The Somogy County town has designated a 40 hectare area, partly owned by the municipality and party by private owners, for the project. “We are lobbying that the project be included in the second national development plan as a large investment project, and we receive significant EU funds,” Mayor Emőke Bihari Asbóth said. She added that Minister of Regional Development István Kolber, who descends from Somogy County, has promised the town state support.

Bihari said the project will greatly contribute to reduce the high unemployment rate in the region, currently at 20 %, because the workshops making the folk tale figures will be mostly staffed from among currently unemployed people. In the next few years 18 localities in Somogy County will be decorated with folk tale scenes and the 270-hectare man-made lake near Gyékényes will be turned into the “Seven Seas.”

The folk tale park in Csurgó is planned to include an open-air theater, a movie theater, a library, an exhibition hall and will be populated by folk tale heroes. One of Hungary’s richest men offered to finance the project entirely, but the municipality refused his offer, because “it concentrated mostly on future profit,” Bihari said, adding that the town did not wish to have rollercoasters in a folk tale park.