Geauga Lake coasters may be auctioned off

The City of Aurora should bid on the two newer wood coasters and whatever else is for sale in the park.

The Senator who wrote Dick K. a letter requesting the Big Dipper to be saved should help secure State or Federal assests for historic preservation to use for bidding on the Dipper which in turn should be donated to Aurora under contingency of operation and preservation.

Once they've secured ownership of the rides, Aurora can use emminent domain to redevelop the blighted property, which contains their newly purchased assets, into a new amusement park. All they need to do is declare the remaining eyesore (shuttered gate area of the real Geuga Lake park) as a redevelopment zone - it's perfectly legal and used as a tool by municipalities throughout the nation to stimulate economic development.

All three coasters and the park were fantastic - the only problem with the place was the last owner bought it to drive it into the ground to eliminate competition for it's more expensive nearby property.

Unfortunately, what you say really can't happen in the compressed timeframe. Reguardless of what the current owners did and did not do, its their property.

CF has paid the taxes, paid the help, and paid the bills. No way there to step in for current fiscal business.The rides are 'operational', and ready to go. No condeming can happen. The entire property is maintained. There is no blight. The only real guilt that CF has done is eliminating jobs, which will be equated by new housing. Construction jobs are better than ride ops. On paper.

Aurora, if not Solon, may or may not have had an agreement with Six Flags to do this or that when they agreed to move the road, but that would have been swept under the rug by now. Back to Aurora. They could have offered tax incentives, as the townships could have down, to at least show they wanted kids working, and local vendors to have business. None of that matters to CF.

What will happen is this: Come next summer, from the Streetsboro exit off the turnpike to Rt43 to Portage Road or where ever the Sea World parking lot is, there will be lots of less traffic. Everyone will feel it, from Perkins to Bob Evans to Holiday Inn to Bang Bang Fireworks. Once the tourism boards realize most of the group business went to Waldameer, Kennywood, and Conneaut Lake Park, which has some intersted parties doing the math as you read this, they will realize they got the screw.

Prepare for the knee-jerk reaction, which will include a hefty increase of the amusement tax on waterpark admission to 'Wildwater Kingdom', since the name Geauga Lake will be dropped for 2009. By 2011 or 2012, wave goodbye. All started by Busch, then on and on.

Once nice Aurora, with plenty of jobs for the neighborhood kids, could in theory look like the Euclid Beach area. Ugh.*** This post was edited by Agent Johnson 3/28/2008 8:53:42 PM ***
*** This post was edited by Agent Johnson 3/28/2008 8:55:09 PM ***

It's actually not too late and the property does not need to be blighted - it's using eminant domain similar to the way a County or DOT can come into your area and has the legal right to toss you out in the name of a new roadway, as long as you are paid the fair assessment value of your property - towns in NJ and OH have taken over some nice-looking, still occupied middle class residential neighborhoods in the name of declaring them redevelopment zones. It's not fair, but it's a tool that has been used and abused by municipalities and higher courts have upheld their rights in both cases in those States. Coasters with no trains are not operational - it's similar to the way a town can take an abandoned department store which has no economic activity left and use eminant domain to redevelop the lot. All it takes is a zoning change to redevelopment by the zoning board and subsequent adoption of a resolution by the City council - they can wrap that up easily before the auction.

If they are concerned about the drop in tourism and loss of their beloved 120-year old local park, they should be coniving this strategy already. The key is to having enough funds to outbid others on the coasters, but I think only the Villian will be bid competatively - chances are slim anyone will bid on the other two woodies during a recession, except for maybe the mechanical parts. No one has come forward to purchase the Villian yet because they know a bargain auction was going to be the next logical step and they can get it for 1/3 the asking price - look how cheap the stuff at Wyandott Lake went for. Once they own the coasters they will likely be given a decent amount of time to claim it from the property, so they'll have a little more time to get the property taken over. All they need to do from there is find someone to completely manage the place or call West Chester County to gets some tips on running an amusment park with coasters. They'll have plenty of seasonal jobs back and can focus on turning the park back into a great local traditional park (and competing with GLWW Kingdom to boot!)

Again, they have to have a plan, and I don't think one exists. CF has every right to get top dollar for the land. If was simply closing the Aurora Farms Outlets for example, it would be a different ballgame.

While jobs are lost to be replaced by housing, development would go on. There is nothing bad here. Its a business decision. Yes, its a decision that is hurting a lot of emotions, including mine. But, as an industry person, this is what happens.

