See inside the New Orleans Six Flags site for first time in years. Here are next steps for revival.

The two-story, whitewashed theater, with its Greek columns and round stage, occupies a lonely section of the former Six Flags theme park in New Orleans East.

Two decades ago, it anchored a row of tidy, French-Quarter style buildings on “Main Street,” the corridor that shepherded thousands of visitors from the park’s entrance gates to the thrill rides and other lofty amusements farther afield.

New Orleans businessman Troy Henry stood inside the debris-filled theater on a recent evening, navigating around overturned chairs, busted wooden pallets and yellow caution tape.

The building is one of the few things that Henry believes can be saved on the 227-acre site, where two decades of rot, rust and wildlife mean a date with the wrecking ball — or some other to-be-determined demolition equipment — for the iconic Mega Zeph roller coaster and just about everything else.

“You can imagine it being redone, used as a venue,” Henry said.

Henry and his partners with the Bayou Phoenix development team spent the better part of three years trying to win control of the publicly owned land. Now that they've signed a lease for it, what becomes of the theater is one of the many questions Henry faces in transforming what looks like a post-Apocalyptic wasteland into what he’s promised neighbors, friends and the city of New Orleans: a family-friendly recreational and entertainment development they can be proud of.

During a recent visit and tour of the site that's become a haven for Hollywood film shoots and not much else, Henry said the next steps for Bayou Phoenix’s plans to build a family-oriented destination with youth sports complexes, a water park, two hotels and a film studio are coming soon. 

It is of the most complicated development projects in recent New Orleans history, and so far, brush clearing and animal wrangling have been the primary on-site activities. Access roads that had been buried in thickets are now passable. Henry has also hired an old Stanford University college buddy, Vincent Williams, who visited the site with him last month, to serve as project manager.

'I look at this blight every day' 

Cruising through the broken down park, where the rides wind in and out of the overgrowth and vultures were perched on buildings and trees, Henry said more tangible signs of progress are just around the corner.

Demolition should be getting underway by late summer, and an announcement of major tenants and operators will come around the same time. Those commitments will set the table for financing packages, he said.

Since it entered the competition to take over Six Flags, Bayou Phoenix has faced skepticism as to whether the roughly $1 billion plan is actually possible, and Henry continues to walk a careful line between showing confidence and overpromising.

“There are still unknowns that we have to solve for. But we're confident that they're solvable,” Henry said. “I’m a man of faith.”

Henry, a businessman, city contractor and one-time mayoral candidate, readily acknowledges he and his partners with the construction firm TKTMJ Inc. didn’t know exactly what they might find once they finalized the lease and got control of the park.

What Henry did know, he said, is that he needed to try something. The park had been a regional attraction to New Orleans East for the five years it was open before Hurricane Katrina. It’s been a daily reminder of devastation for 20 years since.

“I look at this blight every day. I can see it out the windows in my home,” Henry said, talking in the shadow of the towering Mega Zeph. “I know the pain this site has caused to many of my neighbors.”

'One of our good friends'

Thrill-seeking trespassers, reptiles and marsh water have had their way the park, once a wonderland with fancifully colored buildings.

Satanic graffiti is scrawled on a blue concession stand and overgrowth partially obscures the Zydeco Zinger Swings, a pink carousel with intricately painted brass musicians on decorative panels. Drainage pumps, needed to start some engineering and consulting work, have been stripped of their motors.

The whole place is in terrible shape, but Henry seems bemused by some of the aspects of the work, including the wildlife that’s been discovered. His next stop after leaving the theater was to the edge of a fenced-off lagoon.

“Let’s see if our friends are here today,” Henry said to Williams, a reporter and photographer. “Normally when I come over here, one of our good friends that likes to swim in there will come up to you and look.”

Within a couple minutes, an alligator patrolling its territory swam toward Henry and staked out a spot a few feet away. As it approached, Henry pulled out a recently shot photo with a professional wrangler on the site holding up a giant snake that looked well suited for the Amazon.

“Look at him now,” Henry said, turning his attention back to the gator. “He can see where we are, we can see where he is. Ain’t that something?”

Complications

The demolition process that awaits Six Flags promises to be extraordinarily complicated. More than 90 buildings and amusement rides need to come down, and initial demolition bids range from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to the tens of millions, according to Scott Hedlund, executive counsel for TKTMJ, Henry’s construction partner.

The wide range is because no one is yet sure of the condition of pilings and concrete slabs the structures are built on. Hedlund said he believes much of the site’s foundation is still usable, but a formal assessment is needed to know for sure.

“We might find out that, because of where the water levels have been, or the fact that there’s been no maintenance for 20 years, that some of it is useful, some of it is not. Or none of it is usable, and we have to take it all back down to grade level and start over,” Hedlund said.

Adding to the challenges, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must determine what percentage of the site is natural wetlands. To do that, the site will need to be drained of standing water, and since the motors have been stolen out of the site’s existing drainage pumps, new ones will be needed.

Hedlund said he didn’t know how long federal wetland permitting could take. Bayou Phoenix ultimately will have to pay for wetland restoration or protection elsewhere in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin to get the permits.

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, we will be able to build on all of it,” Hedlund said. “It's a question of how quickly.”

Easiest thing is to do nothing

The prospect of building something new at the former park and sustaining it as a business for years to come has countless skeptics. But Henry said he’s not too worried about that: he and his partners are giving it their best shot, come what may, and they wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t believe in their vision, he said.

New Orleans East residents are behind the plan, too.

“The easier thing to do is nothing,” Henry said.

As he spoke towards the end of the tour, a contracted security guard drove up.

“Just want to give you fair warning,” the guard said. “I saw a rattlesnake over there by your vehicles.”

Henry was already running late for a church meeting. He joked that he probably wouldn’t make it now because he was too afraid to go back to his car.

“No, no, no,” Henry exclaimed in mock horror. “Did he say rattlesnake?”