Universal Parks & Resorts has acquired land along the Dallas North Tollway in Frisco and plans to build a family-focused theme park with rides, shows and a 300-room hotel.

Frisco city officials, business leaders and tourism representatives joined Universal executives to announce plans Wednesday for the theme park to be built in the Fields development.

Mark Woodbury, chairman and CEO of Universal Parks & Resorts, said the Frisco resort will include a 300-room hotel and be a one- to two-day experience for its guests.

"We think it represents a Universal park unlike any other in the world, and we're wildly excited about the potential of bringing that here," Woodbury said. "With the help of the mayor and the city and with the community, it's our dream to see this come forward, and we look forward to the opportunity of sharing opening day with all of you.”

Page Thompson, president of New Ventures for Universal Parks & Resorts, said the park will have family friendly attractions and “interactive playful and shows.”

The Frisco theme park, on 97 acres, will be a smaller version of Universal Studios’ parks in Orlando and Los Angeles.

“That gives us plenty of room to build a park, this themed hotel featuring Universal characters, parking areas, and still have lots of room for a really lush landscape buffer, as well as lots of space for a thoughtful exit and entrance plan,” Thompson said. "It's a scale appropriate for our young family audience and even though it may be smaller in terms of acreage than our other parks, the quality of it will be worthy of the Universal name.”

Universal, which is a unit of Comcast NBCUniversal, operates five theme parks and resorts around the world, nine hotels and 10,000 hotel rooms, Woodbury said.

“We're known for creating one-of-a-kind, innovative, interactive experiences for the whole family,” Woodbury said. “We're also known for being a company that really treasures its involvement in the communities in which it participates and operates.”

“It’s a tremendous place to grow opportunity, to create jobs, to create opportunities for people,” he added. “That's what we hope to do in Frisco.”

Officials did not announce a construction timeline or an expected opening date. Universal still has to get certain approvals to move the project forward.

The addition of an amusement park at the massive Fields property was expected to be discussed at a meeting tonight by city officials, a person familiar with the plans told the Dallas Business Journal Tuesday evening.

The only item on the special meeting's agenda was listed as an update on the Fields development. 

Attracting a major amusement park has long been a goal of Frisco city leaders. The latest advancement toward that goal, including the discussion of a theme park being part of the Fields development, which was first reported Tuesday.

The potential site was acquired by a newly organized Delaware-based shell company, FTNV Corp., according to a report from The Dallas Morning News.

The land being sold for the Frisco theme park is in the Fields development, a more than 2,500-acre project under construction on the toll road that will have over 10,000 homes. It also includes the recently opened headquarters of the PGA of America and two championship golf courses, as well as Omni’s new $520 million hotel and resort, which is scheduled to open this Spring.

The property was formerly a sprawling ranch, and the development now underway is one of the largest of its kind in the state.

Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney said at the announcement that Universal Studio’s executives searched the world before selecting the site in North Texas.

“They were looking not just any place in the country, but some place in the world, to launch this, whether it’s going to be in the United States or another country, and they decided that North Texas may be a good fit,” Cheney said.

"Frisco is known for being family friendly,” he said. “It's known for being innovative, being first and leaders in everything. We've been named the No. 1 place to raise a family, the No. 1 place to raise an athlete, to host a business, and the No. 1 place in America is to live, and here in Frisco, we play to win."

The park will include four or five different themed lands, and one of the next steps for Universal will be to select which themes to feature in Frisco, Cheney said.

"Once these projects are announced, they start getting all kinds of feedback coming from all directions on what themes should be in their park,” Cheney said. “I'm going to be advocating for Mario Brothers, that's kind of my favorite, and Minions. So if you have a favorite — Kung Fu Panda, Puss in Boots, whatever your favorite is — they're all ears here today." 

Fast-growing Frisco has become known for using public-private partnerships to make big projects happen in the city. The Omni PGA Frisco Hotel and Resort is one example. The Star, the $1.5 billion mixed-use development built around the world headquarters and practice facilities of the Dallas Cowboys, is another.

Both partnerships involve tax breaks and other incentives from the city of Frisco and the Frisco Independent School District in exchange for the jobs, prestige and economic impact the projects bring to town.