CF is not going to allow that to happen without a fight, and I would think it is too late for anyone to do that. Entire Crawford County is spinning now on what to do to Conneaut Lake Park, an entire county. For GL to be saved, you would need the State of Ohio to show up Monday and purchase the entire property. Thats about it. CF even oews the name, so what would you call the park?

As for West Chester County, that system works for some summers, and some that don't. They haven't made solid profits since Marriot left decades ago. Every winter, they need to get more money for the county to 'buy out' leases to take ownership of attractions to add to the bottom line, which, to this day, has been unattainable.

I just think that all of this has happened way to fast for Ohio to put the brakes on. Cedar Point's sound business and operating strategies have allowed them to grow, and in the process, they have ko'd about a dozen other parks, who were not as sound. Its just business. Park owners do not want other parks around. Its sad, but true.

Its all very sad, including my lost memories, but I still love the business and my co-workers. I don't have to agree to what all the owners want, but I don't have the bucks to buy all those rides and move them myself.

Is it too late to mourn some more? :(

It's probably true they aren't coming to grips with how to stop this corporate giant from raping and pillaging their local history, and they probably don't have the wherewillall to want to deal with it, I'm just saying that is what they should do.

Once a municipality uses eminant domain to obtain a property, they only need to pay fair assessed value, not market value, so it has nothing to do with having every right to get top dollar - based on the corporate greed involved here and the way they did not give people a warning to come visit one last time, I couldn't disagree more - they do NOT deserve to get top dollar for the land anyway since they bought it with the intention of closing the ride park all along. It's a nice way for Aurora to stick it back to Cedar Fair for the way that company misused and mismanaged the property.

Since U.S. Senator Brown from Ohio has already taken the effort to address his concerns in writing over the potential loss of the Big Dipper, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of the State taking the property using historic preservation funding, he may even be able to secure a federal grant for some of the funds if a case could be made that the Dipper has national significance.

The intent of Playand was never to turn a major profit. I was created in Rye as a diversion for the benefit of the residents of West Chester County. It's still a great and affordable place for a family to spend a day - if they wanted to make a large profit, they could easily double the price of everything there (except parking) and it would be comparible to prices at the larger chains, however that would be defeating the purpose of why it was built in the first place.

Cedar Fair is no longer a company that recognizes and respects it's own roots within the amusement industry - it has become everything that went wrong with Six Flags during it's acquisition and greed frenzy. The CF from twenty years ago would never have the audacity to close Geauga Lake permanently. I once had great respect for the company and their business strategies, but that is long gone since the Dorney takeover. Even a big company like Disney has better ethics - it's time for a change in leadership at CF. I went there this summer for the first time in a while and was appalled at how much worse the customer service has become at the place, including the hotels - and I never thought it was that good in the first place! They should be glad their even getting flat attendance figures based on the way they treat their guests.

You pretty much summed it up - it's sad.*** This post was edited by Rye.D.Ziner 3/29/2008 11:28:54 AM ****** This post was edited by Rye.D.Ziner 3/29/2008 11:33:15 AM ***

Wow, that's a lot of drama in those posts. "Raping and pillaging?" Please.

What is all this crap about corporate greed? Shutting down a failing business isn't greed. What universe are you guys living in? All of this nonsense about their roots in the amusement industry... what does that even mean? That somehow amusement businesses aren't obligated to be profitable and accountable to their investors?

And by the way, Aurora doesn't care what happens here, because the part that closed is not in Aurora. Furthermore, if that community really cared, they would've been visiting the park.

All of these hurt feelings, and chalking them up to distaste for capitalism, are at odds with the financial reality that these are in fact businesses.

^Corportate greed has indeed become a redunant phrase, however a visit into their museum at CP shows how they once acknowledged and appreciated the process and some preservation of their past - I wouldn't be surprised now if the current mentality of CF board levels it to build an ATM and soda machines in it's place. Disney is a large corporation in the amusment business who are similarly accountable to shareholders, however they are more responsible and respectful of the amusement business in general - in their US theme park markets they have never bought a park to eliminate their 'competition', even though they have had the opportunity to do so with both B&B and SFMM. If you don't think those were contenders for a tourist's desire to stray outside the Disney magic boundaries for a day, just look at Animal Kingdom and MGM which were built to compete with nearby similar parks, and DCA which is like a combination of USC and KBF.

Of course a business will fail if you rape the attractions out of the park. All this nonsense about 'we don't do animals' during the CF purchase was a ploy to relocate the waterpark and eventually close the ride park. What was that tiger show doing at CP all those years along with the Oceana stadium? Obviously they 'did' animals at some point, and they could have just rehired the professionals who had previously been taking care of the animals all those years. Removing the animals was an intended fatal flaw and they pillaged the area into a stark and cookie-cutter waterpark, then pillaged the great waterpark on the ride side into an abandoned eyesore.

