County clears plan for amusement park in Williams

Coconino County approved the creation of a theme park district that could lead to a half-billion-dollar amusement park on the north side of Williams, Arizona, according to the Arizona Daily Sun.

The amusement park would be on 475 acres on the city’s north side, plus 21 acres in downtown for a long-proposed, $20 million Arizona State Railroad Museum.

Here’s how the district and its governing board would work:

The five-member board has representatives from the city of Williams, the city of Phoenix and the state. The district would have the power to issue up to $1 billion in bonds to finance the project, would retain ownership of the project and would have the ability to impose a user tax of up to 9 percent on sales and income within the district to pay back that bond.

Although the city remains vague on what the amusement park would contain, it’s estimated to cost between $175 million and $500 million. It’s also estimated it would generate $3.5 million to $4.3 million in sales tax — boosting annual revenues by nearly a quarter.

There still are questions about how such an amusement park would get access to the massive amounts of water it would need — especially when Williams in the middle of water restrictions and a persistent drought. Then you would need more fire protection, police and housing resources.

And the rosy estimates for such an amusement park seem overly rosy. Even so, the basic infrastructure for Williams (population: 3,000) seem far too meager for a development that’s supposed to draw millions of visitors a year. However, according to various reports, amusement park attendance has risen worldwide for the last few years after hitting the skids during the 2000s.

Longtime readers may remember developers proposed a $700 million amusement park for Williams way back in 2006. At the time, developers thought they could 10 million visitors — double what the Grand Canyon sees each year. The Sun reported that the developers never attracted the financing they needed, and two of them were fined for improperly selling investments to the park without a state license.

(Image of downtown Williams by David via Flickr)