Within the midst of an American manufacturing collapse, Flint, Michigan, spent thousands and thousands constructing a twisted monument to the very trade that was leaving its residents excessive and dry. AutoWorld, the world’s first automotive theme park, was bought as the reply to Flint’s woes. It might flip across the metropolis with the very best unemployment within the nation. It lasted all of six months.
Whereas GM was busy slashing jobs in Flint, metropolis leaders concocted a hare-brained scheme, puffed up by a military of consultants with help from elected officers and federal packages. The concept was destined for greatness, one other manner for the folks of Flint to outlive off of automobiles as they’d carried out for many years. However from the beginning, the issues with AutoWorld had been apparent.
“While you ask Flint residents about AutoWorld, all of them say the identical factor: Both ‘Oh, we by no means went,’ or ‘We solely went one time — it was too costly for our household,’” Flint historian, College of Michigan-Flint archivist (and my sister) Colleen Marquis instructed Jalopnik. She’s steward of all types of intriguing items of memorabilia from AutoWorld, Flint’s failed try on the world’s first automotive-themed amusement park.
(A particular due to the College of Michigan-Flint and their archivist for permitting me time to comb by way of their packing containers of paperwork and memorabilia pertaining to AutoWorld.)
“Have you ever ever seen a lot ridiculous merch?” she stated, as we went by way of the packing containers of rocks glasses, private grooming kits, espresso mugs and dollhouse furnishings, all emblazoned proudly with the admittedly very cool Six Flags AutoWorld emblem. All of it from a park that was open common public hours for under six months.
The assorted items of flotsam validated my cynical perception that such locations are constructed solely to soak up cash from vacationers lulled into spending by alcohol or nostalgia or delicate mind trauma (or all three.) From that angle, a theme park in Flint, Michigan, within the ’80s, when unemployment was generally over 17 p.c, clearly made no sense.
However there have been moments of perverse, perhaps determined optimism. That or opportunism and grift. Perhaps AutoWorld was some combine of all of them. Wanting again on it, to the times when theme parks had been an enormous deal, the times of Nationwide Lampoon’s Trip, it’s laborious to inform how a lot was craven and the way a lot was silly.
Together with the tiny cups and ashtrays within the U of M-Flint archives are packing containers and packing containers of paperwork pertaining to the planning and improvement of AutoWorld. The College didn’t have a lot to do with the plans, aside from permitting for a couple of heaps to be designated as overflow parking for AutoWorld in the summertime.
I actually assume “planning for overflow parking at AutoWorld,” could possibly be the brand new “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” It seems, not a complete lot is smart concerning the world’s first automotive themed amusement park. The complete factor was a blunder, and the folks of Flint paid the worth for it.
How It Began
The concept to construct the primary automotive theme park in America’s Car Metropolis didn’t originate from Normal Motors, however from C.S. Harding Mott and his basis’s president, William White. Sure, that Mott, as in apple juice. His household got here from beverage cash, however this Mott invested within the automotive trade and was very lively in Flint. The Mott Basis would play a key function in getting AutoWorld constructed and ultimately sharing in its ruinous demise. GM would truly principally keep out of AutoWorld, aside from a $1 million donation. Former Normal Motors Chairman Roger Smith instructed the Flint Journal again in 2009 that he might see the mission was doomed from the beginning, however there was no stopping civic leaders.
What Mott initially envisioned was an Automotive Corridor of Fame and guests heart, the place the proud historical past of the automotive trade can be highlighted. One thing extra akin to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, which Ford himself designed to have a good time not simply the Ford Motor Firm and Detroit space achievements however industrial historical past usually. It might be a non-profit, hands-on museum or some kind of science museum. Detroit designer Minoru Yamasaki, designer of the unique World Commerce Middle, was tapped to come back got here up with plans for the middle in 1970. The ultimate architect for the park can be Randall Duell Associates — a agency chargeable for 22 theme parks throughout the U.S.
Flint simply so occurred to be in the course of an city revitalization mission that was alleged to prop up an already struggling metropolis. Thousands and thousands of {dollars} of funding flowed into the encompassing space. There was $80 million spent on constructing the College of Michigan-Flint campus. A $61 million Hyatt lodge with 35,000-foot conference heart and 400 rooms opened downtown. An industrial park within the former St. John’s neighborhood, a 54,000-square-foot market with native outlets and River Village — $40 million in residential planning — had been nearly carried out earlier than the C.S. Mott Basis even purchased the area for AutoWorld. The area got here within the type of the Industrial Mutual Help Auditorium — a former UAW-owned facility that hosted live shows by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Vacation for its members. The IMA can be absorbed into AutoWorld.
