Filmmaker has idea for park in Akron

By Stephanie Warsmith

Akron Beacon Journal

An amusement park ... in Akron.

The idea may seem far-fetched — and it may well be — but it earned a mention in a recent book and a Time Magazine article published this week.

Whimsical director Wes Anderson poses the concept in the foreword to a new book about Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, with whom he’s collaborated on several movies.

“It will include hundreds of animatronic characters and creatures, rides through vast invented landscapes and buildings, extensive galleries of textiles and sculptures, plus an ongoing original music score piped-in everywhere,” Anderson wrote in Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia.

If the park is built, Anderson said it would go in Mothersbaugh’s hometown: Akron.

Akron leaders contacted Wednesday hadn’t heard about the Anderson/Mothersbaugh park pipe dream.

“Nada,” Stephanie York, the city’s spokeswoman, said in an email. “First I heard of it.”

City leaders, though, seemed open to the idea, even suggesting possible spots for the hypothetical theme park.

“I’ve got a great location for them: the Innerbelt, right downtown,” said Planning Director Marco Sommerville, of the bypass through downtown that city leaders have long wanted to put to a different use.

Anderson said in the article that he would be the “facilitator” for the amusement park, which would be “conceived and designed entirely” by Mothersbaugh. Anderson said a visitor to the park “will be amused and frightened, often simultaneously.”