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

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The board of Six Flags (OTCBB: SIXF) voted last week to beginj reorganization proceedingsin U.S. Bankruptcy Courg for the Districtof Delaware. The company listed assetw of $3.03 billion and debts of $2.3t billion in its Cascade Investments, the investment firm for Microsoft foundedrBill Gates, owns 11.1 percent of the voting securities in New York-basedc Six Flags, the largest bankruptcy documents show. Six Flage has 97.7 million shares of commohn stockand 1.1 million shares of preferred stock. "The current management team inheritedda $2.
4 billion debt load that cannotg be sustained, particularly in these challenging financialo markets," said Mark president and CEO of Six in a statement. "As a result, we are cleaningt up the past and positioningt the company for futuregrowth ... Following a record year of performancein 2008, which completedr the three-year turnaround of our system-wide park this action to clean up the balance sheet paves the way for a full revivapl of the company," Shapiro said. Elitch Gardens had operated for more than a centurhy at a northwestDenver site.
The old Elitch Gardens shut down in and a new version of the amusemeng park opened a year later in downtown The local Gurtler family and its financiall partners sold the new park to PremieerParks Inc. in 1996 for $65 million. It becamwe Six Flags Elitch Gardensx twoyears later, when Premier acquired Six Flagzs Inc. and changed its corporate name toSix Flags. Six Flagxs sold off Elitch's and other properties in 2007 in a seriess of transactions that left the Denver attractio n in the hands of CNL IncomePropertiea Inc., a real estate investment trust based in Orlando, Fla. CNL reportedlyt paid $312 million for the properties.
CNL arrangedr for Parc Management LLC of Floridaz tomanage Elitch's. Six Flags now operates about 20 Nortbh Americanamusement parks.