Notes from Winter Chill Out 2022

This got me looking for pier examples. Looks like they could fit a pier the width of Santa Monica or Chicago Navy between Windseeker and Gatekeeper. I see another one in Galveston, TX. Has anyone been to any other amusement park piers? How was the experience?

People have been wanting to build into the lake for as long as this site has been on the air. While not impossible, I think y'all underestimate the cost and environmental impact.

It would be easier just to build out over the sand and give the illusion of a boardwalk/pier. The amount of land between the current park boundary and shore is a lot, especially if you go east/west along the shore.

Maybe those who dream of a pier over the beach haven’t been to the park on a stormy day when the entire (Not) Wicked Twister Midway and it’s rides are inundated with sand.

Of course a Pier on either side of the peninsula would be subject to weather extremities or just plain miserable days. RCMAC mentioned the sand situation. There are several operating days that I have felt sorry for the WT crew with the nor'eastern wind howling at them. But, predominantly the wind and weather usually comes from the west, and I recall a couple years ago the several weeks of flooding in the Famous Daves area and beyond.

Last evening I watched a Youtube of "Euclid Beach is Closed for the Season". At one point they showed their Pier which was stretching out into Lake Erie and bustling with activity. In the 60's they showed how the outer areas of it were closed off due to the expenses of maintaining it. Presently there is a newer pedestrian pier there maintained by the Metroparks.

Avoid the piers during "midgies" season.

Ignoring the pier idea for the moment, a pretty sizeable two story restaurant could be tucked behind the Coliseum without detracting from the midway beach view, and would be a pretty great spot for a second story VIP viewing area of a potential stage that straddles the border between the park and beach.

Very good point, in my mind I was assuming they would use the WT footprint but using the land NW of WTs footprint along with some of the spike pad would open that view up!

It's just a big grassy field right now, and ignoring the true pier idea, there's certainly enough room over a section of the beach I don't think is used regularly that they could put a nice deck over it "pier style" without going into the water as 99er proposed. And build a nice 2/3 (with a roof deck) story restaurant/lounge/vip area.

I think that would also be big enough that the first floor alone (making some assumptions about how much of the old aquatic stadium footprint is used, I see a plot up to 205'x165' of available space roughly, so around 33,000 square feet) we could finally have a "Harmony Hall" type dining facility as many have pointed out would be good along with a nice sit down/table service location on the second floor, and open lounge space on the "deck" over the beach.

It would certainly be an impressive structure at that scale.

Still vote to remodel the inside of the coliseum and make part of that the restaurant.

Doing a change of use remodel on the coliseum would require a lot of code changes and would likely cost much more to modernize than to tear down and rebuild.

(A change of use from one building code use designation to a different one requires a previously grandfathered building to be brought up to current codes for the new use designation.)

I am not aware of any real historical building designation for it to be saved.

The only structure that had a Historical designation was the Breakers, which due to the remodeling, was lost.

Jeff said:

People have been wanting to build into the lake for as long as this site has been on the air. While not impossible, I think y'all underestimate the cost and environmental impact.

This ^^ especially the environmental impact and approval that would be needed to do so.