Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Summer's Over


I was terribly busy this Summer working crazy 12+ hour days at Fun Forest Amusements. I have been back to working as a carnie, supervising an Amusement Park and taking care of amusement park rides. It has been fun as always, but I knew that this would be the last Summer there, at least for the big rides.

The City of Seattle has been moving to eliminate the Fun Forest for some time and it has looked like this would definitely be the last Summer for the whole park to remain intact. The big rides, such as the large roller coaster (the Windstorm), the water ride, the Galleon, and Orbiter are no longer going to remain at the park. That part of the park is going to be changed and apparently taken away from the Fun Forest. In the city's "plans" for the Seattle Center, it looks like most of the whole area occupied by the Fun Forest is intended to be redeveloped into park area and some of it given to the Space Needle. The amusement park area seems to be intended to go away, which is unfortunate since it has been present since the 1962 World's Fair, when the Space Needle was built. The other unfortunate thing about this is the loss of jobs. There are many Summer and part-time positions that are offered by the Fun Forest that are now no longer going to be available because of the city's redeveloping of the Seattle Center. These positions were also often positions that required little experience, so they were good for unskilled workers and high school students and were available to almost anybody. It's tough to think about job losses, especially when the Seattle Times just ran a cover last week that claimed that 1 in 20 jobs were gone in the Seattle area. I guess this either helped contribute to that or it will for next year's statistics, since that will be when jobs will no longer be available. Aside from that, people are already losing jobs due to this.

One thing I don't understand, is where the city is getting money to redevelop something like the Seattle Center when there are such budget shortfalls. It seems that money coming in would have been better for the city than to have a project waiting for money to be infused into, that I can only imagine will sit by the wayside for some time. It seems that with libraries running short on money, schools closing due to similar issues, and economic problems that are spanning across the board, Seattle cannot afford to get into this "project".

As of yet, the fate of the Fun Forest still seems a bit unsure, though the skill-based games booths have been mostly stripped clean and dismantled and rides have been sold or are on the market. Still, will the city continue with this plan? Will a new Mayor change things at all? Will money go to this developing park project as other parks are forced to shut down? It's all a waiting game at this point, I guess...

2 comments:

fantastic said...

hmm interesting...i wonder where they'll get the money for that as well. it'll be sad not to have an amusement park downtown anymore...

Sione said...

Yeah, no amusement park anywhere near downtown after that all wraps up! It'll be Federal Way (eww) or nothing!