Regardless of whether the ride side was taxed by Aurora, I'm sure they care about the potential loss of tourist dollars on the businesses in their limits - if not, they will care soon when some of the area businesses close and leave behind abandoned sites. I'm sure many locals still visited the park, however the population of the area represents a drop in the bucket for their larger market of Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron/Canton, so it's not even relevant.

It's not about distaste for capiltalism - the bottom line is that there should be antitrust laws in place to prevent transactions such as Busch buying B&B, and CF from buying GL - capitalism in it's best form should create competition, not the opposite. GL could easily have 'prospered' under a different owner who recognized the need for a less expensive alternative to CP in that economically challenged area of NE OH. If CF was prevented from purchasing GL in the first place under such needed antitrust laws, it would have likely remained open for another hundred years or more. Even the last ticket price of twenty-something bucks was way too expensive for that market - a wristband POP ride option is the best way for a successful park in that area. That's why Busch couldn't profit enough up there to justify continuing their presence, because you can't do that option in a park with so few rides, and the more they increase their gate prices the fewer numbers came.*** This post was edited by 3/30/2008 4:29:58 PM ***

Yeah... that's perfectly logical. They wanted the park to fail so they could just do a water park, which will generate less income than a full amusement park would. Makes perfect sense.

"Geauga Lake will be more of a waterpark, and maybe we'll let the coaster enthusiasts head over to Cedar Point." - Dick Kinzel, spring 2007, Plain Dealer interview.

You think he had a choice in that? Are you saying they wanted to make less money?

No, I'm saying that as early as the beginning of the season 2007, Dick Kinzel knew that Geauga Lake was going to be a water-park only attraction -- or at least primarily so.

And that he expected that a large number of former Geauga Lake customers would go to Cedar Point instead. And that the local water park fans (who primarily wouldn't be going to Soak City anyway) would still remain customers, with a substantially reduced park overhead. A financially winning proposition, to be sure.

To me it doesn't sound like he closed the ride side to make less money, but to make more.

^He's right: the whole thing was ruthlessly planned from the initial takeover purchase, always suspected (especially while shipping off coasters to other parks), and now obvious from the unceremonious sudden closure of the ride side of GL. Closing the ride section forces that market to seek coaster thrills at CP at double the price, and possibly get them to stay over a night in one of their overpriced hotels. They can control any overcrowding at Soak City by maintaining a waterpark at GL - keeps less people off that little road around the park perimeter and possibly expand some of the SC parking lot into another hotel site. If someone is just going to do water rides for the day, they'll more inclined to settle for GL now since the waterpark has been expanded to be comparible to Choke S*itty.

The whole sinister scheme I'm sure seems like a great kill for CF shareholders, however in the grand scheme of things, totally worthless in terms of bringing more gate attendance figures to CP, and in the process cuts the throat of a great piece of amusement park history in Ohio and means a lot less jobs and tourism for the GL area. Overall a dispicable action - I wouldn't be suprised if they clubbed all the seals before shipping them off the Sea World side of the property! Watch in amazement as attendence figures in CP remain flat as gas prices surge and Northeast Ohio residents head to cheaper options like Columbus Zoo, Kennywood/Sandcastle, and Waldameer! The minor surge in CP attendence numbers they are expecting from the GL fallout will not likely transpire, and instead of maintaining those profits from the ride side of GL, their competitors will now see the lions share of those dollars. I'm sure the waterpark left at GL will still have decent attendance numbers, but like CF already acknowledged, people don't carry their wallets on waterslides.*** This post was edited by 3/31/2008 1:50:09 AM ***

It may seem that Gl will be a waterpark but, The waterpark won't probably last a year because people won't drive out to Aurora for a waterpark.

I think six flags handled the park better than CF due to the animal side,the water park ,& rides. Cf took thngs out and destroyed the park NOT Six Flags. Six Flags Added rides and attractions,so cedar fair was mean't to close the park and not save it like six flags did.

that's my opinion.

I give the waterpark at least a couple of years before CF decides it's not profitable enough to continue - unfortunately, like classic GL, they will not sell it to another company to run it as waterpark since it would be competition for Soak City, and possibly even CP if the new owner started adding dry rides. Instead, I predict they will move the water rides to Kings Island to expand that waterpark in an effort to eliminate The Beach directly across I-71, along with rebranding it Soak City South and 'adding' a new gate directly from the parking lot - they'll use the massive expansion of the waterpark as the excuse to eliminate that section as a free themed area of Kings Island.