BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer
JACKSON — Summers in Jackson are not likely to include a visit to MythFaire, a fantasy theme park still in the planning stages, according to Michael Hamilton, chief executive officer of the amusement initiative.
“I’m looking at a couple of other locations, not Jackson,” Hamilton said in a May 24 interview with the Tri-Town News. “I just don’t think there is an appropriate site for us [there]. I think it is a very long and involved process in Jackson and so many different elements in terms of land … that it’s too problematic to do business there. My investment team asked me to look at other locations.”
Hamilton said he is currently considering two sites in Connecticut and one in New Jersey near New Brunswick. However, he said he is still in talks with Mitch Leigh, one of the largest landholders in Jackson. Hamilton said that if he and Leigh could come to an agreement, residentially zoned land across the street from Jackson Commons, a commercial campus approved by the zoning board last year, could be used as the site of MythFaire. However, there would be limitations to the land that might impact the project’s success, said Hamilton.
“The footprint for MythFaire is between 300 and 400 acres, but you really need even more [land] for the other developers” such as hotels and water parks, which would locate on the frontage of the site, Hamilton said. “The land we’re looking at is a footprint of 600 acres. In Georgia, (where the first MythFaire will break ground in September), it’s 1,000 acres with frontage. The frontage would likely be used by the other developers; we have no interest in frontage.”
MythFaire’s premise is based on
transporting visitors to a different time and place through historical and fantasy re-creations by actors.
In January, Mayor Michael Broderick discussed the possibility of MythFaire being built in Jackson.
“One of the problems with that application is the vast amount of land it would require,” he said. “To rezone Jackson for one entity is [unlikely to be approved]. I don’t know one place in town where you could develop 400 acres and not have an impact.”
Broderick asserted that land owned by Six Flags Great Adventure would be the perfect location for MythFaire, but acknowledged that the company could not be forced to sell any land.
“If [the land] is not for sale, it’s not for sale,” said Broderick.
The problems faced by MythFaire executives seeking to locate in Jackson were predicted several months ago by Don Alemany, co-director of the Lakewood Renaissance Faire, an annual event held in September for more than two decades to raise money for charity.
Alemany said in January that he did not view MythFaire as a threat to attendance at Renfaire, as the event is nicknamed. However, contrary to the opinions of Hamilton and Jackson’s economic development consultant Barry Lefkowitz, Alemany said he did not believe that Great Adventure and MythFaire could peacefully coexist.
“You can’t spend half a day at one place and half a day at another,” Alemany said at that time. “In order to see everything at the New York Renaissance Faire (in Sterling Forest, Tuxedo, N.Y.), you need a minimum of two days.”
He said east coast weather would also be a problem.
In his comments to the newspaper, Hamilton cited seasonal weather in the northeast as a factor that was a concern, but remained optimistic that the market was still strong. He said Jackson’s location on the border of southern New Jersey was less a magnet for attracting the attendance numbers needed to make MythFaire a financial success as were more northerly municipalities.
“It starts with a site and the sites up in the New Brunswick area and Connecticut are better,” he said. “When you take that and you add the incentive packages and the willingness for both state and regional government to get you in there and a much bigger, much stronger population and demographic appeal, it becomes much easier.”
The bottom line is that Jackson is less likely to be the home of a MythFaire than would another location, Hamilton indicated.
“This isn’t to say that Jackson has been struck from the list,” he said. “It just isn’t on the short list at this point.”