MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN BY CLOSING GREAT AMERICA
The Silicon Valley Irony That Roller Coaster Enthusiasts and Data Center Critics Didn't See Coming
There's a certain poetic cruelty in the fact that the tech industry's relentless march to Make America Great Again — at least in the Silicon Valley sense — begins by demolishing a theme park literally named Great America. Somewhere, an irony detector just blew a fuse. The TechBros and their political allies are busy promising a gleaming AI-powered future, and their opening move is bulldozing 112 acres of roller coasters, funnel cake stands, and childhood memories to make room for... server racks. USA! USA! USA!
Welcome to California in 2026, where the most thrilling ride left in Santa Clara won't have a 48-inch height requirement — it'll have a $10 billion price tag, a 300-megawatt power appetite, and a water bill that would make a Las Vegas casino blush.
The Theme Park That History Keeps Selling
Great America has been sold more times than a used car on Craigslist. Let's do a quick recap of this park's tragicomic ownership saga:
- 1976: Marriott opens it as a Bicentennial celebration of America — because nothing says patriotism like a double-decker carousel and a wooden coaster.
- 1984: Marriott decides theme parks aren't their thing and bails. Check out anytime you like, but you can never leave — except Marriott absolutely left.
- 1985: The City of Santa Clara buys it for $93.5 million to save it as a "public amenity." A city. Bought a theme park. With taxpayer money. To preserve the public's right to get motion sick.
- 1992: Paramount swoops in, slaps Hollywood IP all over everything, and suddenly you're riding Top Gun: The Jet Coaster while humming Kenny Loggins. Peak America.
- 2006: Cedar Fair pays $1.24 billion for all the Paramount Parks, strips the movie branding, and adds genuinely excellent coasters like Gold Striker and RailBlazer.
- 2019: Cedar Fair buys the land back from Santa Clara for $150 million — the same land the city bought for $93.5 million in 1985. Not a bad flip, Santa Clara.
- 2022: Cedar Fair sells the whole 112 acres to Prologis for $310 million, pockets the profit, and signs a lease to keep operating until 2033 — essentially renting back the park it just sold, like a homeowner who sold their house and is now paying rent to live in their own garage.
The land has now been sold, bought, sold again, and sold again — appreciating from $93.5 million to $310 million in roughly 37 years. The real thrill ride, it turns out, was California real estate all along.
The Pros and Cons of California Data Centers
Or: How to Spend $10 Billion and Make Zero Friends at a Neighborhood Meeting
California currently hosts over 240 data facilities pumping out roughly 1,057 Megawatts of operational capacity. And that's just the warm-up act. There are 32 major projects in the pipeline set to nearly triple that capacity. Here's the honest scorecard:
The Pros — What the Press Releases Say
| Benefit | The Reality |
|---|---|
| 💰 Massive tax revenue | Billions in industrial property taxes for counties that desperately need it |
| 🏗️ Construction jobs | Thousands of high-paying jobs during build phases |
| 🤖 AI leadership | Keeps California at the center of global compute infrastructure |
| ⚡ Grid investment | Forces upgrades to aging transmission infrastructure |
| 🌱 Renewable pairing | Inland campuses can co-locate with utility-scale solar and battery storage |
Governor Gavin Newsom loves this part of the story. He signed SB 53 to create CalCompute, a public cloud initiative, and has made it abundantly clear that California intends to remain the "global capital of AI." Senator Scott Wiener agrees — no moratoriums, full speed ahead, just please use recycled water and build your own microgrid. Pretty please.
The Cons — What the Press Releases Don't Say
| Problem | The Ugly Truth |
|---|---|
| 💧 Water consumption | A large facility can consume 250,000–750,000+ gallons per day. In drought-prone California. Per. Day. |
| ⚡ Electricity rates | California industrial power runs 15¢–25¢+/kWh — among the highest in the U.S. Texas is laughing. |
| 🏘️ Ratepayer cost-shifting | Grid upgrade costs risk being passed onto residential electricity bills |
| 🔌 Grid bottlenecks | Silicon Valley faces multi-year interconnect wait times — the grid simply can't keep up |
| 🌊 Environmental pushback | Imperial Valley communities are fighting a proposed 330 MW, $10 billion campus over groundwater fears |
| 🎢 Cultural displacement | Three million annual visitors lose their theme park. The data center promises zero roller coasters. |
The progressive wing of California politics — figures like Saikat Chakrabarti and Connie Chan, aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders — wants a full moratorium until tech companies agree to strict zero-carbon and water-neutral mandates. Rural water district boards are filing CEQA environmental impact demands faster than a Six Flags ride operator can check a seatbelt.
