From Haywood County News 

MAGGIE VALLEY — Along the streets of downtown Maggie Valley, hotels and shops display signs of hope for a great tourist season ahead: Ghost Town is back.

After five years of sitting vacant, the mountaintop amusement park Ghost Town in the Sky is set to reopen Friday.

Tourism officials are optimistic about the impact the park’s reopening will have on Maggie Valley’s economy, which is based primarily on tourism. Local business owners are filled with anticipation.

“It’s kind of hard to say how you feel. It’s huge, it’s just huge,” said Allison Carver, owner of Jelly Bellies Mountain Gift Shop in Maggie Valley.

Carver and her husband opened their shop along downtown’s Soco Road about a year before Ghost Town closed. As word got around that the park was gone, Carver said she began seeing fewer families visit and the spirit of the town seemed to sink. “It was kind of drab, but now it’s back. The excitement is in the air — all the businesses making improvements, putting on a fresh coat of paint,” she said.

Eric and Lydia Freyeisen spent upward of $1 million in 2005 to renovate and expand the Smoky Falls Lodge in hopes of a reopening. Eric Freyeisen said he hopes the valley is ready to accommodate the influx of visitors he expects. “We don’t want to be slammed with people and not be able to serve them,” he said. Maggie back on the map Ghost Town in the Sky’s opening in the 1960s put Maggie Valley on the map as a tourist destination, many people say. Before that time, the valley was mostly farmland with only a handful of motels and restaurants, said Robert Bradley, a Maggie Valley native and longtime Ghost Town “gunfighter.” Bradley said the long strip of hotels and shops along Soco Road popped up only after the park opened, capitalizing on the area’s new attraction.

In its heyday, the park drew an annual average of more than 400,000 visitors, many of whom traveled from out of town and stayed at local hotels, according to figures released by the new ownership.

“It was the most highly attended family amusement park in the state,” said David Huskins, director of the Smoky Mountain Host, a regional tourism marketing and development organization for southwestern North Carolina. Ghost Town fell on hard times and closed in 2002, after a series of equipment problems and declining maintenance. Attendance dropped in the years leading up to its closing.

When a group of investors announced plans last summer to revive the park by investing more than $17 million in it, more than 1,000 people gathered at an event in August to celebrate its return.

Huskins, who helped facilitate the sale of Ghost Town, is enthusiastic about the new owners, who have experience running amusement parks in other parts of the country.

“I think within the next five years it will be among the top family attractions in the state. They know what they’re doing, I can tell you that right now,” he said.

Lynn Collins, director of the Maggie Valley Visitors Bureau, said many new businesses have opened since the announcement, and she has noticed an increase in property sales.

A tourist’s town Tourism is the primary industry in Maggie Valley, Collins said. “That’s all Maggie Valley is, is tourism,” she said.  Ghost Town is now the largest employer in Maggie Valley, followed by the Cataloochee Ski Area, Collins said. Park officials said they are employing 250 mostly seasonal workers, though they have plans in the future to expand their season. Some businesses have suffered financially since Ghost Town’s closure, though the valley has continued to draw visitors for winter sports and other area attractions like the Wheels Through Time motorcycle museum, Collins said.

Occupancy tax revenues from hotel guests in Maggie Valley and Haywood County have generally remained constant or increased over the past five years, according to the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority. “They were maintaining,” said Scotty Ellis, director of the agency. Ghost Town buzzIf the amount of phone calls Collins has received about Ghost Town is any indication of its potential for success, the park could be looking at a bright future. Since the announcement of its reopening, Collins said the phones in her office have been ringing off the hook with people recounting good memories of time spent at the park and in the valley. “I think the names Ghost Town and Maggie Valley are synonymous with each other,” she said.  That’s just the kind of buzz Ghost Town’s marketing staff has been trying to create in advance of the opening. Many city officials joined the Maggie Valley Mayor Roger McElroy in declaring days throughout last week as “Ghost Town Day” in their respective towns. Many hotels have already booked reservations for people planning to attend Ghost Town, and some that sell tickets for the park at their business have already sold out their supply, said David King, Ghost Town’s marketing manager. The park has sold 27,067 tickets so far, said Julie Dion, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing. That number does not include online sales.

Dion said Ghost Town’s previous owners did not keep detailed records on the number of people the park attracted in its heyday. She said the new owners hope to have 200,000 visitors in the first year.

A market study by a group of investors interested in buying the park in 2004 found visitation, since the park opened in 1961 and until it closed in 2002, fluctuated between a high of 404,000 people a year to a low of 200,000 people a year. The group estimated the direct tourism spending associated with the park in a 25-mile area was $20 million in 2002.

The study, paid for by the group Greater Haywood Opportunities for Supporting Tourism, predicted a visitation total of 179,000 in 2008 with direct spending at the park of more than $7 million.

The total spending at the park would be worth $17.7 million that year, according to the study.

By 2009, visitation is expected to reach the 200,000 mark and would be worth $19.6 million to the regional economy.

King said his team’s job is to keep the buzz alive in the months and years ahead as Ghost Town hosts special events and eventually plans to become a year-round attraction.

“I think we’re going to have a big impact in the beginning, but it’s for us to keep the buzz and excitement about Ghost Town through the opening and through the summer and the next few years,” King said.