$400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

[LargoWinch]

Ok this thing took 4 years to plan, 2 years to build and now, - 8 months after opening - this $400MM park is bankrupt.

And listen to this:

"The park’s owners were unable to find bidders willing to pay at least $35 million at a Dec. 15 auction."
http://www.counton2.com/cbd/news/sta...quidate/18731/

Economic recovery anyone?

PS: Jim, perhaps "theme parks foreclosure" should be another of your indicators?






Jan 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy court has ordered that HRP Myrtle Beach Holdings LLC, the parent company of Hard Rock Park, can liquidate its assets under Chapter 7.

On Jan. 2, the company filed a motion asking the court to convert all its Chapter 11 cases to Chapter 7 cases.

Hard Rock Park is a 50 acre rock 'n' roll theme park located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The park opened in April 2008 after nearly two years of construction.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssC...39785020090107

[petertribo]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

What a disaster!

Can the USA afford to lose critical INFRASTRUCTURE like Rock 'n Roll Theme Parks?

I hope Paulson has a Temp TARP ready for these Rockers until Barry O's
new American Recovery Program can give them permanent shelter.

After all, what's more American than rock 'n roll, Hard Rockin' and Bailouts?

[don]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

Or a Jackalope Ranch Restaurant, featuring Progressive Southwestern :confused: cuisine.

"The highly anticipated Jackalope Ranch restaurant, which cost in excess of $36 million to build, opens today in Indio.

With its intricately designed interior and lush outdoor special event venues, many hope the facility will become a Coachella Valley destination and help the east valley secure a piece of the tourism pie.


“There's nothing like it in the desert,” said Indio City Manager Glenn Southard. “It's 21,000 square feet — it's like two ... Cheesecake Factory (restaurants).”


Though dozens of restaurants across the valley have shuttered in recent months, new places like Jackalope Ranch continue to open, providing jobs at a time when unemployment continues to soar."


Perhaps the spark will ignite in Indigo, with 100s of enraged waitresses tired of being jerked from one "this one's different" restaurant closing to another :eek:

[FRED]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

Or a Jackalope Ranch Restaurant, featuring Progressive Southwestern :confused: cuisine.

"The highly anticipated Jackalope Ranch restaurant, which cost in excess of $36 million to build, opens today in Indio.

With its intricately designed interior and lush outdoor special event venues, many hope the facility will become a Coachella Valley destination and help the east valley secure a piece of the tourism pie.


“There's nothing like it in the desert,” said Indio City Manager Glenn Southard. “It's 21,000 square feet — it's like two ... Cheesecake Factory (restaurants).”


Though dozens of restaurants across the valley have shuttered in recent months, new places like Jackalope Ranch continue to open, providing jobs at a time when unemployment continues to soar."


Perhaps the spark will ignite in Indigo, with 100s of enraged waitresses tired of being jerked from one "this one's different" restaurant closing to another :eek:

Many restaurant investors are re-learning a simple fact: no one has to go out to eat.

[Andreuccio]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

Or a Jackalope Ranch Restaurant, featuring Progressive Southwestern :confused: cuisine.

"The highly anticipated Jackalope Ranch restaurant, which cost in excess of $36 million to build, opens today in Indio.

With its intricately designed interior and lush outdoor special event venues, many hope the facility will become a Coachella Valley destination and help the east valley secure a piece of the tourism pie.


“There's nothing like it in the desert,” said Indio City Manager Glenn Southard. “It's 21,000 square feet — it's like two ... Cheesecake Factory (restaurants).”


Though dozens of restaurants across the valley have shuttered in recent months, new places like Jackalope Ranch continue to open, providing jobs at a time when unemployment continues to soar."


Perhaps the spark will ignite in Indigo, with 100s of enraged waitresses tired of being jerked from one "this one's different" restaurant closing to another :eek:

They built that in Indio? :eek: Why would anyone drop $36 million in Indio?

It's been a few years since I was there, so maybe things have changed, but I remember Indio as a very small, slow town at the far edge of the corridor of towns along the 10 Freeway starting with Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage. Indio's about a half an hour drive from Palm Springs. After Indio is empty desert for about an hour and a half, until one arrives at scenic Blythe, which I affectionately refer to as Blight. (No offense to any iTulipers who actually live in Blythe. I'm sure it's wonderful. The name and location make an easy target. )

There's nothing wrong with Indio, but it's not where I'd pick to open a 21,000 foot restaurant complex with "intricately designed interior and lush outdoor special event venues", even in the best of times. Hell of a risk.

