Fun Forest Pavilion lease up in two years

SEATTLE — The Seattle Center’s Fun Forest Pavilion has outlived its welcome.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” said Dan Nolan, 50. “I think it’d be kind of sad if they closed it.”

But there’s no “if” now.

In December, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a shortened lease for the Fun Forest — through 2009, five years before the end of the previous lease.

The new lease slashes rent and concession fees to about $335,000 annually, in exchange for an agreement to close the park that council President Nick Licata described as “not so much fun, sort of a dreary forest, unfortunately.”

Nolan agreed with Licata’s assessment.

“It is kind of old,” Nolan said, gazing at the Puff and Dumbo ride. “These are the same rides that, I would assume, have been here for the past 25, 30 years.”

Actually, the Fun Forest has been a feature of the Seattle Center since the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

In 2007, a task force created by Mayor Greg Nickels to look at ways to revitalize Seattle Center recommended a grass amphitheater, picnic spaces and a sculpture or pond to replace the Fun Forest buildings and rides.

Tom Israel, finance director for Seattle Center who worked on the latest Fun Forest contract, said financial problems began in earnest in 2004 when the amusement center’s managers were unable to make their quarterly lease payments.

“When somebody’s way back on their rent like this, your choices are to come up with a different arrangement, which is what we did, or you sue somebody for breach of contract, which I couldn’t see the city doing,” Israel said.

Stella Robertson began working the Fun Forest’s carnival games in 1966 when she was 16. Now 57, she said 2000 was one of the Forest’s biggest years, but then the 9/11 attacks led to decreased attendance.

With declining attendance came declining ticket revenue, she said.

“We used to be open to midnight every summer night,” said Steve Robertson, her husband who became manager of the amusement park in 1976. “Then it was 11 o’clock, then it was 10. Now we have one price that lasts till 9, and then, lots of times, we’re closing at 9 or 9:30 on summer nights. That never used to happen.”