At their meeting Tuesday, members of the Vinita City Council showed their enthusiasm and support for a proposed $2 billion theme park and resort being planned east of town by voting overwhelmingly to annex six square miles near the project in an effort to maintain influence over area development.
Mansion Entertainment Group, which announced plans in July for its American Heartland Theme Park and Resort as well as its associated Three Ponies RV Park and Campground, posted Wednesday on Facebook that a groundbreaking ceremony for the RV park is scheduled for Oct. 30. Mansion Entertainment bills itself as the leading performing arts, animation and studio brand in Branson, Missouri.
“We are thrilled to announce the start of construction on Three Ponies RV Park and Campground will begin this month,” the post states. “The project team will gather with state and local officials on Oct. 30 to break ground. We look forward to celebrating this major milestone as we begin our journey together.”
The campground is expected to open in 2025, and the theme park is proposed to open in 2026. But questions linger about what level of state support will be requested to improve infrastructure and support the proposed park, answers to which likely will not come until Oklahoma’s 2024 legislative session in the spring.
Meanwhile, a consultant who has spent more than 50 years working with theme parks, amusement parks, resorts and other entertainment venues, said the proposed campground could work, but he remains skeptical about the American Heartland Theme Park.
“The market isn’t there,” Dennis Speigel, founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based International Theme Park Services, Inc., told NonDoc on Thursday. “It’s not a supportable investment in that market for a theme park. Now for an RV park, that’s totally different. There may be a million campers that go through that area, and that could be fine. But in terms of building a theme park that’s going to draw 4.9 million people in the first year, it’s just not practical, and it’s totally unrealistic. They don’t have the tourism, and they don’t have the local population to support it. And the industry as a whole, I haven’t heard anybody say they think it’s a viable and possible idea.”
Vinita annexation of land effective immediately
With little discussion, the Vinita City Council voted 7-1 on Tuesday to annex six square miles from east of Vinita to Ten Mile Corner and State Highway 82. The council also passed an emergency measure making the annexation effective immediately.
Police Chief Mark Johnson wrote city council members in August that his department is capable of providing law enforcement services for the annexed area. However, as the area becomes developed and draws an influx of traffic, “expansion of the police department is also expected to maintain a satisfactory level of service to the citizens of our growing community,” he wrote.
Fire Chief Kevin Huxtable wrote to council members that “the majority of the area is already within our fire protection district” and that fire, rescue and first-response services to the new area will not be an issue.
Mayor Josh Lee told council members Tuesday evening he didn’t know when city trash service would be made available to the annexed area or how many residents would sign up for the service.
Kristy Adams, American Heartland Theme Park LLC‘s senior executive vice president of sales and marketing, provided a statement to NonDoc saying her company appreciates the council’s action.
“We commend the Vinita city leadership for their diligence in pursuing a path forward that is mutually beneficial to both the project and the community,” she said. “We look forward to continued positive and productive conversations in the next steps of this development.”
‘I need more information’
On Sept. 26, the Vinita City Council on held a public hearing and advanced the proposed annexation ordinance to the Oct. 17 meeting. During the nearly two-hour meeting Sept. 26, council members heard from several residents concerned about the amount of water the theme park and resort would need and the tons of trash it would produce each year.
Ward 1 City Councilwoman Stephanie Hoskin voted against the annexation both times, saying she was concerned about the strain it would have on city services and the cost. The spouse of former Vinita Mayor Chuck Hoskin Sr., Stephanie Hoskin said she is concerned there were no written agreements in place from the state, sovereign tribal nations or Mansion Entertainment to help with costs, especially those associated with water and sewer improvements.
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“I need more information,” Hoskin said during the Sept. 26 hearing.
Lee, the town’s current mayor, assured Hoskin more information would be forthcoming, perhaps as soon as next month’s city council meeting when it’s anticipated Mansion Entertainment will present a proposed memorandum of understanding on “certain aspects of the project.”
“There have been plenty of discussions since our last meeting,” Lee told Hoskin on Tuesday. “There’s a lot of discussion every week on that. They’re getting closer and closer. As far as having money in our bank account that we can start spending on water and sewer, no, we do not have any of that at this point in time.”
Lee told NonDoc on Sept. 8 that the city is still tallying what kind of financial assistance it will seek from the Oklahoma Legislature.
“I think $30 million, $35 million is probably the bottom number on that,” he said. “It could be north of that. It could be closer to $60 million if you start talking wastewater facilities, water storage and those kinds of things. It’s a big project, and it comes with big numbers. But it comes with a huge, huge, huge potential upside for us.”
Lee said it is logical for the Vinita community to reach out to the state for financial help because the theme park and resort will have a statewide economic impact.
Two weeks after the proposed park was announced, Senate Appropriations and Budget Chairman Roger Thompson (R-Okemah) said July 31 that he was surprised project backers had not met comprehensively with legislative leaders before issuing their press release.
“For you to come to the state and say, ‘I’m going to spend $2 billion and then you’re going to be my partner,’ when I don’t know what that partnership looks like? I’m starting at a disadvantage,” he said. “I like to be a good partner, but I don’t like to be boxed in.”
Thompson said he has signed a nondisclosure agreement that prevents him from discussing some of what he has been told about the theme park venture.
‘Anybody who’s drinking that Kool-Aid is in for a real shock’
Planned as a 1,000-acre development with a 125-acre theme park, the American Heartland Theme Park and Resort would be comparable in size to Magic Kingdom Theme Park and Disneyland Park. The proposal features an Americana environment with a variety of rides, live shows, family attractions, waterways and restaurants. The development is also slated to include a 300-room hotel and indoor water park.
The adjacent 320-acre Three Ponies RV Park and Campground, designed by Oklahoma architects ADG Blatt and announced as the development’s first phase, is being billed as the largest campground in the central U.S., with 750 RV spaces and 300 cabins, plus amenities.
As a proposed $2 billion investment, American Heartland officials have said their project will create more than 4,000 jobs and attract more than 4.9 million visitors from all over the world each year.
Speigel, who has been in the business of consulting and drawing up feasibility analysis for theme parks and amusement parks for nearly 50 years, said if you took all the people who live in states surrounding Oklahoma, tipped the states up and slid the people into the theme park, there still wouldn’t be enough customers to generate the revenue to service the debt.
“You gotta have the market,” he said. “You have to have the foundation for a theme park, and it just isn’t there. I hate to see them waste their money if they’re putting money from the state and any local money into this idea. It’s just not viable there.”
Speigel’s company has worked with such entertainment venues as Paramount Parks, the Fort Worth Zoo and Hershey Park. He said he has seen various ventures, some with state and local funding, fail even after sounding like good ideas. Those include the Wizard of Oz theme park in Kansas west of Kansas City — where construction never started after 10 years and an escalating budget that reached more than $800 million — and Hard Rock Park, which later became Freestyle Music Park. The music-themed park, which opened in 2008 with a concert by the Eagles and the Moody Blues in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, shut down after two years with foreclosure proceedings filed against it.
“Just because you have an idea doesn’t mean it’s a good one, and that’s the situation with this park,” Speigel said of American Heartland Theme Park and Resort. “It might be a great campground, but as a theme park and talking about Disneyesque quality, no they’re not. One attraction in Disney costs $200 million to $300 million-plus these days — one attraction, one ride. Anybody who’s drinking that Kool-Aid is in for a real shock.”
