The Smoky Mountain News reports on former county manager/ Information Technology Guru, Steve Shiver, executive and shareholder of a bankrupt amusement park; Ghost Town at Maggie Valley, NC. Ghost Town slipped under the management of Shiver and Miami investors at the height of the real estate boom. Along with bankers Bill Losner and Bob Eppling, Shiver helped turn South Dade into a speculative bubble for crappy suburban sprawl. That was the Gold Standard during the housing bubble that steamrollered civic opposition at every turn. For his work fronting a scheme to redevelopment the Homestead Air Force Base as a private, commercial airport, Shiver was appointed county manager by then county mayor Alex Penelas. Today much of that chopped up, destroyed farmland and open space is home to suburban ghost towns, riddled with foreclosures and overdevelopment. But Shiver and his cohorts had already picked up their bags and moved to North Carolina by the time the costs fully materialized.
Shiver and his Miami investment team landed in the crisp mountain air of western North Carolina, focused on the development potential of a failed amusement park. When last spring local government declined to invest in the Shiver-led venture, an unlikely angel named Alaska Pressley threw a bundle of cash to keep Ghost Town at Maggie Valley in the game going through its 7th inning stretch through court-supervised bankruptcy. The hope was to get the venue open, re-arm the shoot-em ups, fill the tents with international talent through the eagle eye of Dolly Parton's sister, Stella, put the roller coaster in motion, and lure hundreds of thousands of new visitors who can't afford going to Paris because the real estate crash stripped away so much net worth.
But the summer is over. The tally is in. The kids are back at school. Mom and Dad have stored the travel gear, saving the sunscreen for weekend travel soccer. A quiet descends on the field of summer dreams. Fall is on the horizon and Ghost Town is still way in the red. 215 vendors are owed $2.5 million by Shiver and fellow shareholders whose names have not been disclosed.
Ghost Town still in the red despite $1.53 million in revenue
By Becky Johnson • Staff writer
Ghost Town in the Sky did not bring in enough revenue from its amusement park operations during the months of May, June and July to cover its overhead and operating expenses.
Ghost Town recently filed financial statements with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for May, June and July that show how much it made off ticket sales, concessions and souvenirs. For the three-month period, Ghost Town made $1.531 million in revenue off the park.
Meanwhile, the Maggie Valley amusement park paid out $1.845 million in operating costs, including salaries, utilities, insurance, taxes, advertising and equipment.
The operating loss was offset thanks to contributions from investors to the tune of $322,000. The financial statements do not say where or who the cash infusion came from. The cash infusion mostly came in May, when the park bore significant expenses to get the doors open for the season. Once open, the park began to break even and during the month of July, the park even made money.
Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver made a modest salary of $5,426 over the three-month period. However, a company Shiver is president of, Global Management Services, was paid $27,000 by Ghost Town for the period. Shiver’s company is billed as a professional services company and dates to Shiver’s former life in the Miami area. The services Shiver’s company provided were not spelled out in the financial filings, but the fee was listed under a section for payments to insiders.
The theme park has suffered a setback this summer by failing to get the Cliffhanger Roller Coaster open.
The Maggie Valley theme park filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March in hopes of holding off bill collectors long enough to get back on its feet. In addition to a $9.5 million mortgage, the park has a trail of unpaid bills with more than 215 companies totaling $2.5 million.
Ghost Town has been granted an extension to file its reorganization plan under bankruptcy protection. In early July, days before the plan was due, Ghost Town asked the court for an extension. The bankruptcy court granted a three-month extension, making the plan now due in early October. The plan is supposed to spell out how the company plans to make money to pay back its myriad creditors.
Those owed money get to vote on whether to accept Ghost Town’s reorganization plan. The plan is supposed to be voted on by creditors within two months of being filed.
The bankruptcy court turned down a request by Ghost Town that would have paved the way for another $250,000 loan from a private investor, Alaska Pressley. The loan would have been used to help get the incline railway working. Ghost Town wanted to pay back the loan by dipping into proceeds from ticket sales, but the bankruptcy court ruled that this in effect would allow Pressley to jump in line ahead of others already owed money by Ghost Town.
21 comments:
Thanks for the update..........It never gets old, at least to me. Some forgotten names on the roster of Who's Who of the destruction of South Dade - The Williams Family who sold off their Potato fields east of the turnpike, after they annexed them into Homestead. They now live in Lakeland! There are more too. For those who live down here and fought so hard, it still makes me sick to take the turnpike extension. We should also thank the former City Council of Homestead, Mayor Warren, et al for their obliging this pilfering of Ag Land and open space. I hope they all lost double what they gained by the destruction.
You got it right. Warren pushed all the development thru and was rewarded but we will never know how much he got. Steve Losner a city commissioner during the boom led the Williams' legal team straight to his father's and Epplings banks. The mastermind Shiver had his tentacles in all projects from the 90's forward. These people ruined Homestead and instead of having to answer for their corrupting of government they are sailing yachts and enjoying their ill gotten gains.
