sfgam-fan wrote:[quote="Coaster Justin"] Build a Parking Garage in the Overflow Lot
With the crazy price of parking these days I'd expect they can afford it.
It would allow them to expand into the current lot.
That would never happen though because they would have to build a new entrance, ticket sales, etc. and Columbia Carousel would no longer greet guests as they enter the park.[/quote]
They could take out Pictorium, and add a midway going down, with new rides and shops along the way. OR, turn the main lot into a parking garage, and have a tunnel or some sort of shuttle to expansion in the back of main lot and overflow lot. As long as their well maintained, either way works for me. I think the latter works better.
I'm somewhat surprised it hasn't been said, but in addition to a parking structure for the guests, a parking structure for the employees, approximately in the full-timer lot that would be able to handle what is the seasonal lot, then expand the park that way, moving the boneyard to the outskirts of the property line along with the greenhouses. The entrance to this new area would come from the entrance of the picnic grove, thus moving the picnic grove entrance back a tad.
I'd also like to revisit landscaping at the park, while mature plant life is nice, I'd love to trim back bushes from fences so that they don't grow through.
And after visiting non six flags parks, I'd can the metal detectors too, feel just as safe at parks without them as with them, they just seem to slow traffic down.
I would also setup a bunch of dummy companies to buy the houses next to the park as they come on the market and use rent them out till the time comes that all of them are mine then tear them down and expand that way.....the houses go, the trees stay, and instant shaded parking lot... Of course that's the 80 year plan, and the park there needs to be bought from the city too. Then the existing lot can be used for even more park expansion, even if Columbia needed to be moved.
dlmtechnology wrote: I would also setup a bunch of dummy companies to buy the houses next to the park as they come on the market and use rent them out till the time comes that all of them are mine then tear them down and expand that way.....the houses go, the trees stay, and instant shaded parking lot... Of course that's the 80 year plan, and the park there needs to be bought from the city too. Then the existing lot can be used for even more park expansion, even if Columbia needed to be moved.
damn right, why not, plus if people knew the park was after the property they would ask for a premium price! If I had the funds, why not try to buy that area, then those complaints about traffic and noise are reduced as those complainers are gone. Heck those properties could be used as housing for the international employee program in the mean time
I'm actually surprised the values of those homes are not lower, you have to find a very specific buyer who would want to live next to that mess and deal with it for 6 months of the year.
dlmtechnology wrote: I would also setup a bunch of dummy companies to buy the houses next to the park as they come on the market and use rent them out till the time comes that all of them are mine then tear them down and expand that way.....the houses go, the trees stay, and instant shaded parking lot... Of course that's the 80 year plan, and the park there needs to be bought from the city too. Then the existing lot can be used for even more park expansion, even if Columbia needed to be moved.
Pullin a disney on em. Eh?
I was thinking this exact thing recently. That if I had been running Marriotts theme park division back in the 70's, I would have done this. Especially with all the headaches the neighbors caused during planning and construction, and Marriotts boneheaded decision to build next to neighborhoods in the first place. I would also have acquired the 30-40 acres where Ihop, Crabby Joes, Olive Garden, etc. are now. That land could have been used for Marriott hotels or a future waterpark.
I don't know if Marriott ever owned additional land on that side of the Tollway, but Six Flags owned a bunch of land on the other side of the Tollway in the late 90s. They got village approval to build a Water Park, Hotels and other things, but (obviously) never did it. From reading old articles in the Tribune, they started talking about it in 1996, got it approved in 1998, were still talking about it in late 1999, but I can't find anything about it after that. I assume it has something to do with Time Warner selling Six Flags to Premier Parks in 1998, that kind of thing would obviously change the scale of things they could afford. It's a very sad "what if" though, if the water park had been built across the tollway they could have used that space for a bunch of rides...
in my short few years working at the park the rumor mill was that we had to do something with the land across the tollway or lose it. We wanted a bridge between the two parks but the state DOT or county wouldn't allow it so instead we sold the land.
People complain of the traffic now, imagine if we had to drive from SFGAm to HH down the road, and back again all day long and of course I'm sure there wouldn't be any sort of "pay once and park at both parks" type of thing. Imagine the loss in revenue with people just giving their friends the parking receipts all day long, unless the receipts had the car's license plate number printed on them.
Anyways, that was the rumor. Now we have a business district across the freeway
From the articles in the Tribune, there doesn't appear that there was ever any talk of a bridge, but Gurnee was insisting that as part of the deal the park pay to expand Washington Street. Actually, the point of the very last article I could find on the subject was that it would cost $7 million and that it may be too much for the park to want to do (see that article here: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999 ... water-park). Seems unlikely they'd pass on building a $400 million complex over $7 million, though, seems a lot more likely to me that it was due to the change in ownership.
I started this topic 4 years ago, if you want to see what would have happened with the 134 acres west of the freeway. There are a few artist renditions on page 2. It's titled the "Hypothetical Great America Resort."