Fourteen Propositions, Zero Data Center Questions
California's November Ballot: A Study in Selective Priorities
California voters will face 14 ballot propositions this November. They will weigh in on housing, criminal justice, education funding, and approximately eleven other things that California voters love to have Very Strong Opinions About.
Not one proposition addresses:
- The water consumption of data centers
- Electricity rate protections for residential ratepayers
- Zoning oversight for hyperscaler mega-campuses
- The grid interconnection backlog threatening grid stability
This is not an accident. It is, as political scientists call it, a feature, not a bug.
Because here's the thing about California politics: powerful forces rarely need a ballot proposition when they have a campaign contribution. The tech industry's lobbying apparatus in Sacramento is a well-oiled machine — and it runs on considerably more than 300 megawatts. Hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Meta don't need to win a public vote. They need to win a planning commission meeting, a county supervisor's goodwill, and occasionally a state senator's calendar.
And they are very good at all three.
The result is a political landscape where inland mayors and county supervisors in Kern, Kings, and Imperial Counties are actively courting billion-dollar data campuses — because when your county's economy runs on agriculture and the aquifer is already stressed, a $10 billion industrial property tax anchor looks like salvation. Meanwhile, Sacramento legislators pass carefully worded "oversight" bills that protect ratepayers in principle while ensuring the construction cranes keep turning in practice.
It's not corruption, exactly. It's California. Go figure.
Surely California Has Plenty of Water and Electricity
A Brief Comedy in Two Acts
Act One — Water: California just emerged from a multi-year megadrought. The Colorado River compact is under renegotiation. Imperial Valley farmers are in water-rights litigation that makes Game of Thrones look like a friendly dispute. And the proposed Imperial Valley data center campus wants 330 megawatts of power and the cooling water to match.
But yes. Surely the data center will be a big hit with California citizens. Especially the farmers. And the fish.
Act Two — Electricity: California's electricity rates are among the highest in the continental United States. PG&E ratepayers are already paying for wildfire liability, grid hardening, and the general privilege of living in Northern California. The state's grid operator, CAISO, is managing a transmission interconnection queue so backed up that new large-scale projects face multi-year waits just to plug in.
The solution, apparently, is to build the data centers anyway — in Sacramento, the Central Valley, and the desert — and figure out the power later. This is the Silicon Valley approach to infrastructure planning: ship it, then patch it.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
Here's the comparison nobody in a press release will make for you:
| Metric | Great America (Theme Park) | Future Data Center Campus |
|---|---|---|
| 🎟️ Annual visitors | ~3,000,000 people | 0 (access-controlled facilities) |
| 😄 Fun generated | Immeasurable | Statistically zero |
| 💧 Daily water use | Moderate (water rides, landscaping) | 250,000–750,000+ gallons/day |
| ⚡ Power draw | ~10–20 MW estimated | 100–300+ MW per campus |
| 💰 Land value | $310 million (2022 sale) | Projected billions in development |
| 🎢 90-degree drops | RailBlazer (literal) | Your electricity bill (figurative) |
| 🌊 Community impact | 3M+ visitors, local tourism economy | Construction jobs, then locked gates |
Three million people visited Great America every year. They rode Gold Striker, screamed on RailBlazer's 90-degree drop, ate overpriced churros, and went home with sunburns and good memories. The data center that replaces it will serve the compute needs of AI models that generate text, images, and — with exquisite irony — articles like this one.
The new facility is guaranteed not to be as fun. There will be no Columbia Carousel. There will be no Demon. There will be no child crying because they were one inch too short for Flight Deck. There will be cooling towers, fiber conduits, diesel backup generators, and security fencing.
The Verdict: Making America Great Again, One Demolished Coaster at a Time
The closure of Great America is not a villain's story. It's a systems story — the kind California specializes in producing. A theme park built to celebrate America's Bicentennial gets sold by a hotel chain, rescued by a city, sold to a movie studio, sold to a coaster company, and ultimately surrendered to the inexorable gravity of Silicon Valley land economics.
The TechBros didn't set out to close Great America. They just needed the land. The fiber was already there. The power grid was adjacent. The location was perfect. The fact that 3 million people per year were having the time of their lives on that land was, in the cold calculus of megawatt-hours and rack density, a temporary inconvenience.
Gavin Newsom will call it progress. Scott Wiener will call it managed growth. The Central Valley mayors will call it economic development. The Imperial Valley water board will call it a threat. The progressive moratorium advocates will call it reckless. The RailBlazer will call it nothing, because it will be disassembled and shipped to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City.
And somewhere in the ghost of a 1976 Bicentennial theme park, the Columbia Carousel — all 100 feet of double-decker American nostalgia — will spin one last time before the demolition crews arrive.
