Six Flags, former Elitch Gardens owner, files for Chapter 11 - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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The board of Six Flagw (OTCBB: SIXF) voted last week to beginh reorganization proceedingsin U.S. Bankruptct Court for the Districtof Delaware. The compan listed assets of $3.03 billion and debtds of $2.36 billion in its filing. Cascadw Investments, the investment firm for Microsof t founderBill Gates, owns 11.1 percent of the voting securitiesw in New York-based Six the largest share, bankruptcy documents show. Six Flags has 97.7 milliomn shares of common stockand 1.1 million share s of preferred stock. "The current management team inheriteda $2.
4 billionn debt load that cannot be sustained, particularly in these challenging financial markets," said Mark president and CEO of Six in a statement. "As a we are cleaning up the past and positioning the companyt for futuregrowth ... Following a record year of performancrin 2008, which completed the three-year turnaround of our system-widde park operation, this action to clean up the balanc e sheet paves the way for a full revival of the Shapiro said. Elitch Gardens had operated for more than a centuryu at a northwestDenver site. The old Elitch Gardenw shut downin 1994, and a new versiomn of the amusement park opened a year latert in downtown Denver.
The local Gurtler family and its financia partners sold the new park to PremierdParks Inc. in 1996 for $65 million. It becamer Six Flags Elitch Gardens twoyears later, when Premiet acquired Six Flags Inc. and changed its corporates name toSix Flags. Six Flags sold off Elitch'd and other properties in 2007 in a seriesx of transactions that left the Denver attraction in the hands of CNL IncomdProperties Inc., a real estats investment trust based in Orlando, Fla. CNL reportedlyh paid $312 million for the properties. CNL arranged for Parc Managementf LLC of Florida tomanage Elitch's.
Six Flags now operated about 20 North Americanamusement