[don]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

They built that in Indio? :eek: Why would anyone drop $36 million in Indio?

It's been a few years since I was there, so maybe things have changed, but I remember Indio as a very small, slow town at the far edge of the corridor of towns along the 10 Freeway starting with Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage. Indio's about a half an hour drive from Palm Springs. After Indio is empty desert for about an hour and a half, until one arrives at scenic Blythe, which I affectionately refer to as Blight. (No offense to any iTulipers who actually live in Blythe. I'm sure it's wonderful. The name and location make an easy target. )

There's nothing wrong with Indio, but it's not where I'd pick to open a 21,000 foot restaurant complex with "intricately designed interior and lush outdoor special event venues", even in the best of times. Hell of a risk.

I walk on occasion with a guy at the local park who started his prison medical career at Blythe. That was where all the new state prison hires had to serve time. The locals? They started work at Blythe's prison and at first opportunity, transferred out. Skedaddled :cool:

[don]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...tlantaspan.jpg

Here's another whopper. File under Hegemonal Menapause

Hard Times Find Replica of White House for Sale

The replica of George W. Bush’s desk still sits in the Oval Office beneath the Iranian and American flags. The seal of the president of the United States still adorns the floor mats across the hall from the zebra-skin rug. And the porch overlooking the 75-car parking lot is still called the Truman Balcony.

But soon enough, change is coming to Fred Milani’s replica of the White House, an outsized casualty of the national housing crisis.

For the last seven years, almost as long as President Bush has been in Washington, Mr. Milani, an Iranian-American home developer, has lived in a scaled-down version of the presidential mansion in Atlanta. A private Xanadu for Mr. Milani, a headache for neighbors and a destination for camera-wielding gawkers, the 16,500-square-foot home has become a kooky symbol of this boom-boom city’s ever-growing residential skyline.
But now, like the current occupant of the real White House, Mr. Milani is planning to leave his home.

“I still do not want to sell,” he said. “But I will.”

Inside its wrought-iron gates, the Atlanta White House is a singular pastiche of Middle Eastern décor (wall rugs, a hookah), American political kitsch (Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation painted onto a bedroom wall), religious iconography (a tapestry of “The Last Supper,” a giant crucifix) and self-promotion (an “M” tiled into the pool, a bust of Mr. Milani).

It falls to Shawn Ghiai, the real estate agent for the Atlanta White House, to answer the question of who would want to move into such a personalized home? “Wealthy international buyers, most likely,” Mr. Ghiai said. “Or maybe I’ll contact one of the contenders for the real White House, maybe John McCain or Ross Perot.”

Is Mr. Milani Iranian regime change material or what

[GRG55]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

Many restaurant investors are re-learning a simple fact: no one has to go out to eat.

Are we to understand that all those acres of granite countertop and commercial cooktops installed in America's designer kitchens during the housing boom are finally going to be put to use.

Imagine that...

[oddlots]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

No wonder the western world is confused. File these stories under the definition of non-linearity. How do you go from what the Blackstone CEO described as the best market he has ever seen to the demise of Wall Street in toto in a period of, what, a year... from building an abomination (sorry hate them - especially now) like that theme park to its wipe out to the tune of what, billions in 8 months...? If we're all naive empiricists whiplash is involved. Oprah should add Hyman Mysky to her book club reading list and copies should be sent to everyone with Public Health Departments paying the bill.

[LazyBoy]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

If we're all naive empiricists whiplash is involved. Oprah should add Hyman Mysky to her book club reading list and copies should be sent to everyone with Public Health Departments paying the bill.

I don't know the Mysky reference, but some non-bandwagon economic recommendations via Oprah might actually have an effect.

[don]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

This may have been posted elsewhere. If so, my apologies.

Las Vegas Journal
Stimulus Money for a Mob Museum. Got a Problem?

LAS VEGAS — After taking a hail of bipartisan bullets in recent days over the suggestion that a federal stimulus package should help pay for a proposed $50 million museum here on the history of organized crime, the project’s godfathers are returning fire, complaining that Washington pols are scapegoating the museum and the city.

