Scarborough’s Alpamare Waterpark could be set for added upgrades in the future as Flamingo Land aim to open the park again this summer.
Flamingo Land signed a year’s contract with North Yorkshire Council to oversee the venue. A date in July has been earmarked to open the water park.
Owner – Gordon Gibb – says that in the longer term he would like to add more facilities to Alpamare.
Am overall enhancement and expansion would include installing a lift so riders can transport their inflatables to the top of the rides, offering discounts for local residents, organising shuttle buses from Flamingo Land and building an accommodation at the water park.
Its owner Gordon Gibb explained why the project has so much personal meaning: “I was brought up in Scarborough and saw the resort when it was at its best and have seen its general decline over the years, so being able to get one of its key tourist assets operational again is really gratifying on a personal level.
“Hopefully it will be commercially successful as well and we will get control of the operational costs and make it a year-round business rather than just seasonal and then we can start to offer people careers and not just seasonal jobs.
“We know a bit about the history, but we are trying to turn a fresh page as much as we can. A lot of business models fail because they are too ambitious at the onset.
“Hopefully with our years of experience we are a lot more practical and prudent than that and having the mothership of Flamingo Land as a support network in the background will put us in a pretty good place to give us the best chance of opening in time for summer and surviving on a year-round basis hopefully after that.”
“With our skill set that we already have within the leisure industry we feel quite well placed to get the water park operational by the end of July.
“A lot of our staff live in Scarborough and there will be some additional career enhancement opportunities for our team leaders at Flamingo Land.”
Image: Flamingo Land
