Will the red chair in the sky live to glide over Durban's promenade again?

There is a glimmer of hope the curtain won't fall on Durban's iconic 80-year-old amusement park, which was set to elicit its last thrills and screams come May 1.

Durban Funworld owner Nic Steyn believes the city can still save the amusement park by buying its assets and putting it out to tender together with the property on which Funworld stands (which the city already owns).

The Sunday Times reported that Steyn was withdrawing from the 80-year old beachfront entertainment park which had been operating on a month-to-month lease since 2017, when the long-term lease agreement for the city-owned land lapsed.

The rides and other assets belonging to Steyn are to be auctioned online from Thursday. Details on what the land will be used for are still unclear.

However, Steyn believes there is a way for the city to buy the assets and save the iconic park, and he would be willing to lend a helping hand during the transition.

“This can be so easily resolved: they have a resolution that it will be paid for with savings from the unspent budget expenditure in various departments. That can quite easily be allocated to purchase the rides and I can even stay here, looking after them and fixing those that need fixing,” he said.

Steyn was speaking during his meeting with ActionSA leaders in the eThekwini council on Tuesday. The meeting was to discuss possible ways to keep the park open.

After Steyn's announcement, the eThekwini municipality said it was working on a project to attract developers and would invite proposals to redevelop the property this year.

Steyn said, “If [the city] wants to put it out to tender, it's fine ... only the land is going out on tender because it belongs to the city — but if they buy the rides then they will be able to tender it both as land and [a funfair].

“I can help, whatever their future plans are, because we've been involved in enough of these things to know what works and what doesn't,” said Steyn.

ActionSA's caucus leader in eThekwini, Zwakele Mncwango, told TimesLIVE their meeting with Steyn was to establish facts from his point of view. Their next step will be to engage with the city and city manager Musa Mbhele, in particular, to find out what can be done to preserve the park.

“This is part of our history in eThekwini and if this establishment has been here for 80 years you can’t just let it go. If you look at anything that talks about tourism in eThekwini it will reflect and show pictures of this facility. It has been the face of the city for years so we must be able to protect it,” he said.

He said the city should explain what triggered it not to renew the long-term lease because it was impossible to run a business month-to-month.

“When you run a business you invest. If you invest R1m  to maintain the rides and the next month the city says they have other plans for the property, what then? A month-to-month lease would discourage any investor,” he said.

Mncwango questioned the point of the upcoming tender if the city didn't purchase the rides and called for more clarity from the city on its plans.

“To say you are going on tender with this land doesn’t make sense. If you take out the rides, who will lease the land which has nothing,” he said.

“The big question is what will the land be used for and does the city have plans? If they do then what do you do about the children and adults who play here?”

TimesLIVE

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