Wednesday, Jan. 07, 2009

Road at Hard Rock Park not set in rock

Area worries parkway name misleads

If the towering Led Zeppelin roller coaster's white curlicues aren't enough, there are signs around the bankrupt Hard Rock Park that provide daily reminders of the theme park's failure.

The renamed Hard Rock Parkway was supposed to be a long, four-lane road that could handle the tens of thousands of visitors a day who never showed up. The previous street name, Outlet Boulevard, was a remnant of the Waccamaw Pottery outlets, which enjoyed its heyday but eventually went bankrupt.

Now, after a Delaware bankruptcy judge granted an order Tuesday to liquidate the park in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, businesses are trying to figure out how to rename the road - and what its new name should be. "We really need to get the name off everything we have," said Lori Posma, director of sales and catering with the Holiday Inn just down the road from the 55-acre, $400 million theme park.

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The Holiday Inn was one of the few hotels deemed a "partner" resort with the doomed park, and the hotel wanted to make the most of that relationship.

That meant printing fliers, tacking the Hard Rock name to the end of the hotel's name, promoting the park on its Web site and prominently displaying its new address, 101 Hard Rock Parkway, in black lettering on the building's foremost facade.

The hotel now is trying to cleanse everything of the Hard Rock brand, after the international cafe company told the bankruptcy court that the park's failure had hurt its reputation. The park opened in April and shut down in bankruptcy in September.

Posma has begun to look into requesting a name change, which could be expensive.

Hard Rock Park paid for the initial road signs, although Horry County discourages roads named after businesses.

"That can be problematic," said Carol Coleman, the county's deputy planning director. "When they built this, of course, everybody was hoping it would be a long-term thing."

There's not much concern with another road renamed along with Hard Rock Parkway in September 2007. Backstage Boulevard is generic enough to stay, Coleman said.

But for Hard Rock Parkway, replacement signs would have to be paid for by the people or businesses making the request, said Cynthia Thorpe, a senior planner with Horry County. That bill could be more than $1,000, depending on how many signs are needed for the road's six intersections, plus a $250 petition fee to start the process.

That doesn't seem quite fair, Posma said.

"I don't think that any of us should pay for it to be changed, because we didn't want it changed to begin with," she said.

There were only a handful of businesses whose address changed, but it proved to be a costly hassle.

Staybridge Suites had to spend about $2,500 printing new business cards, pamphlets and letterhead with the road's new name, said Erik Reis, the hotel manager.

He joked that if the county were to rename the road based on what's there now - vacant mall buildings - they could call it Ghost Town Road or Tumbleweed Lane.

Several of his co-workers pondered what the new name should be.

"Something that's historical and timeless would be great, something they should have gone with in the beginning," said Derek Nelson, a regional director for the hotel group that runs Staybridge. "I can't believe they let [the name] pass to begin with."

Shelly Kirkbride and Wendy Hucks suggested renaming the road Waterway Boulevard, which conveniently meshes with the name of their business, Waterway Maintenance on George Bishop Parkway.

"I mean, it's going to the waterway," Hucks said.

Their office faces the largest intersection in the area, Hard Rock Parkway and George Bishop Parkway, where several new street signs hang above the scant traffic.

"Think about all those big green signs," Kirkbride said. "What a waste of money."

Patricia Sourlis, owner of the Boathouse Waterway Bar & Grill on Hard Rock Parkway, said it never really made much of a difference to her what the road was named, besides having to reprint various materials.

"We would rather it go back to Outlet, because we still have stuff with Outlet Boulevard on it," she said.

Posma says her hotel worries about guests who book a room on Expedia.com or other travel sites expecting the park to be open, only to be disappointed when they arrive.

It takes a while for the travel sites to be updated, she said.

Some online sites still have not reflected the fact that Hard Rock Park ever existed. MapQuest shows the renamed Hard Rock Parkway, but Google and Yahoo maps still have the previous Outlet Boulevard name. Google Maps' satellite picture of the area shows undeveloped dirt where a park would one day rise.

Then again, whatever name the road takes might not make too much difference to the drivers who frequently use it.

"I don't think we ever thought about [the name]," said Mike Worley, a volunteer at the Christ United Methodist Church.

Most just say the church is across from Medieval Times. "I don't know if you were to ask the congregation what that four-lane road out there was, if they'd be able to tell you."

Judge approves Chapter 7 conversion

A Delaware bankruptcy judge on Tuesday granted Hard Rock Park's request to convert its bankruptcy to a Chapter 7, meaning the park has to turn over all its assets and records to a trustee for liquidation.

The judge ordered the park to give a trustee all of the estate's records and property, and submit a list of unpaid debts that they accumulated after filing for bankruptcy within 15 days.

Within 30 days, the park is required to submit a final report and account to the U.S. Trustee's office.

The court appointed Fred Giuliano, a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Panel trustee for Delaware, as the trustee in the case. The trustee's role is to sell the assets and pay creditors.

Though he had only a short time with the park's information, Giuliano said most of the assets seemed to have liens on them, meaning there would likely be very little left, if anything, for the average person or business owed money.

"It doesn't look like there's a lot available there to pay the unsecured creditors," he said.