Prologis buys 112-acre theme park in Santa Clara

San Francisco-based industrial real estate powerhouse has acquired California’s Great America theme park in Santa Clara for $310 million.

Cedar Fair, the Ohio-based owner of the 112-acre amusement park at 4701 Great America Pkwy., has sold the land for redevelopment, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The buyer was Prologis, an industrial real estate developer based in San Francisco.

As part of the deal, Cedar Fair signed a lease to continue operating Great America for up to 11 years, after which it would close for good.

The amusement park company sold the theme park land to slash corporate debt, it said. It bought the property from the city of Santa Clara in 2019 for $150 million

“We chose Prologis as our partner because of their deep ties in the Bay Area and their reputation for working closely with local communities on large developments,” Cedar Fair CEO Richard A. Zimmerman said in the statement.

Nonetheless, the deal announcement caught the city of Santa Clara by surprise.

“On the surface, it appears California’s Great America will not change in the short term,” Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmorby said in a statement. “My hope and goal is to keep California’s Great America there as long as possible in the long term.”

Prologis doesn’t “have a plan for future use” of the Great America property after Cedar Fair ends its lease, company spokeswoman Jennifer Nelson told the newspaper. In a separate statement, it said it planned to work with Santa Clara officials and community members about redeveloping the amusement park.

Great America was opened in the Bicentennial year of 1976, and grew to more than 60 rides and attractions, including the Gold Striker, among the highest ranked wooden roller coasters in the nation.

The Silicon Valley amusement park was developed on a former peach orchard by the Marriott Corp. The city of Santa Clara, which feared the park being redeveloped for housing, ultimately paid Marriott $93.5 million for the park in 1985, while spinning off 20 acres for development.

Its latest sale comes after amusement park operators were slammed by public health measures during the pandemic. In California, such parks were closed for more than a year, reopening only last spring, according to the Business Times.

Cedar Fair, which operates 15 parks around the nation, said it aimed to cut its corporate debt to $2 billion, from $2.6 billion in late March.

[San Francisco Business Times] – Dana Bartholomew

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