduation. Then, in 1984, Rouse was one of the investors responsible for buying out Taft’s theme park business and forming Kings Entertainment Company.

Rouse: “[turning to Merrell] Like you said—you find what you like, and I guess I found popular culture and entertainment more appealing, perhaps, than grand opera.” James: “I’ve never escaped the business. I got into it and loved it.”

The three would soon go in two different directions, though, in 1987, when James left Kings Entertainment to help launch Universal Orlando, while Rouse and Merrell broke away to form Jack Rouse Associates (James rejoined themin 1992).Merrell says the reason they left was the need to do something new, rather than putting new faces on the same projects they’d been working on for the better part of a decade. Though they were leaving Kings Entertainment, the experiences they learned there would last a lifetime.


Rouse: “We all decided to change and get out fromunder the Taft umbrella in 1987—for totally different reasons and from totally different parts of the world. [But] that whole mind-set—a collaborative approach and the constant need to keep an audience happy—still infuses everything we do, even if we never do another theme park in our lives.”

‘Audience Advocate’ Keeping an audience happy—over the course of his long and storied career, Rouse has turned that goal into the term “audience advocate,” and used it as a foundational principle of his firm’s work. FUNWORLD asked the JRA leaders to define their hallmark tenet.

James: “Everything we do is related to the guest; it’s not confined to the thingwe’re presenting.We look at things from the eyes of the people who are going to pay the money to buy the ticket.Howdo you emotionally connectwith them?There will be an impact—something that changes them. Something that has them walking out saying, ‘Wow, I had no idea…’
“Many times people ultimately forget who the client is— the person who’s shelling out 20 bucks at the door. The family says: ‘We’re going to give you half of our day and 120 bucks. You owe us; we deserve this.’ That’s a continual education process—even for us, sometimes.”
Rouse: “The reason that works for us is because of the show business background. Theater without an audience is not worth doing.When you get into the sports, corporate, or not-for-profit areas, you have to continually remind them just because they’re infatuated by [the subject matter] doesn’t mean anyone else on the planet is gonna care. I’m surprised we haven’t lost more clients as we challenge any initial [meeting].”

When Rouse and James watched stage productions they’d directed looking for improvement, they didn’t view from the wings; they went to the back of the auditorium, to put themselves in the shoes of the person with the worst seat in the house. And they say they welcome suggestions from everyone working on the project to ensure the best show possible.

James: “Everybody understands here that all voices are equal. People may have different titles, but nobody has a corner on good ideas. We’re all from the theater business. [The audience] deserves as good a show tomorrow as they had today.”
Rouse: “Bingo! Standing ovations!”

James: “That’s how we grew up and were trained.We’re doing it not just for opening night, but the second night, the third night. It’s not over when the show opens—it’s just beginning.”
Rouse: “It’s not because we have social science backgrounds and we understand what makes people laugh or cry. That’s not it at all. It’s very intuitive. The show either works or it doesn’t.”

JRA finds this method of doing business particularly effective—and particularly challenging to push through, at first—in museums.

Merrell: “The audience has not been widely considered in a lot of museums for a long time—until just recently, anyway, when they need to get more people through the door. They’re turning to us to enliven that experience.”
Rouse: “[Connecting with guests] ismore emotional interpretation than factual interpretation. The cultural world, the artworld, is full of academics and has never really gotten that.”
Merrell: “They haven’t had to. That need hasn’t been there.”

FW: Jack, how did you avoid this pitfall when you were teaching?
Rouse: “I got the hell out of it! I grew up teaching in the late ’60s, so I learned a long time ago if you were gonna teach anybody anything, you better keep them awake first. Academia has discovered only recently it’s not about the content fromthe professor; it’s about the imparting of that information to the audience. You better fire ’em up and get ’em to listen.”
James: “Jack’s the only professor I ever had who had a standing-room-only class at 8 a.m. That doesn’t happen. It was just different, and we were the audience then.”

Theme Park People Doing … Sports?
Though JRA started in the theme park business, much of what the firmdoes now goes way, way outside that box, be itmuseums, science centers, or, perhapsmost unusual, sports arenas. The group’s first sports-related project came in 1996 with the refurbishment of Atlanta’s Turner Field. Since then, withMerrell taking the lead in this area, JRA has worked on more than a dozen sports-related projects, including the 2003 redesign of the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame at the revered Lambeau Field inWisconsin.

