Park has pounced and denied the rumors… again;
https://www.wellandtribune.ca/news/...cle_21c734c5-f0d6-542f-a3ce-d4f3a577b275.html
Since I've last posted in the thread, I went to dinner in June with reps from the real estate developer most interested in the land. This was following a visit in May in which I went to check the park out for the first time in a decade. Very nice evening and venue in St Catharines, was more or less a consultant.
Marineland is an extremely complex situation. Depending on where you hear it from the park is either near death or could run indefinitely; literally either could happen at any time. In a nutshell the actual family is no longer associated with the park's ownership and a shell management runs it under their name. The kids are distanced and indifferent about the park's operations and not really pushy about selling it right now, but the lawyer has other ideas. It's also in the grandmother's will that it remains an animal park, and nobody seems keen to contradict it right now. In other words, the park is very much in equilibrium and there's a lot of miscommunication between parties.
There is a lot of interest across the board and politicians in keeping a theme park and redeveloping the excess land, although there's been zero motion on either matter. Nobody's yet to make a sale, nobody is yet to organize a team. There's an emphasis on keeping as much of the natural environment as possible. I recommended bringing in another party to help redevelop and operate the park with some funding provided, but not necessarily own it. It's not a bid that any current North American theme park operators would be likely to accept, but it's the most viable option as the interested party has no theme park experience.
The "Marineland is closing" report and denial is literally an annual tradition nowadays, as was the case this weekend… another year, perhaps. For now, there remains zero movement.