Theme Park

From the Palm Beach Post-

The dreams of laboratories, medical discoveries and scientific breakthroughs at Mecca Farms have faded away as the vision of Scripps Florida moved a few miles to the east.

How do roller coasters, a water park and 15 hotels in its place sound?

That's the unsolicited proposal a three-person development team from a yet-unformed corporation submitted to the county Friday. It is the first formal bid the county has received for the former orange grove it bought for Scripps.

The $73 million offer to buy the 1,920-acre property in northern Palm Beach County also includes building a golf course, movie theater, 12,000-seat amphitheater, shops and restaurants.

Leading the charge: two Broward County octogenarians, one a longtime banker, the other the lead contractor of the Pirates World theme park in Dania Beach, open from 1967 to 1975.

"This isn't something you can dream up overnight," Mark Zenobia, 85, of Pirates World fame, said in a phone interview from his Hallandale Beach home. "It's a $2 billion deal. It isn't a carnival."

James Ryan, a North Palm Beach-based attorney representing the group, met with County Administrator Bob Weisman on Friday morning to drop off the plan.

"We certainly would like the opportunity to come and meet with them (commissioners) in person and speak to them as a board," he said.

After ditching plans to build Scripps at Mecca, undone by a federal judge's ruling that limited construction there, a majority of commissioners endorsed building more than 3,800 homes on the land, expecting to earn their investment back and more.

The first county commission hearing to discuss changes to the comprehensive plan for such a development is tentatively scheduled for April 18.

I'd think a theme park would do good business here in Palm Beach County. It would give local residents a cheap alternative in contrast to the expensive and more remote Disney World.

TFM has no objections to building a park at Mecca.(Though we could probably do without another shopping center and golf course) Of course I don't live anywhere near it either. We await the local NIMBY reaction.

Linked to- Bullwinkle, Blue Star, Third World County, World According to Carl,