http://www.gurnee.il.us/zba/minutes/06-17-1998
This is the meeting where Great America's expansion plans to become a resort was discussed in front of the village board. There was reference made to this in a topic I saw earlier. Many of you may not know anything about it. It is lengthy, but scroll down to about page 31 to pick the discussion up if you are interested in it.
Great America bought 134 acres west of I94 back in 1995 for expansion. Basically, Great America wanted to add several hotels, a conference center, a waterpark, employee housing, and 10 acres of themed entertainment in Phase 1. Themed entertainment would have consisted of theaters, restaurants, and stores. Phase 2 was to be a 12,000 seat event center.
Let's hypothetically suppose that this had passed zoning and was constructed. How would the park look today? Would all of the components of this plan be profitable? Or would some of it had been sold off leaving only the waterpark? Would the waterpark be better off standing alone or attached as it is today?
I believe Marriotts, if they still owned the park, could have pulled this off successfully, if they could have found a way to link the 2 properties together. I really feel this was a bit overambitious for Six Flags, and that all of it except for the waterpark would have been sold off for a loss. The park is probably better off today that this project did not happen.
What do you think? Could Great America have survived successfully as a resort?
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The hypothetical Great America Resort
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Last edited by BLADE on August 19th, 2010, 6:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yep I read through that when I was doing my investigation on if SFGAm needs a coaster. What a lot of people don't realize is just how massive a plan this was. Think of Universal's city walk, Hurricane Harbor, 500+ room hotel, banquet and conference hall employee housing structure, oh and Six Flags Corporate headquarters pretty much in the same complex.
We are talking a plan that would make Gurnee become "Sandusky 2" and the reason why this plan fell through? Six Flags didn't feel it had to pay for road improvements on Washington Street. It is probably the biggest failure ever on Six Flags part.
It should also be pointed out that even on 1998 people had reservations about noise coming from the proposed site as well as that had this plan gone through, SFGAm would be the crown jewel of the Six Flags chain. Also the proposal for Washington St. Is just now being done 12 years after the fact.
Instead Six Flags spent the hundreds on millions of dollars ear marked for this plan on such wonderful additions such as: SFKK, SFA, Elitch Gardens, SFNO, Darien Lake among other amazingly successful additions that put SF in 2 billion dollars in debt.
I remember when they were considering this project and alot of reasons are given because of its failure.
Burke and Co. besides the road widening wanted to start selling off unused land in an attempt to lower the debt. They failed with this and they failed with SF Astroworld (Not making enough). This center would have been nice but also would have put SF more in the hole as far as debt. That was going to be one expensive ass project. Since they are bleeding in debt, it made more sense to construct the waterpark where it is and sell off that land on the other side of the tollway. Gurnee had other issues with this since it wasn't attached to the current Great America property. I finally retired the Sarah Palin signature because she is now 100% irrelevant.
I saw this in your post Galvan and dug it up. I found these meeting records a few years back.
No doubt Six flags would have had to liquidate a few assets. They had zero chance of this working if the company was too big with subpar parks. Last edited by BLADE on August 19th, 2010, 7:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
^^ But that land sell off didnt happen until 2004 or 2005.
The original proposal was in 1998 before Burke and Co went absolutely bananas buying up every Roadside Carnival and slapping a Six Flags logo on it. 
^I know. I never said they were back to back.
That proposal went on for quite awhile until SF finally pulled the plug. I think that was in the early 2000's. I finally retired the Sarah Palin signature because she is now 100% irrelevant.
What is being done with Washington St. now? I don't recall it being under construction when I was on it in May.
I dont live in the area, but Im pretty sure its being widened
I really don't see the appeal in a resort-esque theme park, not because it is not a profitable expenditure, but because it is in the north. They could really only be open for a small amount of time during the year because let's face it Chicago is no Miami. Although if it had worked out imagine how much bigger SFGam would be, it would be like a Cedar Point but probably smaller because of land limitations. The one thing Six Flags has going for it is that it is by a Alpha ranked city, and Chicago is much much larger than Cleveland or Toledo. It would have been interesting though...
"Park staff later claimed that they were offered a hundred bucks a pop to try to the slide, but refused after seeing that test dummies often emerged on the other end dismembered. The looping slide was actually closed down for most of the park’s life due to these injury concerns."
Kalaharis are all in the north and open year round.
Keylime Cove is already there. Unfortunately SF dropped the ball and didn't build one of their own.
One area that could be reduced is the employee parking lot. They don't have enough employees with cars to fill that lot even on busy days when alot of employees are working at the same time. Factor in alot of teenagers and others who either get dropped off or take a bus to work. That is one possibility to expand but it probably won't happen (at least not for a long time). If they have no intentions of putting in a high capacity coaster or a flat package in 2011, I would prefer the area where Chang was going to be built would sit vacant again next year so they can plan something decent and high thrill. I finally retired the Sarah Palin signature because she is now 100% irrelevant.
