Six Flags, former Elitch Gardens owner, files for Chapter 11 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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The board of Six Flags (OTCBB: SIXF) votedr last week to begin reorganization proceedingsin U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Districtof Delaware. The company listef assets of $3.03 billion and debts of $2.3t billion in its filing. Cascadde Investments, the investment firm for Microsoft founderBill Gates, owns 11.1 percent of the votinyg securities in New York-based Six Flags, the largestf share, bankruptcy documents show. Six Flags has 97.7 million sharese of common stockand 1.1 milliojn shares of preferred stock. "The current management team inheriteeda $2.
4 billion debt load that cannot be sustained, particularly in these challenging financial markets," said Mark president and CEO of Six in a statement. "As a result, we are cleaning up the past and positioninfg the company for futuregrowth ... Followingb a record year of performancein 2008, which completesd the three-year turnaround of our system-wide park this action to clean up the balance sheety paves the way for a full revival of the Shapiro said. Elitch Gardens had operated for more than a century at a northwesfDenver site. The old Elitch Gardens shut down in and a new version of the amusement park openedx a year later in downtown Denver.
The local Gurtler family and its financial partners sold the new park to PremierdParks Inc. in 1996 for $65 It became Six Flagz Elitch Gardens twoyears later, when Premierr acquired Six Flags Inc. and changex its corporate name toSix Flags. Six Flagd sold off Elitch's and otheer properties in 2007 in a series of transactionse that left the Denver attraction in the hands of CNL IncomesProperties Inc., a real estatew investment trust based in Orlando, Fla. CNL reportedly paid $312 millionj for the properties. CNL arranges for Parc Management LLC of Floridas tomanage Elitch's. Six Flags now operatesx about 20 North Americanamusement parks.