blogs: Rick Redding 

What we have here is a failure to negotiate. Stunned. That's the collective first reaction around town to news that Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, a mainstay at the Fairgrounds and the top tourist attraction in the state, is taking its coasters and ferris wheel and water park elsewhere, charging its landlord with not playing fair in the negotiating process. Thanks to Abby Miller for posting a story here as it happened last night, complete with charges Six Flags blamed the Fair Board for the end result. Shortly after the announcement, the Fair Board's Harold Workman worked up a CYA statement, trying to deflect the blame that's surely his for losing the last cash cow at what will become a largely-abandoned property, with the exception of two weeks a year. The state-issued release opened with the Six Flags statement here: “Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom announced this evening that 'as it nears the scheduled end of its restructuring process, it has decided to reject its lease with the Kentucky State Fair Board relating to the Kentucky Kingdom Park. In recent weeks, Six Flags had proposed a new lease arrangement to the fair board that would have enhanced the viability and future of the park. Unfortunately, those proposals were not accepted and the park will cease operations and the company will move expeditiously to re-locate employees and several of the more than 40 rides and attractions to one of its 13 other markets." The Fair Board's release goes on to attempt an explanation, blaming the park's decision on its financial problems: Approximately thirty days ago, the Kentucky State Fair Board (KSFB) reached out to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom (SFKK) to offer to extend the park's bankruptcy court-imposed deadline of January 9, 2010 to either accept or reject its lease with the KSFB. The KSFB initiated dialogue with SFKK in an attempt to allow the park to maintain its operations. However, SFKK did not schedule a meeting with me until January 4, 2010, only days before the bankruptcy court-imposed deadline. At that point the KSFB did not have any financial information regarding the profitability of the park and only obtained that information a few days ago. As suggested by the KSFB, we entered into an agreement with SFKK to extend their deadline and that agreement was approved by the bankruptcy court. The time frame for the park to accept or reject its lease was extended by 90 days, expiring April 9, 2010. The intention was for the parties to renegotiate the lease terms during that period. The parties also entered into a confidentiality agreement shortly thereafter so that the KSFB could evaluate the park's financial status in order to validate its request for a lease modification. Representatives of SFKK had told the KSFB that the bankruptcy proceeding would NOT affect operations and, in fact, the park was doing well. The KSFB asked SFKK for a written proposal outlining revised lease terms on at least four separate occasions. However, counsel for SFKK never provided a written proposal and to date the KSFB has been reviewing financials and awaiting a proposal from SFKK that would include the proposed terms of the modification. Tonight's announcement by SFKK caught the KSFB completely by surprise. The KSFB remains ready and willing to discuss any reasonable proposal that SFKK may put forward in order to continue the park's operation.” Let's get this much straight as the finger-pointing gets underway. Workman's mismanagement of the lease agreement and negotiations with the park are clearly the problem, and he works for the state, so ultimately the economic development failure points to the governor. You can't blame this one on the Mayor. In fact, in one way it points to Jerry Abramson's skills in this area. Because if he'd been in charge, Jerry wouldn't have been taken by surprise by an operation so important to the local economy. Try to imagine the Cordish company pulling out of town and leaving Fourth Street Live! a ghost town. Well, Abramson risked a ton of political capital to keep the company here, feeling that the downtown development was vital to the city's future. Sure, he gave away a bunch of cash and botched the P.R., but who's to say that if he hadn't, Cordish wouldn't have closed up its sports bar and tourist-y concepts and taken its money elsewhere. Remember when Ford and GE have teetered on the brink of leaving town? Abramson just wouldn't let it happen. I haven't looked up the details of the park's lease with the Fair Board, but it's safe to say that the park was the most important tenant out there. It was an important part of the city's skyline, and of its charm. Its departure is another unwanted helping of bad news for the state's budget. Did Workman not see that things were going downhill? Tearing down Chang!, the world-renowned roller coaster, should have been a sign that extraordinary efforts would be needed to keep the park alive. So I'm blaming Workman, regardless of the CYA statement above. You can't really blame him for losing the University of Louisville's football, baseball and basketball teams, but you can wonder why Fairgrounds Stadium hasn't become a mecca for local high school sports. Remember the local experiments with pro hockey and arena football? Tops on their lists of problems, as I recall, were the difficulties in reaching a lease agreement with Workman. And difficult lease agreements with the amusement park go back to Ed Hart's days operating the original Kentucky Kingdom. Maybe that's just part of the business, but it's hard to see where Workman's leadership is working. He's been the Fair Board President and CEO since 1993. If anyone's going to take the fall for the Six Flags disaster, and clearly someone should, it should be him.

ADD A COMMENT

	Heart of Ophelia   fri feb 05 2010 at 7:39 am         ·  Good riddance. It has been a death trap for years due to them not keeping the rides up to par. Take the rides down and ship them to a park that will monitor the upkeep and safety of them!
	imperfect   fri feb 05 2010 at 8:17 am         ·  I think someone has a man crush on Jerry...just sayin.
	Abby Miller H.   fri feb 05 2010 at 8:49 am         ·  Rick...Great post with astute observations. In the end I can't agree the Mayor's blameless. After all, this is his city, and SFKK is a rather large employer. Given their past problems and their current bankruptcy, I'd think the mayor would have been overseeing or at least checking in on the status of negotiations for the park to stay in Louisville and remain a viable option for employment and enjoyment. Yes it does seem like Workman is the root for break downs in communications and deals for a lot of things at the fairgrounds. Let's face it, you can rename the place all you want, but it will always be "the fairgrounds" to us locals. But, in the end, a portion of the responsibility and accountability lie with the mayor of the city. As you pointed out, he kept Cordish here and leaned on several other big businesses to stay in town. His answer can't be, "well i had no idea." It's his job to have the information. I have to wonder if his political aspirations may have distracted him from that rather large and looming amusement park easily viewable every single time he flew out of town. On a personal note let me point out i'm a Washington Redskins fan. There's a connection you know. Daniel Snyder bought the team and has run it into the ground. Coincidentally enough, he bought into Six Flags and took control of it in 2005 in a proxy fight. He installed his own management team and proceeded to run Six Flags into bankruptcy. So there's blame to go around.
	davilledude   fri feb 05 2010 at 11:20 am         ·  Killer lead in! "What we have here is a failure to negotiate." You still got it, buddy.
	Steve Magruder   fri feb 05 2010 at 11:40 am         ·  I don't detect mismanagement on the Fair Board's part. If there's something I'm missing, point me to it. It seems clear to me that SFKK is the one acting in bad faith here.
	Rick Redding   fri feb 05 2010 at 12:24 pm         ·  the way i see it, Steve, is that now that there's a crisis, all the politicians are rushing in to try, in vain, to save the park. The problem is they were trusting Workman and the Fair Board to work out a deal. If anyone outside of the Fair Board had known this was a possibility, i think a lot of effort would have gone into preventing it, like they're doing today.
	Steve Magruder   fri feb 05 2010 at 2:12 pm         ·  Rick, I think I can sign onto that. It does seem like there should have been some higher level focus by the Mayor and the Metro Council on this matter, and that just leaving it to the Fair Board and its apparent standard operating procedure (whether a normally good one or not) wasn't going to produce the best result.
	Steve Magruder   fri feb 12 2010 at 5:59 pm         ·  Clearly the problem? What facts do you possess that makes it "clear"?