CONNEAUT LAKE, PA. Park plans to raise funds

Plans call for the construction of a conference center at the amusement park.
CONNEAUT LAKE, Pa. (AP) -- A financially troubled amusement park that is home to the country's sixth-oldest wooden roller coaster is trying to hire a consulting firm to help raise money for renovations and make the park a year-round draw.
Herb Brill, the court-appointed custodian for Conneaut Lake Park, said he wants to hire Pittsburgh consulting firm Linden Partners to help create an endowment and guide a fund-raising campaign for the 110-year-old park.
Brill has announced plans to raise as much as $15 million to fix up the 99-year-old Hotel Conneaut and the Dreamland Ballroom, build an 8,000-square-foot conference center and create an endowment to ensure the park's future.
"Once you make those three buildings year-round, then we can generate income year-round. We cannot continue to rely on the 111-day amusement park season," Brill said.
In the black
The park, home of the 74-year-old Blue Streak roller coaster, netted $300,000 on revenues of $2.3 million in 2001 and continued to operate in the black on revenues of $2.7 million this year.
Linden Partners has offered to work for the park for $20,000, which Brill said he plans to pay for with a grant from the Northwest Regional Planning and Development Commission, an economic development agency.
Baker and Associates, an engineering and construction firm, has developed renovation plans for free.
Lawsuit
Besides money problems, the park's future is clouded by a lawsuit over ownership.
In a trial that began in June, the park's former operator, Gary Harris, claims he still has a 99-year lease to the park's land. The trial is expected to finish in December.
Conneaut Lake welcomed Harris when he spent more than $4 million to rescue the amusement park from bankruptcy in the early 1990s.
But that changed when the park closed during parts of the 1995 and 1996 seasons, and shops and restaurants along the lake reported a 40 percent drop in business. In 1997, Harris was convicted of racketeering and evading $115,000 in taxes in an unrelated venture in Ohio.
Brill contends Harris gave the park to the community so it would not be seized by the government. Harris' attorney has said there was no such gift, and the community took over the park while his client was serving 27 months in federal prison.