Making America Great Again, indeed.
The servers will be up by 2034. The funnel cake stand will not.
📍 California's Great America, Santa Clara — 1976 to ~2033. Gone but not forgotten. The data center will have excellent uptime and absolutely zero churros.
Sources & References
🎢 Great America — Sale, History & Closure
Inside the Magic — "Botched Land Deal Threatens Permanent Closure of Six Flags California Park" Cedar Fair's $310M land sale to Prologis and the leaseback agreement explained. 🔗 https://insidethemagic.net/2025/01/land-deal-sinks-six-flags-california-park-rl1/
U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) — Cedar Fair 10-K Annual Report Official filing confirming the June 27, 2022 land sale contract between California's Great America LLC and Prologis L.P. 🔗 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/811532/000081153224000035/fun-20231231.htm
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation — 2024 Annual Report (10-K) Contains the full Contract of Sale (Exhibit 10.8) dated June 27, 2022, between California's Great America LLC and Prologis L.P. 🔗 https://s204.q4cdn.com/155295784/files/doc_financials/2024/q4/2024-Six-Flags-Annual-Report.pdf
San Jose City Council — Official Meeting Transcript City of San Jose public record discussing approved and pending data center projects, including references to the Great America land transition and water/electricity concerns. 🔗 https://sanjose.granicus.com/MinutesViewer.php?view_id=63&clip_id=15753&doc_id=b1ec55ce-9cbd-11f1-a395-005056a89546
🏗️ Prologis & Silicon Valley Real Estate
Prologis Investor Relations — Official Corporate Site Primary source for Prologis's data center and logistics real estate strategy in Silicon Valley. 🔗 https://www.prologis.com/investor-relations
CoStar Group / Commercial Real Estate Data Tracks Silicon Valley land valuations, industrial redevelopment trends, and data center real estate transactions. 🔗 https://www.costar.com
💻 California Data Center Industry & Infrastructure
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) — Electricity Explained Core reference for U.S. electricity pricing, industrial rates, and regional grid comparisons. 🔗 https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/
International Energy Agency (IEA) — Electricity 2026 Report Global and U.S. electricity demand forecasts, including data center load growth projections. 🔗 https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2026
California Independent System Operator (CAISO) Official grid operator data on interconnection queues, transmission capacity, and load forecasting for California. 🔗 https://www.caiso.com
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Regulatory filings on ratepayer protections, utility cost-shifting, and data center grid upgrade requirements. 🔗 https://www.cpuc.ca.gov
🌊 Water Usage & Environmental Impact
State Water Resources Control Board — California Official data on water rights, drought conditions, and industrial water use permits relevant to Imperial Valley and Central Valley data center proposals. 🔗 https://www.waterboards.ca.gov
Pacific Institute — Water & Technology Research Independent research on data center water consumption in California, evaporative cooling impacts, and closed-loop alternatives. 🔗 https://pacinst.org
🏛️ California Politics & Legislation
California Legislative Information — SB 53 (CalCompute) Full text of Governor Newsom's signed legislation establishing the CalCompute public cloud computing initiative. 🔗 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
Office of Governor Gavin Newsom — Official Press Releases Statements on AI leadership, data infrastructure investment, and California's tech economy strategy. 🔗 https://www.gov.ca.gov
Senator Scott Wiener — Official Senate Website Policy positions on data center expansion, opposition to construction moratoriums, and green infrastructure incentives. 🔗 https://sd11.senate.ca.gov
🏟️ Bay Area Cultural & Sports Venue Displacement
San Francisco Chronicle — Bay Area Venue Closures Ongoing coverage of Bottom of the Hill, Slim's, Club Deluxe, and the broader displacement of live music venues in San Francisco. 🔗 https://www.sfchronicle.com
Mercury News / The Athletic — Oakland Coliseum & Stadium Relocations Coverage of the Raiders, Athletics, and Warriors departures from the East Bay and subsequent land redevelopment. 🔗 https://www.mercurynews.com
🎡 Theme Park Industry & Ride Relocation
Coaster101 — Roller Coaster Industry Analysis Industry resource covering ride relocation feasibility, RMC single-rail coaster logistics, and wooden coaster economics. 🔗 https://www.coaster101.com
Theme Park Insider — Great America Coverage Fan and industry reporting on Gold Striker, RailBlazer, Flight Deck, and the park's final operational years. 🔗 https://www.themeparkinsider.com
Note: Some institutional links (CAISO, CPUC, CalLegislature) lead to portal homepages — use their internal search functions with the specific bill numbers or project names cited in the article for direct document access. SEC and Six Flags annual report links go directly to the primary filings.
