Gilroy Gardens Reviewing Plans for Future Growth

© Gilroy Gardens

A Note: Things might be a bit quite in the industry... and the entire world... right now due to the Coronavirus.  While nearly every park around the globe has shuttered for a couple weeks, we'll still look for stories to cover here.  We take the virus quite seriously, but we also know we all need a distraction here and there.

Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park, a non-profit park which is owned by the city of Gilroy, California, and operated by Cedar Fair, is currently looking at possible ways to expand and grow their attendance base over the next decade.

The plan was actually formed a few years ago, but the city of Gilroy is once again actively debating what the best move forward is for the park.  In recent years the family theme park, which was originally known an Bonfante Gardens, has added two family water play areas that have been a huge success for the park.

© Google Maps

Part of the original expansion plan was to build an adventure park on the undeveloped hillside adjacent to the park - seen above.  The park has also toyed with further expanding their water park attractions to further grow their attendance base.

Per this recent story, the park is still operating profitably, however with very thin margins.  The Board of Directors for the park want the city to give them a plan for the future, which includes new additions.  Since 2011 the park has only invested $8 million in new attractions.

The most recent additions made a big improvement for the park's numbers, with attendance of 457k in 2018, up 50k over 2017, and 410k in 2019.

A recent analysis of the park, published last November, said that if both the expanded water park and the adventure park were built the park could draw 400k more visitors, gaining some additional $25 million in revenues.

While no firm commitment on expanding has been reached, it would be nice to see this small, community based park thrive in the future.