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 Myrtle Beach Online reports that the owner of Hard Rock Park filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection today and the park will be closed for the rest of the
season, a company spokesman said.
The 55-acre, $400 million park
plans to re-open in 2009, said Jim Olecki, a park spokesman. He would
not go into detail when asked about the plans to emerge from bankruptcy
protection.
Olecki said the park never had enough money for promotion to begin
with when it opened in April, and the credit crisis that unfolded
across the country over the summer made it impossible to get more, he
said.
"The economy, the frozen credit markets, the global drop in
tourism all just created a situation where ... we weren’t getting the
attendance that we needed and the costs exceeded what we were bringing
in," he said. "Everything just kind of added up."
Economists and
theme park industry experts said the park, which had been in the works
since 2001, could not have opened at a worse time, as home prices fell,
consumer confidence was lower than it had been in nearly two decades
and gas prices were at all-time highs.
"The stars were clearly
not aligned for them to get going this year, some of which was their
own doing and some of which were other factors," said Don Schunk, a
research economist at Coastal Carolina University who studies this area.
Annual
pass and other ticket holders will have to wait until a bankruptcy
judge decides whether those passes will be valid, refunded or
forfeited, Olecki said.
Of the 2,000 employees the park had
during peak season, 75 nonseasonal employees will remain throughout the
off-season, Olecki said.
Read the full story here.
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