By then the preliminary estimate for the price of constructing AutoWorld had ballooned from $28 million in 1977 to $60 million. The park’s remaining prices would develop to $68 million earlier than it opened on July 4, 1984. So who paid for it? In response to the e-book No Miracles Right here: Combating City Decline in Japan And The USA by Theodore J. Gilman, the unique plan was for town to pay for no a part of the mission however using federal funds particularly would come again to hang-out Flint. By 1980, Flint Mayor James Rutherford entered discussions with the USA Division of Housing and City Improvement about making use of housing grants to the constructing of AutoWorld. Seemingly with no self-awareness, Rutherford predicted success in successful grants on account of Flint’s extremely excessive unemployment and poverty charges. He was proper and slightly over $13 million in federal funds went into constructing AutoWorld, regardless of the numerous want of the folks dwelling within the neighborhoods of Flint.
Historic Flint AutoWorld Basis was based to fund the constructing of the park by way of non-public funding. It might find yourself placing up $19.7 million to get the job carried out. The Mott Basis additionally put up a hefty, $14 million chunk — 1 / 4 of its yearly price range. The Mott Basis admitted funding AutoWorld would severely curtail different good it did within the metropolis. The state of Michigan tossed in practically $5 million after Republican Governor William Grawn Milliken got here round to ultimately help the mission. Town council additionally accredited a tax-exempt bond to the tune of $7.5 million. With all this official backing, non-public donations from town’s elite got here flooding in. Even former president Gerald Ford kicked in for AutoWorld.
Of the $13 million in HUD funds, Flint took out a $4.5 million CDBG bond to fund AutoWorld. The issue with that bond is that Flint needed to make funds of $727,000 yearly. Later, if town didn’t pay, the quantity can be deducted from the whole Neighborhood Improvement Block Grant funds HUD dispersed throughout town. Organizations in Flint counted on the complete quantities from these grants yearly to maintain their doorways open. Town defaulted on the grant in 1987, forcing nonprofits within the metropolis to cut back companies or shut altogether. The Mott Basis gave Flint a $4.6 million grant, however a prepayment clause prevented town from paying the grant off suddenly. (Doing so would have incurred a $500,000 payment, which town additionally didn’t have on the time.)
The keenness of the consultants employed by Flint who beforehand labored within the theme park trade bordered on manic. You’ll be able to nearly hear them claiming how theme parks put Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook on the map! As constructing value estimates rose so, too, did their predictions of income. AutoWorld was a two-hour drive from 2.8 million folks, they reasoned. Absolutely one million guests a 12 months after 5 years wasn’t out of the query. And those that came visiting would keep within the park, on common 5 hours a go to. AutoWorld would offer 500 minimal wage jobs and 1,800 jobs within the surrounding space to deal with the inflow of tourists. Thousands and thousands in revenue would roll in instantly and the outcome can be a revitalized metropolis filled with hope once more. It might be that straightforward.
Over a decade of improvement by a parade of consultants who pushed town nearly solely in direction of a theme park morphed the common-or-garden dream of a science museum into one thing unrecognizable. No Miracles Right here cites consultants pushing town to repeat what others had carried out as the primary reason for AutoWorld’s demise.
They actually muddied the waters. Right here’s what an 1982 prospectus described all that AutoWorld would entail by Randall Duell Associates after the Historic Flint AutoWorld Basis inexperienced lit the mission:
What Is AutoWorld?
AutoWord has audio-animatronics, it has Indians, Waterfalls, log jams, log cabins, forests, historic perspective, crafts, eating places, a noticed mills, nice eating and night attract, outlets, snack bars, theaters, a re-creation of Flint’s outdated Saginaw Avenue, a normal retailer, a carousel, bumper automobiles, distant management race automobiles, a huge three story tall V-6 engine, an electrifying exploration of the trade’s know-how right now – new know-how. AutoWord has arcade video games, auto artwork, exhibitory, video games, a set of vehicles, carriages, carts and bicycles, a library and archives, stay theater, an superior IMAX film, fantasia of the long run, a shifting sidewalk historical past of the meeting line, impertinent mechanical horses, monkeys, damsels in misery, menacing mechanical chickens, innovations of all types, pioneers, and even an vehicle present from the subsequent century, the nice races of all time and a gallery of racing greats.
Impertinent mechanical horses? Menacing mechanical chickens? Wasn’t this alleged to be a automobile museum? As soon as the consultants had carried out thousands and thousands in work, the tug of battle grew to become between the Mott Basis and Six Flags itself. Six Flags wished the location to be extra of an leisure venue whereas the Basis struggled to maintain the historical past side alive. It’d do it with static reveals and no thrills.
