After The Amusement Zone
With numerous debates over the area, and its use as a portion of the track for the Long Beach Grand Prix, the main development of the area did not occur until the construction and opening of The Pike at Rainbow Harbor in 2003.
The Pike at Rainbow Harbor is located between the Long Beach Convention Center and the Aquarium of the Pacific. The tourist-oriented development has a large number of restaurants and a 14-theater megaplex Cinemark movie theater. The Gameworks keystone attraction closed and has re-opened as Kitchen-Den-Bar. There is also a four-level, fee parking-structure, metered street parking, a pedestrian overpass supporting teaser artwork resembling a steel rollercoaster, an outdoor amphitheater, an antique Spillman carousel (1920) and a solar-powered Ferris wheel.
Although the area has been developed into a retail-entertainment center that pays homage to its past as an amusement zone in name only, it has yet to become as successful as hoped. There continues to be controversy over the lack of a nearby recreational bathing beach and solutions are being sought for bringing back the excitement of the area’s heyday.
Read more about this topic: The Pike
Famous quotes containing the words amusement and/or zone:
“Business is, emphatically, the amusement of Americans, and, to be in keeping with their character, every thing written for their amusement should partake of the useful.”
—H., U.S. women’s magazine contributor. American Ladies Magazine (February 1828)
“There was a continuous movement now, from Zone Five to Zone Four. And from Zone Four to Zone Three, and from us, up the pass. There was a lightness, a freshness, and an enquiry and a remaking and an inspiration where there had been only stagnation. And closed frontiers. For this is how we all see it now.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)