RIDE'S OVER AT BOARDWALK & BASEBALL; PIECES SELL CHEAP
By Michael Blumfield of The Sentinel Staff
A theme park that once drew thousands seeking thrills and chills drew dozens seeking staplers, bolts, tables, credit-card machines and other business essentials Saturday. And they weren't willing to pay tourist prices for the goods, either.
Sentimentality was one commodity in short supply at a liquidation auction of Boardwalk & Baseball near Haines City, which has been closed since January. The 405-acre property is to be sold. So its owners, Busch Entertainment Corp., thought a huge garage sale - conducted by professional auctioneers - was the way to clean out leftover supplies.
The 75 or so customers who came to the deserted park were no pushovers. Men wearing jeans, baseball caps and T-shirts stood cross-armed in a warehouse, waiting for the auctioneer to begin barking through a portable public-address system.
Although a children's Ferris wheel and a mile-long roller coaster were on the block, most of the material available from offices and restaurants was far from inspirational. Some of the clutter was nearly unidentifiable, but at day's end most of it was sold. The roller coaster remained unclaimed.
Several shoppers were starting businesses and needed a few supplies. Others were junk dealers.
Auctioneer Jack Burch, a mustachioed barker with a practiced charm and cowboy hat and boots, tried early to convince his audience that they stood to pick up tremendous bargains. He grabbed a spool of copper wire from a stack of items sitting on a wooden pallet. "They tell me that this wire alone is worth $60," he said.
"Oh, boo! Get out of here!" responded one man, who said the wire was worth $5 tops.
Nevertheless, the 4-foot tall stack - filled with bolts and other metal items went for $700 to an unidentified man who said he would resell it.
Later, the auctioneers had trouble identifying the serious bidders. They thought they had sold an item for $270 but found the supposed offer came from someone who just happened to be talking to his neighbor. "We take any movement about the waist, folks," Burch warned them.
After an hour and a half of selling power supplies for $70, utility carts for $50, credit-card machines for $17.50 and video monitors for $32.50, the auction headed outside to the bigger items.
On the faded boardwalk, sheets of plywood had been laid to cover holes in the wood. "Watch your step, folks," Burch said.
Whole buildings resembling barns, Western movie sets and army PX depots, were for sale. They were being picked up for $175, $375 and $450, but the buyers - chiefly in the construction business - had to find a way to remove them from the site.
Burch came to the kiddie Ferris wheel, lying on its side. "As you can see," he said earnestly, "it is fully operational," and he gave one of the compartments a half-hearted shove. Some in the crowd snickered.
"Who'll give me $20,000? $20,000!" Burch started. Then he was down to $10,000, then $5,000, $4,000, and finally $3,000. No takers. He stopped the bidding and moved to another item.
Someone quietly approached the auctioneers and bought the small Ferris wheel for $3,500. Its larger sibling had been sold earlier for an undisclosed amount.
Finally, about three hours after the bidding started, the auctioneers and crowd made their way to the Hurricane, a wooden-trussed, mile-long roller coaster that reaches a peak of 96 feet.
A few people wearing Ralph Lauren shirts, who had been standing quietly in the back during the warehouse auctioning, made their way toward Burch.
"This is the item that separates the men from the boys," the auctioneer barked.
He called up the park's president, Dick Howard, to list the ride's features - how it came with extra tracks and beams, how it would cost about $1 million to disassemble and move but that a new one from scratch would cost $5 million to $5.5 million.
Burch went over a few more rules, including the requirement that the successful bidder deposit $10,000 before leaving.
"OK, $1 million, who'll give me $1 million?" Burch began. In the space of two minutes, Burch jumped down to $500,000, then $400,000, then $250,000. No one made a sound. "Any bidders at all on the Hurricane?"
Apparently, Burch was facing an audience of boys.
"You can all go home," the auctioneer said, reading remarks he had prepared in anticipation of no offers.
"You can all sleep on it. You can contact the park in the morning or the morning after that or the morning after that." The ride would be available for $250,000.
Tough sales are part of the legacy of Boardwalk & Baseball, which started life in 1975 as Circus World, a big-top theme park.
Never a huge success, the park was bought by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc. of Orlando in 1986 and converted into the baseball theme park.
The company saw attendance continue to dwindle and sold it to Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. in December 1989. Busch closed it six weeks later and now wants to dump the property and everything on it.
Only the adjoining stadium, the spring training home of the Kansas City Royals, will remain.
Two men from American Coaster Enthusiasts, a 3,000-member national club of roller coaster fans, were disappointed the roller coaster wasn't sold.
They want to see it put to use and are eager to know where it will be relocated.
Bill Figie, 42, a Cocoa computer analyst, said the Hurricane was in the top 20 of the nation's 200 or so roller coasters.
It is particularly appreciated as a "woody," the enthusiast's name for a wooden-beamed coaster, because it gives a softer, more forgiving ride than a steel-beamed coaster.
Figie said he had ridden it hundreds of times in the 10 years the ride ran. "That first drop on the outlying leg was excellent," he said. "It always gave us a thrill."
Park president Howard said he was not surprised that no one bid on the coaster, considering how unusual an item it is.
He also wasn't disappointed that the owners only got a few hundred dollars for some of the buildings since it was better than paying somebody to demolish them.
"We need to get them out of here so it looks like land instead of an old park," Howard said.