American Heartland Theme Park (Vinita)

[shavethewhales]

Nope. There are plenty of rumors about this kind of stuff all the time, but most are absolute nonsense that get spouted on FB and spread around for the fun of it.

There's no way someone would open a third major theme park in this area. It's crazy that this is progressing as it is.

[patric]

Company claims Vinita theme park developer owes $5.5 million for unpaid work

https://nondoc.com/2024/05/09/company-claims-vinita-theme-park-developer-owes-5-5-million-for-unpaid-work/

[swake]

Company claims Vinita theme park developer owes $5.5 million for unpaid work

https://nondoc.com/2024/05/09/company-claims-vinita-theme-park-developer-owes-5-5-million-for-unpaid-work/

I for one am shocked!

/s

[Red Arrow]

I for one am shocked!

/s

Good thing you included the "/s".   

[shavethewhales]

There was a brief window when this project seemed somewhat legit. I mean, I never actually expected the full 2 billion dollar development as promised, but it looked like they might get something cool built after all.

At this point the wheels have just been slowly coming off. Turns out they didn't have a good plan for all the off site infrastructure and are still at the mercy of the state and local municipalities/infrastructure districts to do everything they want. Their plans for the RV park were completely upended - AFTER GROUNDBREAKING - because of easily foreseeable floodplain issues. Now this.

Fortunately for them, the state still seems eager to push this along. Vinita is cautious, but has agreed to everything so far. They need $35 million just to start the off-site utilities and civil infrastructure to support some of the development. I'm sure that number will grow in the future when the actual park kicks off - or IF it kicks off. They still have time to get the RV park design fixed and back under construction and maybe they could open that by 2026...

Ultimately I feel like this is going to become like the Grand Texas development down near Houston. They'll get the RV park built years behind schedule, then maybe some kind of small park or water park or small resort. Then it will stop there, about 80% short of the promised "$2 billion" Disney competitor.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

So reading the link Patric provided it sounds like Mansion really missed the mark and told the designers there are major changes in the design after the original design and haven't paid for the original design. It just sounds like Mansion is flying by the seat of their pants, and they haven't really done the research into the infrastructure for the site. It sounds like on just the RV park site they blew the design by making all the spaces 80' spots and having to go back and cut a number of the spaces to 40' but keeping the same number of spaces. I would think this is going to limit the number of big RV's with trailers and even smaller RV's pulling trailers. I'm just looking at this from what I have seen over the years of RV traffic around Arizona. A 30' fifth wheel being towed by a 1 ton crew cab pickup won't fit a 40' space, nor will a 30' or 35' RV towing a vehicle.

It's not uncommon to see this type of RV here especially around Lake Havasu, Roosevelt, Pleasant or Powell.

With Oologah, Hudson and Grand just a short distance away, I would think that there needs to be space for set ups like this.

[buffalodan]

There were three architects that were always mentioned in the design team. THG apparently had the master plan and Cunningham seems to be more of the hotel/building architect. I'm curious if those people are getting paid or if they are just accepting the risk? I'd assume that ADG's RV park is still progressing.

I'm also curious when the work actually stopped then. I'd think you would start getting unpaid bills, stop work while you talk with the owner, then sue. So this has probably been stalled for since Feb if not something more like November.