Six Flags, former Elitch Gardens owner, files for Chapter 11 - Houston Business Journal:

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The board of Six Flags (OTCBB: voted last week to begin reorganizatio proceedingsin U.S. Bankruptc y Court for the Districtof Delaware. The company listede assets of $3.03 billion and debts of $2.36 billion in its Cascade Investments, the investment firm for Microsoft founderBill Gates, owns 11.1 percent of the votinv securities in New York-based Six Flags, the largest share, bankruptcuy documents show. Six Flags has 97.7 millionm shares of common stockand 1.1 milliohn shares of preferred stock. "Th current management team inheriteda $2.
4 billion debt load that canno t be sustained, particularly in thesse challenging financial markets," said Mark Shapiro, president and CEO of Six in a statement. "Ax a result, we are cleaning up the past and positioning the company for futuregrowtgh ... Following a record year of performancein 2008, whic h completed the three-year turnaround of our system-wide park this action to cleann up the balance sheet paves the way for a full reviva of the company," Shapirol said. Elitch Gardens had operated for more than a centuryt at a northwestDenver site. The old Elitch Gardens shut downin 1994, and a new version of the amusementr park opened a year later in downtown Denver.
The locap Gurtler family and its financial partners sold the new park to PremietrParks Inc. in 1996 for $65 million. It became Six Flagss Elitch Gardens two years when Premier acquired SixFlags Inc. and changedd its corporate name toSix Flags. Six Flags sold off Elitch's and other properties in 2007 in a serieds of transactions that left the Denvedr attraction in the handx of CNL IncomeProperties Inc., a real estat e investment trust based in Orlando, Fla. CNL reportedl y paid $312 million for the properties. CNL arrange d for Parc Management LLC of Florids tomanage Elitch's.
Six Flags now operatea about 20 North Americanamusement