Riverview

Riverview Park, one of the stand-bys in the Dells for the past forty years, may be going under. Their business was down this year almost 20% from 2008, which was already down from 2007. Lots of smaller businesses disappear and are replaced in downtown Dells every year, but these are mostly little trinket souvenir shops that are pretty much the same as a half dozen other shops on the block. It is hard to tell that there is a new name and new management because they continue to sell the same tasteless t-shirts and tacky items as before.

Riverview, on the other hand, is a 35-acre amusement park with go carts, water slides and carnival rides. It is not huge but it covers a large stretch along one of the main roads into town. If it is boarded up next spring, it will mean that many people arriving at the Dells are going to be greeted by seeing something that is sad and depressing rather than noisy, bright and exciting.

The newspaper article today says that Riverview's board is waiting until next spring to decide if (and perhaps how much of the park) to open for the Memorial through Labor Day season. Word on the street, however, includes stories of bankruptcy already being filed. My understanding is that bankruptcy could involve not only the Park, but one of the boat tour companies and some of those shops in town.

There have been other ominous rumblings about the future of tourism here, including murmurs from the guy who has developed the largest project in recent years, Mount Olympus, which pretty much dominates a few miles of the main drag. He has raised questions about why the Dells is drawing so many fewer tourists than other, comparably-sized and -situated tourist towns around the country. Ironically, he suggests that it may be because the Dells fails to capitalize on its natural beauty -- something that happens these days because of developers like him, who build enormous theme parks that hide the natural beauty behind fake Roman walls and Trojan horses and want to line the river banks with high rise condos that block the view for everyone else. As a number of people have pointed out, if the only reason people come to the Dells is to go to an indoor water park, they can do that a hundred miles closer to where they live anyway. Why drive for hours to get to a clone of the Great Wolf Lodge that is in the suburb next door to where you live?

John and Tom, meanwhile, worked with the track crew this week and got an amazing amount done replacing ties at the Riverside & Great Northern. So what Tom has always called "the little railroad that could" continues to plug along. We close for the season on December 6. We will see what next spring brings.