Cedar Fair announces sale of Canadian land

Cedar Fair Entertainment Company has finalized the sale of its undeveloped land neighboring Canada's Wonderland near Toronto. The company expects the proceedings to be completed in the third quarter of this year. The net earnings from this transaction of roughly $50 million will be used to reduce the company's term debt. Little more details of the transaction have been released.

"I am pleased to say that all conditions have been met and we are now moving forward to complete the sale of 87 acres of surplus land near Toronto to the Vaughan Health Campus of Care," said Dick Kinzel, Cedar Fair's chairman, president and chief executive officer. "The sale of this land is another step in our commitment to reduce our debt and strengthen our financial position for the long term."

The sale of the unused land will help the company better balance earnings in the future. The global economic decline has not been kind to the entertainment company. "The decrease in attendance and revenues is due in part to fewer operating days year to date, and the closing of Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas in late 2008, as well as unusually poor weather conditions at several of our parks during the months of May and June and softness in the regional economies in which we operate," said Kinzel. "We anticipated this would be a challenging year for our operations when compared with our record-breaking results in 2008. Since the July 4th weekend attendance and revenue trends have improved somewhat across the regions in which we operate, although overall results since then still remain slightly behind last year."