State officials have given up trying to reopen Kentucky Kingdom this year, but say that six potential operators have expressed interest in the park and that they expect to have at least a tentative deal with one of them by mid-summer.

“We’re working real hard” to have the park reopened in 2011, said Harold Workman, president of the Kentucky State Fair Board. Six Flags went bankrupt and in February announced that it was abandoning the park.

Source: Louisville Courier-Journal

Workman on Thursday afternoon outlined his efforts to the Louisville Metro Council’s labor and economic development committee. Council member Marianne Butler, D-15th District, the committee chairwoman, had asked Workman to give the council an update on the the Kentucky Exposition Center park.

Workman told the committee that he recently had solicited the interest of six companies —businesses he declined to name — to operate Kentucky Kingdom and that he expects soon to receive proposals for running the park from at least two or three of them. “I’d like to see something pretty much in place in a couple of months,” he said of a deal with one of them. “It’s a fast-moving process.”

He said he would like to have a long-term agreement for running the park, perhaps for 30 or more years.

Workman said he expected that a new operator would want to spend several million dollars or more to improve the theme park, including probably expanding the water park portion.

Six Flags had asked to manage the park rent-free through the end of its 2019 lease. The lease called for Six Flags to pay $1.185 million in rent this year to the Fair Board. In addition, the Fair Board was in line to receive about $450,000 from parking fees. Six Flags got none of the parking revenue.

The fair board expressed a willingness to renegotiate the terms of the lease, but Six Flags walked away before any new deal could be struck. The fair board owns about 45 acres that Six Flags leased at the park site, while Six Flags owns about 15 acres.

Workman said Six Flags wants to unload all of its Louisville holdings and probably would willingly sell its 15 acres to either the fair board or to a new park operator.

Six Flags initially tried to remove some of the rides on its portion of the property, but the Fair Board filed actions in the bankruptcy court in Delaware to prevent that.

Workman said the park rides and facilities remain in relatively good shape.

Council member Jim King, D-10th District, a member of the labor and economic development committee, said the theme park is extremely important to Louisville’s economy, providing more than 800 summer jobs typically for young adults and attracting many visitors to nearby hotels. “Those jobs are critical,” King said.

Reporter Sheldon S. Shafer can be reached at (502) 582-7089.