The planned Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, a k a “the Mob Museum” on its own Web site, is to include interactive exhibits where visitors can snap their mug shots, stand in police lineups and wiretap one another. Such a center, Mayor Oscar B. Goodman said in an interview Thursday, is “absolutely falling within the four corners of what President-elect Obama is trying to achieve.”


“This is a project where all the plans are in place and we can start it within 30 days,” said Mr. Goodman, a former criminal defense lawyer who represented several Mafia figures in the 1970s and 1980s.

Slated to open in 2010, the museum would occupy the entire 42,000 square feet of a three-story neoclassical building that was the first federal courthouse in Clark County and one of the sites of the 1950 hearings into organized crime led by Senator Estes Kefauver, Democrat of Tennessee.

Rock On

[petertribo]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

I have two thoughts on this.

First, isn't Bush building his Museum in Dallas? That's supposed to be $300 Million. Seems to me there's synergy here, combine the two. So, it would the Las Vegas Museum of War Crimes, Organized Crime and Corruption of Law Enforcement. One problem would be lack of space for all the needed exhibits.

Second, failing number 1, what ever happened to Corporate Sponsorships commonly used in such a situation to drum up more business? Seems to me this would be a perfect vehicle for Accounting Companies, Ratings Agencies, GSEs, RE Companies, Financial Institutions, War Racketeers, etc. For instance, Whackenhut could do the Security?

Someone should start a contest with a real prize for the most rotten, corrupt, useless, stupid project that will come out of Obama's Recovery Plan. Or maybe even have categories and a mock Awards Night hosted by Jon Stewart.

[Rajiv]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

I don't know the Mysky reference, but some non-bandwagon economic recommendations via Oprah might actually have an effect.

Hyman Minsky

Hyman Minsky's theories about debt accumulation received revived attention in the media during the Subprime mortgage crisis of the late 2000s.[3]

Minsky argued that a key mechanism that pushes an economy towards a crisis is the accumulation of debt. He identified 3 types of borrowers that contribute to the accumulation of insolvent debt: Hedge Borrowers; Speculative Borrowers; and Ponzi Borrowers.

The "hedge borrower" is one who borrows with the intent of making debt payments from cash flows from other investments; the "speculative borrower" who borrows based on the belief that the appreciation of the value of the assets (e.g. real estate) to refinance or pay-off their debt but who does not have sufficient resources to repay the original loan, otherwise; and the "Ponzi borrower" (named for Charles Ponzi, see also Ponzi scheme) who relies on continually rolling over the principal into new investments.

[don]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

I have two thoughts on this.

First, isn't Bush building his Museum in Dallas? That's supposed to be $300 Million. Seems to me there's synergy here, combine the two. So, it would the Las Vegas Museum of War Crimes, Organized Crime and Corruption of Law Enforcement. One problem would be lack of space for all the needed exhibits.

Second, failing number 1, what ever happened to Corporate Sponsorships commonly used in such a situation to drum up more business? Seems to me this would be a perfect vehicle for Accounting Companies, Ratings Agencies, GSEs, RE Companies, Financial Institutions, War Racketeers, etc. For instance, Whackenhut could do the Security?

Someone should start a contest with a real prize for the most rotten, corrupt, useless, stupid project that will come out of Obama's Recovery Plan. Or maybe even have categories and a mock Awards Night hosted by Jon Stewart.

All of the above should be located in Washington as contemporary monuments. Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln- so yesterday

[GRG55]

Re: $400 million Hard Rock theme park liquidated after being open for 8 months!

Many restaurant investors are re-learning a simple fact: no one has to go out to eat.

FEBRUARY 13, 2009
Consumers Cut Food Spending Sharply

Markets and Restaurants Feel the Pinch as People Purchase Generic Brands and Stay Home

The bad economy is hitting America right in the stomach.
Consumers have cut back sharply on food spending, shunning restaurants, opting for generic products over brand names, trading in lattes for home-brewed coffee and shopping for bargains. That is hurting sales and profits at many food processors, grocery chains and restaurants.

In 2008's fourth quarter, consumer spending on food fell at an inflation-adjusted 3.7% from the third quarter, according to data from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. That is the steepest decline in the 62 years the government has compiled the figure...