Don't forget Barbara Jordan, county commissioner, Florida City and Mayor Wallace and Florida City Commons-- another failed Lennar development. On the Homestead/South Dade wall of shame, their names go up there too along with the others listed above.
No one has mentioned that on last friday Shiver couldn't make payroll for the employees that had worked for three weeks. He had to take the weekend ticket sales to make payroll. Checks were issued on Monday. He closed the park immediately except on week-ends in order to hopefully meet payroll.
Shiver is bad news and is a cross between E. Buzz Miller and Tommy Flanagan from the old SNL shows. When they were funny.
The others are Homestead locals but in his heyday of running the county Shiver lied on a daily basis and sold Penelas and the commission on his schemes up to the day of his firing. Yeah I know he says he resigned.
The truth will come out eventually. Maybe Shiver could even write a book...
Some of you should get your facts straight before commenting. There was more than one family that sold some or all of their farm land and 1st National and Community Banks were certainly not the only banks involved. Jealousy seems to run rampant in Homestead...it's really sad that people would wish ill will on others. Guess they have nothing better to do with their time since maybe they, along with those named, also profitted from the "destruction" of Homestead. I think it's interesting that many still follow and are interested in Steve Shiver and his whereabouts and dealings. How long has he been gone from Homestead? Once again, maybe we should ask what these people gained from the "destruction". Instead of looking for past people to blame for the state of the city NOW, why not put energy into making Homestead a better place to call home.
I remember one of the Williams family begging Miami Dade County to create an "AG preserve" by purchasing about 1/2 of that now developed land back when the sellers wanted $15,000 an acre for it. One of the younger Williams' went to several meetings around the state and petitioned many of the government agencies involved with the Everglades Restoration and the preservation of Biscayne Bay...including Alex Pinellas when he was mayor, South Florida Water Management District, The Governors Comission on a Sustainable South Florida and the National Park Service when Dick Frost was the superintendent at Biscayne all to no avail. I also remember One side of the Williams family along with 1 other landowner insisting on annexing their land into the City of Homestead (saving our city from a State oversight board and financial insolvency) AND insisting on a developed density of less than 6 units per acre when up to 20 were allowed. Had they not been cared, there would have been a high density section 8 city out there (allowed by the county code & comp plan) when the land was sold. I also hope some of you are not suggesting that folks can't sell their land..their private property if they need or want to... for whatever reason??
Vice Mayor Steve Losner never led a "legal team" anywhere, he was Tim Williams family lawyer. John Lynn with Lynn and Hanson represented the larger side of the Williams family and the Alger family and Webster Williams and Richard Alger were directors at First National Bank probably since before Steve Losner was born...so was Carl Hanson, John Lynn's partner. Steve Losner lawyered circles around the states biggest firms who were representing big developers coming to town to buy land...like Holand & Knight, Greenburg Traurig,Ackerman Senterfit, and others...you idiots who were living with your heads in the sand at the time can't or wont ever understand what protections for our city, lifestyle and the general greater good Steve Losner worked into the few land contracts he worked on for a fraction of the folks who sold land when retiring from farming...or because all their neighbors wanted to sell. Look at the charter changes and voting record and its abundantly clear Steve Losner is an honorable man interested in ALL of Homestead. Steve also never steered business to F.N.B. but Comunity had the son of an employee... and an employee on the council..both at the same time!!
Comenter # 1....I beleive Mr. Williams still lives in the house he built 50 or so years ago in Modello and not knowing who you are I can't say I remember you alongside the Farm Bureau, Agri Council, Buffer Development Reveiw Commity, South Florida Potato Growers Association, Greater Homestead Florida City Chamber of Commerce, etc. in the fight to preserve a larger ag economy on the East side of town Unlike you who claim to wish for bad things to happen to farmers who retire, I hope we can learn from the past and work to keep Florida agriculture sucessfull and growing!! I think you sound jealous and uninformed...or perhaps you simply fabricate your version of the past to suport a current agenda? TWW
What the difference between a Section 8 city on the east side of the Turnpike and the ghost suburb that's there, now? It's a disaster. Shame on all who allowed that to happen. I wonder if Bill Losner is helping fund his old buddy up there in North Carolina. He's rich enough to bail them out. And he owes Steve for all the heavy lifting Shiver did for him to get his bank assets up.
The Williams' / Shiver defenders need to complete the record: their buddies at the Farm Bureau stopped every-- and I mean EVERY-- effort to put public money into land acquisition of private property during the time in question. To say that the Williams went around trying to persuade public agencies to buy their land without telling also the story that the Farm Bureau was putting pressure everywhere to STOP government agencies from buying land (in order to help foment developers and developers paying a higher price) is telling only half the story.
