Historical April Fools’ satire, April 1987. The amusement-park project is fictional; the source explicitly reveals its joke at the end.
April 1, 1987 — Redeveloper Clinton Meritor announced today that he has acquired the rights to the Nina Place area in Skinker-DeBaliviere and plans to raze the buildings and erect an amusement park.
At a news conference in the Hunt Room of the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel, Meritor, known for his South County A-Frames and West County trailer parks, said “The area needs another amusement park.
Since the Highlands were destroyed by fire, there’s nothing east of Six Flags where a family can go and spend a day riding a Ferris wheel and eating hot dogs.
Our Nina Place amusement park will change that!” Meritor says that once the buildings are leveled in Nina Place, he will build a park with four major rides, a large auditorium for musical and religious groups, and an indoor golf course.
The park will be surrounded by a moat.
The new park, “RODENTLAND,” will be a theme park and all of the rides and activities will be created based on the various rodents and rodent-related animals found in the St. Louis area.
The giant 500-foot Ferris wheel, for example, will be called FerretWheel and the one-half-mile water slide will be called RatSlide. Small autos will be shaped as rabbits for the bumper ride. Security guards and park personnel will be dressed as shrews.
According to Meritor, the project will cost $26 million dollars and the capacity will be 20,000 people per day (25,000 in the evenings).
A 100-space parking lot will be built at the intersection of McPherson and Des Peres for parking. Neighborhood youth and rodents will get first priority on jobs for the new park. “No tax abatements are part of this project,” says Meritor; “but we will be soliciting neighborhood residents for donations, either money or rodents.” If you’ve read this far, don’t get either your rodents or your money out; instead, just smile it’s April Fools time again!
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, April 1987.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1987_04.pdf, printed page(s) 1; PDF page(s) 1.
