Need help - Splendid China ownership

Weird_Inside

Weird_Inside

New Member
Original Poster
I have a question and I'd like to pick your collective brains for just a second.

I remember a site linked here not too long ago which showed who owned what property in the Orlando area but I can't seem to find it.

I need to find out the name and contact information of the owners/bank of Splendid China since everyone has gone back to... well, China.

Any help with this would be MUCH appreciated. Please, please, please help!

Thanks!
 
mkt

mkt

When a paradise is lost go straight to Disney™
Premium Member
possibly the osceola county property appraiser
 
Woody13

Woody13

New Member
Good Idea Rob!

<TABLE class=tblResults cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=middle width="50%"><TABLE class=tblResults cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=tblResultsHdr colSpan=2>Owner Information</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt colSpan=2>

</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Owner Name</TD><TD class=mainTxt>HWANGS INTERNATIONAL INC </TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Mailing Address</TD><TD><TABLE class=tblResults cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=mainTxt></TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>% ROGER SCHWENKE </TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>3000 SPLENDID CHINA BLVD </TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>KISSIMMEE , FL 34747 - </TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Physical Address</TD><TD class=mainTxt>3000 FLA SPLEN CHINA BLVD </TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Tax District</TD><TD class=mainTxt>300</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Description</TD><TD class=mainTxt>TOURIST ATTRACT-IMP </TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Legal</TD><TD><TABLE class=tblResults cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=200 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=mainTxt>FLORIDA SPLENDID CHINA PB 7 PG 152 LOT 1</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
http://ira.property-appraiser.org/ira/PASE/presentation/Osceola/search.asp

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TD vAlign=top align=middle width="50%"><TABLE class=tblResults cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=tblResultsHdr colSpan=2>Current Values</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt colSpan=2>Current Value represents working appraised values as of 10/31/2004 12:05:00 AM, which are subject to change prior to certification</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Land</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$5,879,700.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>AG</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$0.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Extra Features</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$736,900.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Buildings</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$1,384,300.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Appraised (Just)</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$8,000,900.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Assessed*</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$8,620,500.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Exempt</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$0.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt>Taxable</TD><TD class=mainTxt>$8,620,500.00</TD></TR><TR><TD class=mainTxt colSpan=2>* Assessed Values Reflect Adjustments for Agricultural Classification and/or the Save Our Homes Cap</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
 
Weird_Inside

Weird_Inside

New Member
Original Poster
AWESOME!!!

Thank you sooo much! So if I were to need to get ahole of this Roger Schwenke, how would I go about doing so. The last I heard, everyone had emptied out of there....
 
Woody13

Woody13

New Member
Send him an email, fax or give him a phone call:

Weird_Inside said:
AWESOME!!!

Thank you sooo much! So if I were to need to get ahole of this Roger Schwenke, how would I go about doing so. The last I heard, everyone had emptied out of there....
Click to expand...

<!-- end section title--><!--bio photo--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=110 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=10 rowSpan=2>
spacer.gif
</TD><TD> </TD></TR><TR><TD class=body>http://www.carltonfields.com/files/...o326/165/SchwenkeRogerWebBioTemplatePaper.pdf javascript:void(0); http://www.carltonfields.com/attorneys/vcard.aspx?AttorneyID=000000795003 </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--end bio photo-->Roger D. Schwenke
Shareholder, Tampa
<SCRIPT language=javascript>PrintEmail('rschwenke', 'carltonfields.com'); </SCRIPT>rschwenke@carltonfields.com
ph : 813.229.4152
fax : 813.229.4133

