Six Flags in Connecticut?

the Events in history facts on the main page of Coasterbuzz indicates that on July 9th in 1996, Time Warner? announced plans to build a Six Flags in Connecticut. Clearly, this didn't happen - just went on the Six Flags website to see what I missed ;-)
What happened around this potential new park?
- J *** Edited 7/9/2006 6:52:15 AM UTC by ErinGoBraugh***

Time Warner/Boston Ventures then owners of Six Flags were working on getting a New England park off the ground. There were two locations in Connecticut and one in Rhode Island considered. The plan was scrapped when Premier Parks purchased Six Flags and eventually turned their Riverside Park property into Six Flags New England. *** Edited 7/9/2006 9:04:47 AM UTC by Cropsey***

One of the locations considered by Six Flags was Lake Compounce. The plan was later tabled when they (under Premier Parks) opted to develop Riverside Park instead, ultimately making it into SFNE.

LC went through three failed attempts (or planned attempts) to revive the park including the ill-fated effort by Hersheypark. Finally Kennycorp made major investments in the park including water attractions, the Boulder Dash and Zoomerang coasters, and the Ghost Hunt darkride. These changes renewed interest in the park and helped assure its future as an amusement park.

If you're familiar with the Hartford area I believe one of the SF sites was the Rentschler Field area. With the UCONN football stadium now, a massive retail area is planned to open in the next few years, and I mean MASSIVE. I believe the first thing to open is a Bass Pro Shop that's going to be as big as anything they've built before, and as anybody who's been to one knows, that's practically a theme park right there.

Whoever, while I think a theme park would have worked, the SFNE purchase was probably the way to go. Despite some problems with the site, SF has very little problem building what they want compared to the headaches they would have incurred dealing with local government in Central CT.

What an interesting proposition, seeing an SF park being built from scratch here in the US. More than likely we'll never see it now, but I can't help but think all of those rumors of Six Flags Florida (which are what, like at least 15 years old now?) are more the product of wishful thinking on enthusiast's part.

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matt. said:
If you're familiar with the Hartford area I believe one of the SF sites was the Rentschler Field area.quote]

I remember they actually went as far as to bus local residents of the area out to SFGAdv to win approval. It would have been really exciting to see a new park from the ground up, would have been the first since Mid-America.

Another weird side note with this - I remember hearing that the Time Warner group approached the family to that owned Riverside to buy that before Premier got in. TWE eventually bailed on the deal because of a contractual obligation to keep the race track in back as a part of the park. Not sure how Premier got around that or if they only had to keep it in place for a few years since it disappeared to build Superman when the park was branded.

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