The Construction is was in may from hunt club but idk about right in front of Six Flags
^ not to stray to far off topic...
But right now, the construction on Washington Street is from Route 21 (just east of the park) all the way west for a few miles. Washington Street from Route 21 to I-94 used to be two lanes in each direction, with it going down to one just west of the park's entry. However, with the construction, it is now one lane in each direction. So, if there is a backup getting into or out of the park, it does wonders to the traffic out there. Back on topic.... I want to point out that Marriott actually owned that land back in 1976. Not sure what they had planned to build there, but I know that every 4th of July that is where the park would shoot the fireworks off from. There was also plans (not sure if part of this project, or another one) that involved having a Monorail built between SFGAm and Gurnee Mills, running up Grand Ave. If I find the article about it, I'll share it. --Brian
The Monarail would be cool
I was never aware these plans crumbled because the park refused to make fixes on Washington. That is absolutely stupid. If we had that, right now, our park could easily be #4 or #5 in the country.
Although deeper in debt, it would have paid itself off. Now Six Flags must rent out corporate office space in New York and Texas.  Oh Six Flags... sometimes they are just... stupid.
^
There were other reasons that the plans folded. But It really makes you wonder just what could have been.
So what is the long term plan with the Washington St. construction? Will it become 4 lanes west of GrAm? Or are exit ramps being built along the tollway? Brian, Jim Wintrode said in that zoning meeting that Great America bought that 134 acres west of the tollway in 1995. Is this the same parcel Marriott's shot off the fireworks from that you are talking about? I believe this land was all farm fields back in the 70's from pictures I've seen. I would love to see that monorail plan if you can find it.
I doubt their adding ramps. I hope not because then A LOT more traffic would head to the Washington Street Entrance. I think their just simply widneing it.
Oof. This one kind of stings. The possibilities of this park could have been limitless, really. Turn Great America from a day to a weekend, more money infused in the park, more space to grow. Pretty much more of everything.
And Washington St. hung all of it up.
^
I caution the use of saying "And Washington St. hung all of it up." Im sure there where many issues involved.
I live in Gurnee and was on the Blue Ribbon committee that the village put together. The mayor (Wilton) and 3 other Gurnee village employees and about 20 Village residents.
I had some artwork of what they thought it would look like and I will need to see if I could find it. Roads were one reason, but it was the other infrastructure improvements which included paying for the new bridge for the tollway (which the IL tollway just rebuild and widened last year). The other big expense was having a tollway interchange at washington street (they would have closed the Northbound on ramp at Milwaukee Ave a bit south. Some other sticking points were that the employee housing was going to be at the far south-west corner which some of the residents thought was to close due to the noise/ late night (though that was not a dealbreaker). They also had a hard time explaining that there were be outdoor shopping (Dave and Busters was one I recall), but then would people park there and walk to the park (avoiding the GA parking fees. They called the transportation as 'Dedicated Tram System" It was planned as a year round resort because of the convention center & hotel as well as shopping and restaurant (not run/owned by Six Flags). That way they could lease the land and have guaranteed income as long as the stores were leased. One funny note I recall was that they mentioned Marriott considered something like this when the park was originally built and that is why they had the land, but Marriott (theme Park group) did not even know that the Marriott Hotel group was planning and building the resort in Linconshire (about 10 miles south). I just went in the crawl space and found the blue prints. The Theme Park/Water Park was 19.11 acres Parking Lot 2 14.64 acres, parking lot 6 9.66 acres It was called (for the planning phase) as the Six Flags Entertainment Village. There was to be a lighthouse at the south end, but the tollway and the was a water/pond that was going to be boat rides in the Spring, summer & fall and Ice Skating in the winter titled: Water Element / Winter Ice Sports. The water park did not have any detail to the level of what slides/attractions and they did not have that level at that time. I will scan in the 2 Artist rendering of post them somewhere and link them. You can see the tollway interchange, the lighthouse and parking plaza (for the water park), but the slides on this drawing are hard to make out, but there was a wave pool and some slides (looks like they tok most of what they were going to do here and that is what Hurricane Harbor became. I was going to be really nice looking based on what they planned (almost like a small Downtown Disney).
^ Rob make sure you put a watermark on those images.
I dont want anyone stealing your images or anything like that.
I often wonder what GrAm would be like today if Marriott's hadn't sold it. That company had deeeeeeep pockets! I was just old enough to experience a little bit. We'd probably have a few less coasters, but they would be better and be themed. Meticulous landscaping, great food and service, but it would cost more to get in. Could have been on par with Busch Gardens, although with more to do.
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