Practice Experience
  • Roger Schwenke practices in the areas of environmental, land use, real estate and secured financing law.
  • He has served as both a mediator and arbitrator.
Education
  • University of Florida College of Law (J.D., with honors, 1969)
    Order of the Coif
  • Ohio State University (B.A., 1966)
Court Admissions
  • Florida
  • U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida
Other Admissions
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and 11th Circuit
Selected Professional and Civic Activities
  • Former Chair, Firm's Real Estate, Environmental, and Land Use Department
  • American Bar Association (Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section)
    Former member, Sections Governing Council and Environmental Group
    Former member, ABA Standing Committee on Environmental Law
    ABA Advisor, Uniform Law Commissioners Drafting Committee on Uniform Environmental Covenants Act
  • The Florida Bar
    Past Chairman, Environmental and Land Use Law Section
    Past Executive Council Member, Real Property Section
  • Hillsborough County Bar Association
  • Fellow, American Bar Foundation
  • American College of Real Estate Lawyers
    Fellow and Former member, Board of Governors
    Former Chair, Committee on Environmental and Land Use Law
    Former Chair, Legislation Committee
  • Presiding Judge, Episcopal Church, Ecclesiastical Trial Court, Diocese of Southwest Florida
Professional Recognition
  • Who's Who in America
  • Who's Who in American Law
  • The Best Lawyers in America
  • An International Who's Who of Real Estate Lawyers
Practices & Industries
http://www.carltonfields.com/attorneys/bio.aspx?SectionID=5&bioid=000000795003
 
Weird_Inside

Weird_Inside

New Member
Original Poster
OH WOW!!! YOU ARE AMAZING!!

I hate to sound like such a spaz over something so minor, but really, it isn't and this helps a bunch! Thanks a million!
 
Woody13

Woody13

New Member
Weird_Inside said:
OH WOW!!! YOU ARE AMAZING!!

I hate to sound like such a spaz over something so minor, but really, it isn't and this helps a bunch! Thanks a million!
Click to expand...
You're welcome. Spaz on brother, spaz on.:lookaroun
 
Woody13

Woody13

New Member
Bidding farewell to Splendid China

Park's small wonders are on auction block

By Willoughby Mariano
Sentinel Staff Writer

December 6, 2004

KISSIMMEE -- This shuttered theme park's weary façade tells the story of its final days. What remains of Splendid China soon will be going, going, gone.

Cracks snake through the curving tile roofs. Vermilion scales on the twin-dragon marquee are fading to gray.

Now each bonsai, koi fish and plump stone Buddha is heading for the great American funeral for departed business: a bargain-basement auction late this week.

Owners estimated 3 million people would visit Splendid China each year when it opened in 1993. They brought a pageant of Chinese acrobats, lion tamers and dancers to delight them.

Attendance fell short of those expectations, and the theme park closed last December.

Lakeland auctioneer Randy Kincaid, an ardent capitalist with a long Florida drawl, is ferrying its remains to its free-market afterlife.

"I am the undertaker of businesses," Kincaid, 63, joked.

By Saturday, the auction's final day, the park's likeness of Tibet's great Potala Palace, burial place of past Dalai Lamas, could find new life as a feature in a backyard aquatic garden, the auctioneer said. A half-mile model of the Great Wall of China could become the newest attraction of a miniature-golf course.

"If it goes, I'll be the first auctioneer to ever sell the Great Wall of China," he laughed.

Kincaid knows much more about auctioneering than he does about China and regrets he never visited the park while it was open. It is filled with wonders, he proclaimed as he unsheathed a 3-foot sword he found in the gift shop.

"This is the most exiting auction I've ever worked on," he said.

Kincaid relies on guidance from Imperial Tombs of China, a book he also found in the gift shop, and the help of Ho Tran, one of the park's few remaining employees.

Tran, 50, who escaped his native Cambodia after the Vietnam War, came to tend the park's bonsai in 1992. Now he's the supervisor of an empty park.

The shy man keeps a plastic soup container filled with the park's many keys, and he feeds about 100 oversized goldfish, or koi, that remain in its Suzhou Gardens.

They will be sold, too, Kincaid noted as Tran chauffeured him and a pair of visitors through Splendid China's 76 weedy acres on a golf cart.

It took the skill of 120 Chinese artisans to transform this former Osceola orange grove into an outdoor museum with an empire of miniatures. Chinese investors, including a travel-services company owned by the communist government, spent $100 million to open the park.