Rouse: “Very early on, and I think we were in the forefront of this, we realized what we do in theme parks has application in history museums, science museums, kids museums, sports facilities, you name it.”
Merrell: “I’m not aligned with any one sport, so I go into each of these projects with the same interest equally. I don’t follow any of them religiously, so it’s like learning about Coca-Cola or Ferrari. It’s a learning experience for all of us.”

FW: Certainly, though, what you do is a lot more than just hanging jerseys on a wall …
Rouse: “The thirst for knowledge is what’s enabled us to reach out—why is Lambeau a shrine?”
Merrell: “We all got very interested in trying to uncover this mystique of the Packers.”
Rouse: “I don’t think that ‘truth’ ever surfaces as an attraction, but it sure makes the attraction better. The more the writers and designers understand the core of it, the better it’s going to be reflected and it won’t come off superficially.”
For the Packers’ hall of fame, JRA divided the team’s history into chapters to provide multiple entry points for visitors. The idea for those chapters came directly from JRA’s work in theme parks; Rouse says they could be seen as different themed lands.

Merrell: “We always try to present a number of content levels for your interest.We try to give them[the information] at whatever comfort level they have.”
James: “If somebody wants to follow up on it and get really deep, they can do it from home on the Internet.”

Reading the Market— and Finding New Ones
In March, Rouse was honored with the Themed Entertainment Association’s THEA Lifetime Achievement Award, and one can’t earn such an accolade without knowing how to read shifting market trends. FUNWORLD asked Rouse and his team how they keep their fingers on the pulse of the industry, and what that pulse is telling them right now.
Rouse: “We’re driven by themarket.Had we not believed that, we wouldn’t be doing sports and children’s museums. It’s being savvy enough to what’s going on in the global consumer market out there that’s going to help the next generation see where this goes. You can never predict market needs—if you could, the stock market would never go down. You can’t predict leisure time needs, either, but the firms have to be nimble enough to swim through those waters.
“When the theme park industry developed, it was generally one person in the home working and the other stayed home with the kids. Today it’s difficult to find a family where both [parents] don’t work, so time becomes precious. Consequently, the need for the family to do things together whenever possible is terribly important.”
James: “Time’s the thing we have the least of, but what we value most. The value we put on time is what’s dictating the direction of all this stuff. I love to do things with my wife and daughters. It might be an hour and a half, but it’s an important hour and a half—it’s something we’ll talk about the next time we’re together.”
Rouse: “You don’t want to waste it.”
James: “Exactly. I have no time to do anything.”
Rouse: “One of the true gauges of success for anything is not the two hours you were there; it’s what you talk about a day, a week, a month later around the dinner table. These things serve as a touch point for family discussions. Let’s face it: Everybody’s on their own iPod, their own computer, their own everything else. The shared experience for the stuff we do is based on that exact premise. It’s what you talk about. Memories worth talking about—that’s the value of the institution.
“What are those distinguishing factors? That’s going to be the next wave. There’s not going to be asmuch of that greenfield development, because nobody can afford it. It’s going to be integrated stuff—it has to be, in this country, particularly.”

Rouse & Co. agree “mixed-use” developments are driving the market right now, especially in the Middle East.

Rouse: “It’s the role arts and cultural institutions are starting to find. They’re being used to leverage other development opportunities.”
James: “The part that our industry is playing is what differentiates this project from that project.”

China, India, and the Middle East James spends about two thirds of the year traveling around the globe investigating new prospects for JRA. Two of the firm’s most prominent current projects include Ferrari Theme Park in Abu Dhabi, and Restless Planet, one of the signature attractions planned for Dubailand. FUNWORLD asked James and his colleagues to assess the Asian and Middle East markets.

Rouse: “One of the common mistakes people make is lumping China, India, and theMiddle East together. China and India are established countries…that is not true in the Middle East.”
James: “In my opinion, they are not alike at all. They are booming at the same time—the similarity stops there. That’s an issue of timing, not because they’re alike.
“China and India are long-term sustainable markets. They’re so big, they don’t need to grow to remain the biggest in the world. There are so many cities in those two countries that are far bigger than our biggest [in the U.S.], which offers a tremendous opportunity for the entertainment, cultural, and retail and food businesses. They’re just coming into their own.”

FW: How is doing business in Asia different from working in North America?
James: “You have to go in with your eyes open and realizing that it’s different. Americans tend to not be very good at recognizing that there are other ways of doing things. So if you can get over that step…”
Rouse: “You have to get over that step, because it ain’t ‘America’ exported. That doesn’t work anymore. That’s a ticket to extinction.”
James: “I’ve been to China 50, a hundred times, and the Middle East probably just as much, and I still don’t understand it. But as long as I walk in knowing that, it’s OK.”
Rouse: “That’s different from walking in thinking you have answers.”

FW: So what about the Middle East? How is that market different from Asia?
James: “The United Arab Emirates is considerably younger than I am. They’re not merely building theme parks and attractions, they’re building a country to last for multiple generations. That makes the perspective difficult for us to look at.We have no frame of reference on the business logic. The big attractions become the iconic aspects of those big real estate developments and, in turn, increase their value. The parks themselves will do fine over time, but in the short term, they’re primarily to lend the iconic nature [to the real estate]—at least that’s the way it appears to me. It’s an entirely different perspective for those of us who grew up in this business.”
Rouse: “There’s no ROI here.”

FW: If there’s no ROI, how does that affect the huge slate of proposed theme parks in the region?
James: “They have sensational plans to do sensational projects, but the infrastructure in building a country is not able to keep up. Getting trained staff is going to be a nightmare, because people’s expectations are going to be high. It’s a boom, and a lot of people—including us—are keeping quite busy over there. I don’t know how many of the projects can actually be supported, and I’m not sure how many of the projects are actually going to be built—or built on time. There’s an awful lot of talk, but they will have to sort themselves out. They’ll be sensational—but are there going to be enough people? In the short term, from a business standpoint I think there will be challenges. Long term, I think they’ll be fine.”

FW: Do you foresee the UAE overtaking Orlando as the unofficial “Theme Park Capital of the World”?

James: “It’s going to be a long, long time before Orlando is not the capital [of the industry]. Orlando has the critical mass, the population, the tourist population, and 40 years of reputation. That’s an exquisite place to go to experience the things we do. That’s not going to change. The UAE is going to do extremely well, but Orlando will be king for a long, long time.

“They’re very aggressive [in the Middle East], and they’re building the world’s most spectacular stuff. But the tourism population, to me, doesn’t seem big enough to support all the things they’re doing, purely from a ticket-sales standpoint. Short term, there may be some fairly significant challenges, just because there aren’t enough guests. There are going to be mistakes made, and everybody makes mistakes— that’s how we learn.”
Rouse: “These will just be a little more expensive [laughs].”

WorkingTogether— From All Around the World
In June, JRA announced James’ purchase of Rouse’s and Merrell’s shares to become the firm’s sole owner. James says the move was “purely a business transaction”—no titles changed, and the three of themcontinue on in their well-defined roles. James focuses on business development, recruiting new projects—especially outside the United States; Merrell is on the ground, turning those projects into realities; and Rouse remains heavily involved in the firm’s creative process (including a large amount of writing), while also spending time on municipal efforts in Cincinnati. Despite hardly ever being in the same place at the same time, they are of one mind when it comes to the future of their company.

FW: How do the three of you work together when it’s so difficult just to get everyone in the same room at the same time?
Rouse: “Trust and respect.”
James: “We know one another; we can finish one another’s sentences.”

FW: And where do you see your company going in the future?
James: “If I can possibly fly more, I probably will be. [laughs].”
Rouse: “Clearly, we couldn’t have begun to imagine 20 or 30 years ago we’d be working in sports—what does that have to do with theme parks? I sure wouldn’t project where the next one’s gonna be.”
Merrell: “The criteria for us is to continue to grow as a company and continue tomake the employment satisfactory and worthwhile for everybody here. We continue to want projects we haven’t done before, that will challenge us intellectually and creatively. We’ve all agreed on that. We don’t want to keep doing the same thing.”

Which, of course, is why they went out on their own in the first place.