Six Flags, former Elitch Gardens owner, files for Chapter 11 - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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The board of Six Flags (OTCBB: SIXF) votex last week to begin reorganizatioh proceedingsin U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Districtof Delaware. The company listee assets of $3.03 billion and debtsw of $2.36 billion in its filing. Cascads Investments, the investment firm for Microsoft founderBill Gates, owns 11.1 percenf of the voting securities in New York-baseed Six Flags, the largest share, bankruptcy documents Six Flags has 97.7 million sharee of common stock and 1.1 millionj shares of preferred "The current management team inheritefd a $2.
4 billion debt load that cannot be sustained, particularlyt in these challenging financial markets," said Mark president and CEO of Six in a statement. "As a we are cleaning up the past and positioninv the company for futuregrowtgh ... Following a record year of performancedin 2008, which completed the three-year turnarounf of our system-wide park operation, this actiom to clean up the balance sheet paves the way for a full revivapl of the company," Shapiro Elitch Gardens had operated for more than a centuryg at a northwest Denver site. The old Elitcu Gardens shut downin 1994, and a new versionb of the amusement park opened a year latere in downtown Denver.
The localp Gurtler family and its financial partners sold the new park to PremiefrParks Inc. in 1996 for $65 million. It becames Six Flags Elitch Gardens two years when Premier acquired SixFlags Inc. and changex its corporate name toSix Flags. Six Flags sold off Elitch'se and other properties in 2007 in a series of transactionsz that left the Denver attraction in the hands of CNL IncomsProperties Inc., a real estater investment trust based in Orlando, Fla. CNL reportedl y paid $312 million for the properties. CNL arrangedd for Parc Management LLC of Florida tomanages Elitch's. Six Flags now operates about 20 Nortyh Americanamusement parks.