Kincaid is eager to learn about Chinese culture and showed off his new knowledge as the cart puttered past a nearly 20-foot-tall statue of Guanyin, Buddhism's goddess of mercy, sitting cross-legged on a base of sleek white marble. Her many bronze arms and eyes glinted in the morning sun.

"She has all the eyes to watch over her people and all the arms to protect them," Kincaid announced. "See? I'm learning, Ho," he laughed and tapped Tran's shoulder, signaling him to drive on.

Craftsmen used tools modeled after those made 600 years ago to carve each dovetail joint in the park's wood-framed canopies; they also made the miniature empire's subjects, Kincaid said. Crowds of 4-inch ceramic religious teachers and laborers huddle in the temples and villages.

Park founders generated controversy as well. Splendid China includes a version of the holy Potala Palace in Tibet, where past Dalai Lamas are buried.

Activists protested, saying China unjustly occupies Tibet. The Chinese army took it over after 1949, and its government remains in exile.

Other troubles have befallen the park since its closing.

Last month, teenage vandals sacked a doll-sized version of the Summer Palace, where Chinese emperors spent hot summer months. Tran chased one away, but he was too late. They had crushed the roof.

Bonsai trees are ragged with neglect. Oaks toppled by the hurricanes lie upturned in the gardens. Still, the park's sights can be breathtaking.

Terra-cotta warriors remain at attention. A 30-foot stone copy of a 23-story monument to Sakyamuni, who founded Buddhism, still pays tribute to the religion.

"In fact, you too can become a Buddha," a nearby sign reads.

It may all go for as little as $200,000, Kincaid said.

"I really haven't figured out who will buy a lot of these things," Kincaid said.

For instance, there is a forest of fiberglass rocks that rises a dozen feet in the air and a room full of costumes that Tran said represent each of China's 56 minority groups. An oil landscape as wide and as tall as a movie screen hangs as a stage backdrop in a theater.

Yet even in these motley bits and pieces, Kincaid sees opportunities for profit.

Paving stones can be moved to a backyard patio. A clever laborer can pry off a hand-carved lion affixed to the front entrance.

Even the giant oil painting has potential.

"A person that's smart could use this to wallpaper a room," Kincaid said.

From a wooden bridge in Suzhou Garden, Tran tossed food to koi nearly 2 feet long. Their scales flashed white and gold. Their mouths opened like bowls.

Tran is slight, not much taller than 5 feet, and stooped as he fed his charges. His face crumpled when asked whether he would miss the park.

Tran did not reply. Kincaid whispered Tran's answer for him.

"Yeah, I think he's going to miss the place," he said.

This auction business can be unkind, Kincaid said.

"I get mixed feelings and emotions. I see all the care and regard of workers and people and years of work get -- well -- somewhat destroyed.

"Then on the other hand, you have to look at what our economy wants. Our economy didn't want this park, and it closed. That's the American way.

"It's like this -- it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it."

Kincaid went off to hang more yellow tags on auction lots. Tran walked in the opposite direction.

Keys still in hand, Tran took a long stroll down a curving road that leads out of the park. He passed the parking lot, overgrown hedges and a sign that still reads, "Welcome to China."

At the end was a 50-foot archway that marks the park's entrance. He lifted a metal gate and closed the entrance.

Willoughby Mariano can be reached at wmariano@orlandosentinel.com or 407-931-5944.

<!-- <jmpto></jmpto><jmpto></jmpto><jmphed1></jmphed1>



George Skene</photog>/Orlando Sentinel</pcr1>

photos by

george skene</photog>/orlando sentinel</pcr2> Randy Kincaid walks along a miniature replica of the Great Wall of China recently at the now-defunct Splendid China theme park in Kissimmee. Everything at the park is going to auction.<hed>Bidding farewell to Splendid China </hed><dek>Park's small wonders are on auction block </dek><intro>FROM GOLDFISH TO THE GREAT WALL,

A KISSIMMEE ATTRACTION IS UP FOR SALE. </intro> --><CITE>Copyright © 2004, Orlando Sentinel</CITE>

<CITE>http://kincaid.com/china/orlandosentinelarticle.htm</CITE>

 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom