- The Zippin’ Pippin, post-zip
Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who announced this week that the city council of Green Bay, Wisconsin, had formally approved its purchase of Memphis’ defunct Zippin’ Pippin rollercoaster ride, clarified the matter of the purchase price, formerly defined only as “in five figures.”
What the Wisconsin city will pay is roughly $10,000, says Mulroy, who further explains that the original range had been “from $10,000 to $15,000” but that the deal had been simplified when the passenger cars belonging to the legendary Fairgrounds ride had been decoupled from the sale.
Those cars were re-consigned to Carolina Crossroads, the amusement park company which had tentatively bought the entire Pippin complex at auction from the City of Memphis but had failed to come up with a viable use for the ride and had subsequently negotiated with Mulroy to return to his local group’s keeping the partly dismantled Pippin complex.
Taking the cars out of the deal ”was a way of simplifying things,” said Mulroy, who acted as de facto executive officer of Save Libertyland!, Inc., the group founded in 2007 to forestall the abandonment of the Pippin, along with the rest of the once thriving Fairgrounds amusement-park complex.
Commissioner Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor, maintains he — or someone else locally — had to take functional control of Save Libertyland!, Inc. for strictly legal reasons, in that other original members had moved out of state.
“But we’ll have a meeting at some point of all the original members of the group and together we’ll decide what to do with the proceeds of the sale,” said Mulroy.
Green Bay’s council vote on Monday night of this week was by a 7-4 margin. The Wisconsin city intends to spend as much as $3 million refurbishing the Pippin with new materials but in accordance with the original design.
