Six Flags, former Elitch Gardens owner, files for Chapter 11 - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

http://www.tx-mc-alphaphi.org/index.html?subaction=showfull&id=1266014845&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&
The board of Six Flags (OTCBB: voted last week to begij reorganization proceedingsin U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Districtof Delaware. The company listed assets of $3.03 billionh and debts of $2.36 billion in its filing. Cascadwe Investments, the investment firm for Microsoft foundeBill Gates, owns 11.1 percenrt of the voting securitiexs in New York-based Six Flags, the largest share, bankruptchy documents show. Six Flagsa has 97.7 million shares of common stockjand 1.1 million sharez of preferred stock. "The current management team inheriteda $2.
4 billiomn debt load that cannot be particularly in these challenging financia markets," said Mark Shapiro, president and CEO of Six in a statement. "As a result, we are cleanin g up the past and positioninb the company for futuregrowth ... Following a record year of performance in which completedthe three-year turnaround of our system-wide park this action to clean up the balance sheet paves the way for a full revival of the Shapiro said. Elitch Gardens had operated for more than a century at a northwestDenver site.
The old Elitcb Gardens shut downin 1994, and a new version of the amusemenyt park opened a year later in downtown The local Gurtler family and its financial partners sold the new park to Premieer Parks Inc. in 1996 for $65 million. It becamse Six Flags Elitch Gardens two years when Premier acquired SixFlags Inc. and changed its corporate name to Six Six Flags soldoff Elitch's and other properties in 2007 in a seriesd of transactions that left the Denver attractiohn in the hands of CNL Income Propertiew Inc., a real estate investmentf trust based in Orlando, Fla. CNL reportedlh paid $312 million for the properties.
CNL arrangecd for Parc Management LLC of Floridza tomanage Elitch's. Six Flags now operates about 20 Northn Americanamusement parks.