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Conneaut Park seeks yet another revival
Friday, March 30, 2001 By Milan Simonich, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
CONNEAUT LAKE, Pa. -- The question around town each spring is whether the Blue Streak can outrun the red ink.
The Streak, a 64-year-old wooden roller coaster, has been on rickety financial tracks at Conneaut Lake Park for the better part of a decade.
Two of the park's last three operators went bankrupt. The other went to prison for tax evasion in Ohio.
Now remade as a nonprofit, community corporation, the park has promised the judge who's overseeing it that better times are ahead. Conneaut Lake's court-appointed trustee, Herbert Brill, says the park 90 miles north of Pittsburgh will begin paying off its debts while bringing customers a season of fun and nostalgia.
He submitted a progress report yesterday to Crawford County Common Pleas Judge Anthony Vardaro. The park, recently renamed Conneaut Lake Community Park, has made myriad changes since the private operators were removed last summer.
It will lower food prices by about 20 percent, add two vintage rides and treat visitors to a restored Blue Streak.
In addition, Conneaut Lake will try to lure back customers who have drifted away over the years. Its aim is to be more family-oriented by opening its grounds, halls and century-old hotel to picnickers, campers, lake lovers and dancers.
Brill projects that it will take five years to pay the park's two largest debts. It owes more than $225,000 in back taxes to the Conneaut School District and more than $300,000 in sewer fees to the Conneaut Lake Municipal Authority.
Other creditors saw their claims settled when the previous operator, a Youngstown, Ohio-based group called Conneaut Park Management Inc., went bankrupt.
That group took over after park owner Gary Harris, a four-time felon from the Cleveland area, went to prison in 1997 for evading $115,000 in taxes unrelated to Conneaut's operation.
Harris had rescued Conneaut Lake Park from yet another bankruptcy that shut it down for parts of the 1995 and 1996 seasons.
The struggles have left even some people who have had a hand in running the park saying it's obsolete in a region where Kennywood and Cedar Point feature 80-mph roller coasters.
Such pessimism doesn't seem to bother Brill, a lawyer and economics professor at Allegheny College in nearby Meadville. He said the park's opening on Memorial Day weekend will re-establish it as an anchor for Crawford County's tourism industry.
"We are an economic pump for this area," he said. "Business dropped 40 percent when the park was closed. We're going to get off to a wonderful new start."
He believes the 109-year-old park still has a market, though not for vacationers whose sole interest is in high-flying rides.
"We're not an amusement park anymore," Brill said. "We're a community park with amusements."
Conneaut Lake's beach, rustic hotel and improved camping area will bring in a range of community people and tourists, he predicted.
Even so, the park for the first time in decades has upgraded its 14 rides in hopes of drawing young customers, too.
Amish carpenters will complete a $26,000 restoration of the Blue Streak in time for the season opening. The park also has added two climbing walls and two new rides with long histories elsewhere, the Himalaya and the Witches' Brew.
Community support for the park hit a high point during winter when $250,000 in interest-bearing certificates were sold. The deal will provide the park with needed operating cash early in the season, Brill said.
Joseph Prischak, an Erie businessman, bought $100,000 of the certificates. He also bankrolled the new rides and climbing walls, Brill said.
Residents see his commitment as a sign that people want the park to survive for another generation.
"The park is an important piece of history in our county," said Dick Astor, superintendent of the Conneaut School District.
Though the school system has not received the park's real estate tax payments for 1996-99, Astor still regards it fondly. He appreciates it as a summertime employer for local teen-agers and a place where good memories are made. The park hotel is where the school district's three high schools hold their proms.
As a gesture to help the park, the school district has eliminated its amusement tax on ride tickets. But the park still owes the schools about $80,000 in amusement taxes that went unpaid by past operators.
Conneaut Lake Park's sewer system is a bigger financial headache. Its aged, leaky pipes drain thousands of dollars a month from the park's bank account.
Brill wants a $1 million state grant to repair the system. He hopes eventually to give an improved system to the municipal authority, which could hook up new customers along the lakefront. In exchange, he would ask that the park's $300,000 in sewer bills be waived.
Dick Jorden, the former park trustee who is now campaigning for Common Pleas judge in Crawford County, said the park is still viable.
He said private operators could have made a go of it. But the last group was guilty of "gross mismanagement," spending more money than it took in.
After the previous operators were ousted last summer as they headed to bankruptcy court, Jorden took over as trustee and operated the park profitably for the final two months of the season.
His grandparents met at the park, so he's got an affinity for the place that is common among locals.
Every operator of the park has predicted success, but Jorden says the right system finally is in place.
Brill agrees. He says the park will make it this time because it's in the people's hands.
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