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Volume 2, No. 7. April 12, 2002

The Garden of Ed
Yet another “retired” industry legend has returned to the fold. First, Six Flags veteran Larry Cochran came out of retirement to helm the management company running Jazzland Theme Park in New Orleans, Louisiana (THE LOOP, March 8, 2002). Now, longtime small park operator Ed Hutton takes the general manager reins of Bonfante Gardens in Gilroy, California.

Hutton’s daunting task is to re-float a huge, partially sunken ship. Bonfante opened to much critical acclaim but a depressed market last June (THE LOOP, June 29, 2001), and did so without all of its rides operating nor all of its financing in place. Though owner Michael Bonfante planned to run the park’s season past Christmas, cash flow problems forced him to end the inaugural season in September (THE LOOP, September 21, 2001).

Hutton’s résumé indicates he is ideally suited to the task. He began his career working in 1961 as a night watchman for Frontier Village, an amusement park then being built in San Jose, California. The next year when he graduated from San Jose State, Hutton went to work full-time for the park. Though he spent most of his career at parks in the San Francisco Bay area, including Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and most recently the Winchester Mystery House, Hutton has sometimes gone far afield geographically, but never strayed from the industry.

In 1967 he took over the 2-year-old Playland Amusement Park in Ocean City, Maryland, rescuing it from a premature demise. He stayed there only a couple years, preferring the West Coast life. In 1973 he was called to the Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon, another faltering 2 year-old park. “That one was truly a challenge,” Hutton said. “It was a 600-acre park, we were using 200 acres, and its location didn’t support the demographics.” Again, he stopped the bleeding and left in 1975. That park is still operating.

Both of those properties he described as “misbuilt and mismanaged,” and he applies the same adjectives to his current property, but he emphasizes that by “misbuilt” he means Bonfante Gardens did too many good things to soon. “This place has got everything. Way more,” he said. “It has wonderful back-of-the-house facilities and beautiful, labor-intensive gardens. This park was built correctly, (Bonfante) just put too much money into it.” And did not have enough left over to operate it correctly, leading to the “mismanaged” element of the park’s rookie season.

Because of what the park has to offer, and with more time to execute operations and marketing campaigns, Hutton is confident Bonfante, now scheduled to re-open May 11, will succeed. “It’s a major challenge, but do-able,” he said.

For more details on the park’s second-season strategies, see the May issue of Amusement Today.