Consultants ultimately estimated that 930,000 attendees can be wanted to maintain the park working in its first 12 months when probably the most hopeful real-world estimates put the variety of anticipated attendees at 600,000. Even from those that supposedly knew the biz and had been directing the selections from behind the scenes, AutoWorld was a misplaced trigger. However by now, it was too huge to cease.
Doomed To Fail
On July 4, 1984, AutoWorld opened after a decade of improvement and thousands and thousands of {dollars} in investments and it regarded extremely lame:
At 300,000 sq. ft, AutoWorld was additionally the most important indoor theme park on this planet, crammed with tropical vegetation that additionally someway “recreated the banks of the Flint river.” Underneath its 70-ft vast dome had been, carnival rides, freaky animatronics, performers and digital excursions, outlets, eating places, a three-story mannequin of a V6 engine, an IMAX theater and a complete host of different points of interest—however principally buying and shops filled with branded merch. There wasn’t the fun of a Busch Gardens or Six Flags theme park. Your choices had been pretty soporific rides, like a carousel and bumper automobiles, or sitting and watching a film or some nightmarish “humorous” historical past.
Or you could possibly spend cash. Buy groceries. Dine out. Spending cash was the primary attraction at AutoWorld it appears. All this buying was on prime $8.95 for an grownup ticket—about $28 in right now’s {dollars}. Attendees had been spending cash, to spend cash, in one of many quickest fading cities in America with the very best unemployment fee within the nation at the moment.
At the moment, we all know instructional leisure is usually neither. The clumsy blurring of the 2 soured AutoWorld’s essence proper from the beginning. Was it a spot you could possibly take children to on subject journeys? Was it a spot for households to let unfastened? By attempting to be each, AutoWorld ended up as neither. The builders grew to become too enamored with their imaginative and prescient because it grew and overpassed what makes theme parks engaging. As one professional instructed Vox for a 2021 article :
“Theme parks are all about us,” says Margaret King, who has studied and written about theme parks all through her profession and is the director of the Middle for Cultural Research and Evaluation, a market analysis institute. “It’s a museum of us, of America. It’s a distillation of the qualities we most worth and like about ourselves.”
We’re nostalgic for locations that by no means actually had been, she says. Disney’s Principal Avenue USA, the thoroughfares themed to the early-Twentieth century that function gateways to the remainder of Disneyland and Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, are idealized portrayals of a extra genteel, if unrealistic America. They’re spotlessly clear, impeccably landscaped, and overflowing with cheery optimism (in addition to loads of souvenir merch). Visiting the Disney parks is “like going again to your hometown,” King says. “It’s the hometown that’s shared by everybody within the nation.”
The very predictable bother began nearly instantly after the parks July 4 grand opening. In a memo from Senator Donald Riegle Jr. from his Flint workplace to William White, president of the Mott Basis and spokesperson for the non-public traders in AutoWorld, Riegle was apprehensive concerning the low attendance as early as July 27.
“Attendance in the course of the night has averaged between 200-300 folks; there doesn’t look like an attraction or incentive for people to return to the ability; there’s some confusion as as to if AutoWorld is instructional or leisure, and lastly, though there was no point out of it made publicly, the $8.95 entrance payment presents an issue for many individuals.”
To repair attendance issues, in addition to empty seats within the eating places at night time, AutoWorld dropped entrance charges after 6 p.m. to $5.95 and dinner reservations started to incorporate a tour of the ability to try to attract visitors. Because the numbers fell additional and additional behind, everybody started to panic. Traders quickly started to flee AutoWorld.
It was regarding when simply 2,500 guests walked by way of its halls on the unofficial opening day, discounted particularly for the residents of Flint. It was alarming when, by the primary week, attendance had solely reached 38,000. By the tip of July, 100,000 folks visited, effectively beneath the 110,000 anticipated. The 600,000 wanted within the first six months to remain within the black ended up at solely 439,000.
So what occurred? Riegle, who had additionally supported the mission, nailed each drawback with AutoWorld proper on the top just some weeks after its opening.
AutoWorld was opening at a time when Flint’s largest employer, Normal Motors, was starting to wind down manufacturing within the industrial metropolis. In 1978, GM employed greater than 80,000 Flint-area residents, in keeping with a examine by Michigan State College. By 2015, that determine plummeted, to just about 7,000, and this wind down was ramping up proper when AutoWorld opened. From Ryan Felton’s story What Normal Motors Did To Flint:
Following World Battle II, the automaker pursued a company technique that centered on shifting the technique of manufacturing to the suburbs and away from city cores, in keeping with Andrew Highsmith, a College of California-Irvine assistant historical past professor who has extensively researched Flint.
