Michigan park developer has history of failure

Posted | Contributed by Jeff

Patrick Crosson has big ideas for a sprawling, multi-million dollar amusement park near Grayling, but his checkered financial past is raising red flags among local and state officials. In the mid-1990s, Crosson was a top officer in an amusement park project near Indianapolis that flopped and eventually fell into bankruptcy, according to court documents and newspaper reports. Crosson, of Livonia, also emerged from personal bankruptcy early last year, about the same time he started meeting with state and local officials to discuss the Grayling Township proposal.

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This is not the only red flag....the other is LOCATION....LOCATION....LOCATION!!!! Time for Grayling community to pull out before it is too late.

Why am I not in the least bit surprised. I've been saying all along this project made no sense. Grayling is a place you drive *through* to get where you want to be going. It's not a place to stop, and a big shiny amusement park won't make it one. People heading "up north" are trying to get AWAY from the crowds, not join them.

While a lot of people visit Grayling, it's out of the way for the majority of people in Michigan. It's too far to be a day trip from Detroit or Grand Rapids. Could Michigan use another park? certainly, but closer to the population would help. How about the Frankenmuth area? It's a great tourist draw, yet still close enough for Metro Detroit to make a day trip out of it.

I remember that Indianapolis deal - it was supposed to feature Garfield, long before Kennywood got their hands on him, and they had contracted with CCI for a wooden coaster. Schlitterbahn was also going to be involved, and they were talking year-round resort. Never happened. Almost forgot about it. With Indiana Beach having expanded since then, it's probably good that it never happened. One or the other would have suffered.

Why does this sound like The Simpsons' monorail to me?

I've been saying all along it was a dumb idea as well. Aside from people going to Mackinac, what tourist traffic is going that way? Even if you could get half of the Mackinac tourists to stop, I doubt it would be enough.

You get the SE MI to Traverse City folks too. But, still, they don't want to wait in lines or, for that matter, see other people. That's why they own cabins up there.

Frankenmuth would be a much better location for an amusement park than Grayling in my opinion. I used to work at a certain Christmas store in F'muth for the past 7 years and I can tell you that an amusement park would fit right in since many people already come up there from Detroit (F'muth is actually Michigan's #1 tourist destination in terms of number of visitors, NOT Mackinac Island as many would think).

The only problem is that the City of F'muth would never go along with building a big amusement park as they are very particular about what types of businesses they want in their area. Case in point is the City constantly refusing Walmart's request to build in their city since it would attract more traffic and environment problems than they want to deal with. Also, property values are sky high in F'muth now that its a very desirable community for higher income people to live in. My point is is that F'muth will never be home to a full-fledged amusement park.

I can certainly see F'muth having high priced real estate, but there also are quite a few areas just outside of town where that might be an issue. Think of the farmland along the way from Birch Run to Frankenmuth.

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