Santa Clarita wants to annex Six Flags Magic Mountain

Good. It's about time a city realized the importance of a local amusement park and decided to step up and save it. Too many municipalities treat their amusement parks as nothing more than things in the way of more housing developments.

Wow. A community is offering incentives to a business situated outside their borders. They must be swimming in cash in that town.

While Shapiro's announcement last month was likely intended to attract hotel/resort developers (not to sell the park), he just got an offer of government money for doing... nothing! While this won't change the park's thrill-seeking image, it might give Shapiro enough fiscal incentive to tolerate a much longer time-frame to shift the attendance demographic and improve park reputation.

There must be some more to the story that what I am reading. I have to think that, should the park close, there are other uses for that property that would provide an economic and social benefit.

I hope the park doesn't close, this support seems misplaced.

It's one of the largest thrill parks in the world, just about the only thrill park on the western half of the continent. Comparativly speaking what else could they build on top of that property to provide a similar enconomic draw to the community of Santa Clarita? What, a mall, a larger Walmart?

Yeah, the world can never have enough malls and nameless, faceless condos. ;)

What the Santa Clarita is doing says alot. I'm not sure what the impact will be, but I hope they can come to an agreement with someone willing to manage the park long term.

^^ they already have quite a big mall (Stephenson Ranch), including a decent size WalMart, pretty close to SFMM.

Isn't the mere idea of a publicly owned amusement park completely un-American? Just imagine what the community could do with it!

:o)

*** This post was edited by superman 7/17/2006 12:21:04 PM ***

Well we have a couple in the US alreday that are publicly owned. One which appears to be very well run. And the other that one wonders if it will ever open.

Rye Playland - awesome example of a well run publicly owned amusement park.

Conneaut Lake Park - an example of a not so well run publicly owned amusement park.

What they want to do is annex the land that the park sits on, that is bring it within the boundries of the city of Santa Clarita. It currently is located in an unincorporated part of Los Angeles county. They are willing to offer incentives to make it more attractive to operate there, vs. what the county dings them now for.

^^ Don't forget the City of Vallejo owned SFMW, and the land under PGA owned by the City of Santa Clara (with it's 50yr amusement park use only stipulation).

*** This post was edited by jomo 7/17/2006 1:28:18 PM ***

It's a very common suburban practice to annex a property into a municipality for the purpose of some kind of tax abatement, access to utilities, or something like that. It has been happening around me for decades now (though our annexation happens from the original Western Reserve townships, not from the county). Usually it goes something like, "If you become part of our city, you don't have to pay property taxes for a certain number of years and we'll hook you up to our water."

JUST thinking out loud here for a sec...

I know the park employs a lot of people....BUT....won't the developers employ a lot of people as well. People with jobs in construction, electrical, plumbing, roofing, and the like. Certainly not the greatest jobs in the world, but better jobs than working for near-minimum-wage at an amusement park.

As for parks becoming "intimately involved" with local government, I think Rye is the *exception*, NOT the rule. Most times it seems the mismanagement and red-tape spells more trouble for the parks than anything positive. I certainly can, and do, HOPE for better...just that previous experiences seem to point in the opposite direction.

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I know the park employs a lot of people....BUT....won't the developers employ a lot of people as well. People with jobs in construction, electrical, plumbing, roofing, and the like. Certainly not the greatest jobs in the world, but better jobs than working for near-minimum-wage at an amusement park.

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Normally, I'd agree with you. But I think the idea is more long term. Tourists bring in revenue and continued jobs to hotels, restaurants and such in addition to the park.

You know, kind of like how Florida manages to exist. ;)

In Southern California the construction business is very transient. The developers (who for the most part are not headquarted here) bring in crews from around the country (and in some cases from Canada), who throw up mass sub divisions within a year and then move on to the next location. Kind of sounds like a carnival, doesn't it?

Except we're stuck with ugly housing all over the place. I guess there's no profit in making nice-looking homes. Not that local governments care how things look either. Blah. At least a carnival has pretty lights. ;)

Anyway, doesn't annexation require votes of the people who live there? Since nobody lives there, how does this kind of thing work. Who gets to decide?

The growth in that area has been HUGE since MM opened. How ironic that the one thing that offered the interest, could now be gone in less than a year. Without MM, Velencia would be like one of those forgotten areas from the movie Cars. A freeway to save travelers an extra 10 minutes getting into LA. ;)

Imagine those hotels, resteraunts, ect if SFMM ceases to exist. Wanna talk about empty and infrequent?

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How ironic that the one thing that offered the interest, could now be gone in less than a year.

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I see that happening all around.

- There is a development near by called "Orchard View Estates", but no orchard to be found. If you ask your real estate agent, he would tell you... "Oh, they removed the orchard to build the homes."

- There is a road known as "Cinema Drive" near by with no cinema / movie theater with in 10 miles. There used to be one there... but they tore it down to make room for Cinema Drive.

These are two very small scale examples compared to SFMM. A better example was a developer the other year complaining about all of the farm land / vacant land taken up by the Gettysburg battlefield. The argument was... "with all of the people coming to this town, it is a shame to have all of that open farm land there instead of some sort of retail / hotel construction"... failing to realize that the battlefield was the reason why people came to that area... fill up the open land with retail space, you eliminate the reason why people go there in the first place. Luckily this was not a SERIOUS thought (though the near by proposed Slot Parlor (Casino) is just about as idiotic).

Lord G, LOL, makes sense with this one: "But I think the idea is more long term."

You're NEVER gonna get elected with THAT attitude young man... :)

Trust me, I am NO fan of "Valencia Estates", but where there's a quick buck to be made at the expense of the local populace, there's generally a developer with a handy bulldozer, and a politician with his hand out (but well hidden of course)... ;)

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there's generally a developer with a handy bulldozer, and a politician with his hand out (but well hidden of course)...

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Not sure about where you live, and not sure about California and SFMM's area... but that is NOT true about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Our politicians are above under the table deals... they don't bother to hide it and just hold their hands out in the open for all to see.

Anybody been to the Irvine Spectrum? In all honesty do you not think something like this would provide a better tax base and more utility than an amusement park?

"Just another mall" would not make sense. The "Irvine Spectrum" makes a lot more sense than an amusement park. Plus you get those jobs 365 days out of the year.

For selfish reasons, I would always prefer rollercoasters. If I lived there, I would think long and hard about doing anything that might lead to tax payer burden should the plan fail.