Volume 3, No. 11. June 13, 2003
For
the love of Mike
People who visit
Bonfante Gardens have a tendency to fall in love. Including—indeed, especially—the
Gilroy, Calif., park’s own managers. The object of their affection: the
park itself.
“It just makes me smile,” said Barbara-Lea Granter, who has taken
the operational reins of Bonfante Gardens for Paramount Parks. “Look at
the detail!” she says pointing to the architectured landscape. “Not
only is it themed that way but they put a lot of thought into getting plants
to do what they do. Just a tremendous amount of thought.”
Granter is the latest in a line of veteran amusement industry professionals
who have swooned over the natural beauty—literally bent to do creative
men’s will—like a hopeful romantic seeing a hot Italian in Venice.
Granter, assigned by Paramount Parks to run the park, is no different. Less
than a month after Paramount Parks signed the management contract with Bonfante’s
board of directors March 1, Granter was giving a tour of the gardens, all the
while dropping such isolated expletives as “cute,” “too wild,”
“love this park” and “very cute.” She giggled a lot, too.
Granter, a native Canadian, has spent much of her career with Paramount Canada’s
Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario, eventually becoming director of entertainment.
The past two years she has been the manager of Paramount’s Star Trek: The
Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. From there she answered the call to take on
Bonfante Gardens, the $100 million horticulture themed park founded by Michael
Bonfante which had been unable to finish out either of its first two seasons
because of budget shortfalls.
Culture shock? “Vegas is the culture shock,” Granter said, “but
this is not a culture shock from Canada.” Operationally she has gone from
the hard park and stage shows of Wonderland to the virtual reality of Star Trek
and now to kiddie rides amid circus trees and queues made of living bamboo.
Still, that transition has not been difficult for her, either. “You have
to look after your theming in any theme park,” she said. “Instead
of using painters and sculptors, we use landscape artists. It really isn’t
as much difference as I would have thought.”
In fact, it’s easier on the budget. “It’s actually a very economic
theming,” she said. “It requires expertise to maintain, and it may
have been expensive to put in, but from a maintenance perspective, I don’t
have to paint it. It just grows.”
Paramount Parks still has a daunting task ahead of it turning Bonfante Gardens
into a viable financial operation. As a non-profit entity—its proceeds
destined for beautification projects in surrounding communities—it does
not need to make money, but it does need to cover its operating costs and get
out of debt. Paramount Parks runs the risk of being another suitor who loved
it but is forced to leave it.
Paramount Parks is counting on economy of scale. Though Granter is on site,
the rest of the management team is that of Paramount’s Great America up
the road in Santa Clara, California. Aside from sharing expertise and talents
with Great America, Bonfante can now share that park’s audiences: Great
America’s VIP pass includes admission to Bonfante Gardens. Within days
of that announcement, Great America’s season pass sales spiked, and early
in the season Bonfante was seeing record numbers through its gate.
However, Bonfante Parks will not become a Paramount Park, per se. Any capital
improvements would have to be approved by the board of directors, even if Paramount
Parks wanted to make changes. But why change perfection? “One of our goals,
because it is a very, very unique property, is to make sure it remains unique,”
Granter said. “It is an addition to the Paramount Park family because of
its uniqueness.”
The smile never fades from her face as she glances around her new park and remarks
in appreciation of its designers, “They did some special things here.”
THE LOOP is written and produced by Eric Minton, Minton Enterprises, LLC. To see more examples of Eric Minton's work and Minton Enterprises services, visit www.ericminton.com.
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