It wasn’t that Barnes had much chance to avoid Zoomers, given that he passed the vacated property twice every day for those seven years while transporting his two girls to and from school. “The sight of Zoomers always got them excited,” he recalls. “And then one day, I had the opportunity to become interested.” When Zoomers first broke ground in 2002, the original partners and financiers of the project could hardly have imagined the stretch of rough road ahead of them, as well as their 18 acres of kiddie rides, arcade games and a go kart track that actually traveled right through the middle of the building. But a Category Four hurricane not only destroyed homes and businesses, but dreams up and down the Southwest Florida coast. Add to it a slowly tanking economy that eventually led to the Great Recession, and Zoomers in fact experienced bankruptcy twice — first declared by its owners and later, when the bank itself holding the papers was shuttered by the State of Florida Office of Financial Regulation.
Barnes, A Fort Myers Beach resident for 25 years, with a history in real estate development and other commercial ventures mostly in his native Iowa, had followed the history and listing price of the property for a number of years. But when the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) took ownership in 2010, things got serious and he called a family meeting to address the subject of going into the attractions business. “Everybody voted yes,” he remembers. “The kids were 13 or 14 years old then, and very excited about going there and having birthday parties.” In 2011, the property and all of its assets — once upon a time listed for $14 million — was purchased at auction for only $1.4 million. Barnes immediately went to work and over the next year invested significantly via capital, hard work and enthusiastic vision to reopen on June 12, 2012. Roughly 10 years after the dream of Zoomers began, it finally had come true. And his kids, now 21 years old and who also once dreamed of playing there, realized that and more — getting jobs that lasted until they attended college.
COASTE | ATTRACTIONS 23
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