The buddy list is out in full force today. Where everyone down south went wrong was the partnering up with developers and zoning meisters to create prairie dog towns with the higher density per acre as the goal. I suppose once a grower always a grower. They were growing a higher per acre price and to pay for it the developers lobbied hard to reduce green space, parking and everything on the outside. Quality of life is gone, thanks to the Losner and Eppling gangs. If you don't believe me notice that they never changed the zoning of the northwest side of Homestead where Eppling and Losners have their homesteads. Fought protective incorporation too just to fight the Wades.
But wasn't it fun while it lasted.
Up in Martin County, they're voting to build more Homesteads right now. The biggest crash since the Depression can't stop them.
Again, the facts are that by incorporating the 600 acres into the City of Homestead...the landowners...Cox and Williams primarily effectivly reduced the alowable density from as high as 20 units per acre...DOWN to 6 alowable units per acre and forced by private contract, a developed density of LESS THAN 6. Get your facts straight and quit lying about density increases! What possible agenda are you trying to push forward with your falsehoods?? Another commenter confuses what I think the Farm Bureau's efforts were against unlawful taking by the government, ... by maping out unfunded aquisition areas and through regulation...with nonexistent government offers to actually purchase property. I know for a fact that two large landowners offered their property for sale to the County and the State and finally the Federal Government at a discount with the caveat that it be rented back to them to farm and kept as an agricultural buffer in perpituity and that the farm bureau was in full support of that plan!! The government said NO!! So whoever you are, ... you are full of crap and don't know what you are talking about!!! What I have said is true and can be researched and suported by multiple public meeting minutes, articles, many people still involved in environmental issues in S Florida all know these facts...so again I ask... what agenda are you pushing with your liabelous and false comments???
Incorporation is still a bad idea and you admit yourself that there were and are no plans to develop out west where the incorporation was proposed. Do the math...an incorporation would cause for a short period of time...no building and an increase in taxes...then as the political pendulum swings...change and more hispanic residents...who tend to vote with like minds and suport hispanic candidates..like most ethnic groups in our history. How long can a municipal government suport itself without ongoing development? How long can the squirls hang on to their nuts?? Political change in an incorporated Redland would come in about 7 years I predict and the kids would be in charge of the candy store. The no growth contingency is always better served by the existing form of government which alows all the rich folks in Coral Gables, Pinecrest, South Miami, etc.,to support the bucollic utopia they visit on the weekends and want to keep it just the way it is....as oposed to the few affected taxpaying voters within a jerrymandered boundary. The wades want power and want to controll the many even though they are few...they wanted to controll the larger portion of land while they only have an acre or so.....maybe they should be fought with? Losner owned a hundred times what they did and felt just as strongly about the place where he was born and raised...Did you ever listen to his intelligent articulate argument against incorporation?? The wades tuned him out and always dismissed him ..instead of listening. Don't make the same mistake... cause most of us who live in the Redlands agree with Losner.
Posting August 31, Williams/Shiver defenders... I wasn't defending just getting the (verifiable by many avenues) truth out. Can you give me one example of the Farm Bureau not suporting a willing party sale and purchase between a private landowner and the government? Just one? Any? Please I can't wait for you to back up your statements.
Some of the highest density and least open space in Homestead "PER POD" or development node or "neighborhood" is and will be in Keys Gate. Municipal property...our property like the stadium, ball feilds, etc., count toward their open space. Unlike the newer development which had to meet open space criteria in each PUD Keys gate has a deck that they can "shuffle" around at will. Look at an overhead picture and you can clearly see all the development that Tim Williams worked on, including the Hospital, Publix, Movie Theatre, etc. has what looks like 50% MORE green space than parts of Keys Gate. Put the blame where it belongs but get your facts right.
Two paydays in a row, Shiver has admitted no money for employees' paychecks. But he offers the state inspectors OVERTIME and expenses to come and inspect the rides! Can't pay his help, how can he pay the inspectors? Would, could this be an indication of undeclared funds somewhere? Another question, If he made $1.5m and spent $1.8 million, how can he pay the debtors $12.3m? How can the bankruptcy judge allow him to lie and cajole to the U.S. Court?
Anyone have answers or comments? Steve will do whatever is required, lie, cheat, deny, bully and fool those that oppose him or those that can help him. He is systematically eliminating all the veteran employees, those with any knowledge, and those with any experience. The marketing dept is ran by a 18 year old daughter of the HR manager. She just graduated HS! The entertainment dept is ran by Steve's 16 year old daughter and the list goes on!
Comments?
http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_944.shtml
Good ole Steve blaming his employees for not knowing paydays weren't guaranteed!
How does he lie so easy? He filed with the bankruptcy court, his salary he was receiving and now he claims he hasn't had a paycheck in over two months. Who did he lie to the news reporter or the court?
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