"Have The Time Of Your Life In 1965."
That's what a Yellow Pages advertisement promised the citizens of Huntsville and the thousands, no, millions, who would surely flood into north Alabama in shared ecstasy over America's bold venture into outer space.
There would be:
Amusement
Entertainment
Recreation
Education
the ad assured readers.
Launching from a billboard alongside Highway 20, a rocket soared toward limitless skies, with a banana-nosed cartoon astronaut floating alongside. An arrow pointed south, directing attention to a "multimillion dollar park under construction."
Mission unaccomplished.
The arrow basically pointed nowhere.
Space City USA crashed on liftoff.
Last week's gaudy announcement of a proposed $3.5 billion musically oriented theme park in the Shoals area to be called DreamVision SoundScape shook the cobwebs of memory for many long-time Huntsville residents.
Similar ambition and hype - Space City organizers even flew in Decatur-born TV and movie personality Dean Jones for the press conference - accompanied a project that was revealed to Huntsville a half-century ago last month.
In recalling the project in a March 2012 retrospective, The Huntsville Times' Deborah Storey led off impeccably:
"Space City USA is the biggest thing that never happened in Huntsville," she wrote.
Space City USA, with a $5 million price tag, was to be built alongside Lady Ann Lake, just down Zierdt Road from Highway 20 on an 850-acre chunk of property.
It was so long ago and the area so sparsely populated, the site was then described as "six miles outside Huntsville" and "between Huntsville and Decatur."
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The plans included various rides, a volcano, a glass bottom boat and - incongruous among the Buck Rogers fantasies flying about- a narrow gauge locomotive.
There would be a 200-room, 10-story space-theme "motor hotel" adjacent to the park, with a space-themed restaurant and shops. The area now being cleared for Town Madison was to have been developed as part of the plan.
The railroad track was laid, including a span across the lake, and the locomotive purchased. Four domes and some offices were built.
Even now, one can see where the track crossed the lake. A few pieces of foundation of early structures can be spotted in the woods and weeds and a circular concrete path has been encorporated into development.
But you wonder how many people in the Colonial Grand Apartments or in the tony homes of Edgewater and The Reserve even know they're living where Dead Man's Island, Moon City and Time Circle were dreamt to be?
Hubert Mitchell was the Space City USA president and Nelson Weaver was chairman of the board. To support their project, they sold stock in the corporation for $2 a share. More than a few Huntsvillians jumped onboard with their checkbooks.
But, by 1967, it was clear Space City USA was earthbound. Despite some construction and civic-minded support, the project was doomed. Things wound up in court. On October 17, 1967, only a few weeks before the Huntsville-built Saturn V would propel the first Apollo capsule into space, the assets of Space City USA were sold.
"An amusement park scheme which fell flat on its face and took some $2 million in capital with it," The Times noted.
Not long after Storey's reporting, UAH professor Dr. J.P. Ballenger assigned his students in a Project Management class to study Space City USA's failure.
To wit: Bad weather. Lack of direction. Reliance on stock sales and not enough foundation of start-up cash. Swampy site problems. Underestimating costs. The folly of competing against Disney. Lack of experience with theme parks. Poor planning.
Other than that, well, it was A-OK.
Now, to look west to the Shoals: Can DreamVision SoundScape really work? Or does it set up a bunch of grad students for an easy A some day?