In Flint’s suburbs, Highsmith wrote in a 2013 paper, GM constructed eight factories, all forming “an arc across the metropolis.”
Because the Nineteen Seventies and 80s approached, GM’s plant closures in Flint ticked upward, compounding town’s rising monetary duress, forcing it to the brink of chapter, in keeping with Highsmith. To maintain GM on the town, metropolis officers accredited quite a few tax abatements for the automaker, which “coincided with a internet lack of practically 15,000 native positions at GM,” Highsmith wrote.
The thriving firm city wasn’t such any longer.
Theme parks had saved different cities, however copying and pasting that answer on to Flint was by no means going to make sense. Positive, practically 3 million folks lived inside a two hour drive of Flint, however when you’re carried out with AutoWorld you’re now in Flint; a metropolis that works for a dwelling, with out the attraction of honest climate or further websites to go to like say, Orlando, Florida or Anaheim, California. The folks dwelling three hours from AutoWorld can be folks from Michigan, and the state at giant wasn’t doing so scorching within the ’80s with unemployment at 11 p.c. Flint can be over an hour’s drive from Michigan’s largest metropolis, Detroit, and its largest airport, Detroit Metro. It’s flat, so the snowy winters don’t even present the appeal of seasonal outside recreation, and Flint is surrounded by factories. It’s simply not in a spot the place you’d assume “yeah, trip!”
Flint, very similar to Detroit, is experiencing a resurgence, particularly in hometown delight. Town might not be the bustling heart of trade of the ’40s and ’50s, but it surely’s being reformed into one thing new and delightful by the individuals who stay by way of issues just like the Flint Public Artwork Mission, cultural occasions and new investments.
The Fallout
AutoWorld went to 5 days every week in an effort to shore up attendance numbers. Usually there have been extra workers than guests on some weekdays, resulting in a lower than festive environment.
By January 1985, the park closed to common attendance. This closure would show solely momentary, however the park was by no means open full time once more, with lengthy durations of closure making the location much less and fewer of a vacation spot. A number of makes an attempt had been made to reopen the park with new traders, however none managed to maintain the doorways open full time. It closed for good in 1986 and was knocked down in 1997 to construct extra space for the College of Michigan-Flint campus.
AutoWorld is such an odd second in American historical past. The one factor I can relate it to is the fictional Ice City within the TV present Parks & Rec that sank a then-teenage Ben Wyatt’s mayoral profession, solely it’s not as humorous when it occurs in actual life. AutoWorld grew to become an emblem of Flint’s decline till the Flint Water Disaster picked up the mantle. It might even be featured in Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, which launched the world to the shitshow that was GM’s actions in Flint.
The Charles H. Mott Basis, the primary philanthropic establishment within the metropolis to this present day, would lose $50 million on AutoWorld, when all was stated and carried out. All organizers, planners and builders later claimed they noticed the failure coming from a mile away. From the Flint Journal:
Basis President William S. White stated even earlier than development began, lengthy earlier than the grand opening, he “had a nasty feeling” about what the theme park was rising into and he wasn’t alone.
“Lots of people blame (former GM Chairman) Roger Smith for this,” White instructed The Journal. “(However) he sat in my workplace and stated, ‘It’s not going to work. What can I do to cease it?’’’
White stated in the long run, the mission couldn’t be stopped as a result of civic and enterprise leaders had been so dedicated to bringing the concept to life.
“It had a lifetime of its personal,” stated White, who grew to become a de facto spokesman for AutoWorld as a result of non-public traders had been scattered everywhere in the nation. “Individuals had been simply bought on this dream.’’
When the dream is over, solely actuality stays. At the moment, on the previous spot of AutoWorld, stands the William White constructing, satirically named for one of many most important architects of the failed theme park. Flint continues to battle with its sophisticated relationship with automotive historical past. Town wouldn’t exist right now with out the auto vegetation, however the lack of these vegetation many years later spelled devastation for the area. Flint has the very best focus of individuals dwelling in poverty within the state of Michigan and continuously charges as one of many poorest within the nation. It then got here out that when GM had early indications that Flint’s water was harmful, the automaker was allowed to quietly swap water sources with no testing being carried out on water that was corroding engines. It might be years earlier than officers would take public complaints significantly nonetheless, compounding the horror of the Flint Water Disaster and mistrust of GM.
No half-baked rides or eccentric bobble could make up for the lack of the dignity of a dwelling wage and primary requirements like clear water. AutoWorld is now nothing greater than a retro emblem on some dusty mugs behind a College archive. A becoming finish, to an ill-fitting theme park.
