PRESERVATION RAZE THE COMET?

When you make your annual pilgrimage to the State Fair of Texas this fall, stroll out to the far end of the midway and pay your respects-possibly your last respects-to the Comet Coaster. The graceful wooden roller coaster, a fixture in Fair Park for the past forty-one years, has been silent since the spiraling cost of liability insurance prompted State Fair officials to shut it down in 1986. It will be silent again this year. By next year, it may well be gone.

But if the Comet is to go the route of so many other historic landmarks in Dallas, it won’t be without a fight from local preservationists. They point out that Fair Park has been the home of a roller coaster for about a century, and that the Comet is the oldest existing wooden roller coaster in the South. “It’s really a state treasure,” says Ron Emrich, the city of Dallas’s senior planner for historic preservation. He’s one of the many people working to save the Comet from destruction.

This save-the-Comet sentiment hasn’t been lost on State Fair officials, who withdrew a demolition request four months ago and have been dickering with a few potential buyers ever since. The hope is that the owner of a mid-sized amusement park who can’t afford to build a new coaster can afford to buy the Comet and move it to another site. Says Gary Slade, regional representative of the American Coaster Enthusiasts organization, “I think that if time were given-and I’m talking a couple of years here, not months-we could indeed find a home for the Comet.”

State Fair officials aren’t thrilled by the prospect of not being able to use one-and-a-half acres of prime real estate-land where two smaller rides or a new roller coaster could be built-while they search for a buyer. Nor are they optimistic that they’re going to find somebody willing to ante up the estimated $1 million it will cost to dismantle, transport, reassemble, and renovate the Comet. As State Fair board member Herschel Brown puts it, “There’s a difference between people who are interested and people who are willing to put their money where their interest is.” And unless a legitimate candidate shows up real soon, chairman Dave Fox says bluntly, “We’ll have to tear it down.”

The Comet, the last in a long and distinguished line of Fair Park roller coasters dating back to 1888, was built in 1947. Although it now seems more quaint than majestic, the Comet is one of the most thrilling rides built by Charles Paige, an internationally acclaimed designer. It is one of only three Paige coasters left in the world, and the only one left in the United States. Until it closed, it was considered one of the finest wooden roller coasters on the planet by coaster connoisseurs.

The Comet’s reign of terror ended not because the wooden coaster didn’t measure up to modern technology, but because the cost of insuring it skyrocketed during the mid-Eighties. “Insurance would run more than the gross take from it,” Brown says. And mounting premiums aside, State Fair officials still haven’t forgotten the gruesome deaths and huge lawsuits that resulted from the Skyride failure in 1979 (one dead, fifteen injured) and the Enterprise disaster in 1983 (one dead, two injured). “We all talk about the insurance,” Fox says, “but the real issue is the safety of the roller coaster. It’s an old roller coaster and it’s dangerous. We really believe that it’s a hazard.”

Critics say this fear is unfounded. Nobody’s ever been hurt in a ride-related failure of the Comet, and the coaster has received $1.4 million in renovations since 1980. “The structure is probably in better shape now than it’s been in for the past twenty years,” says John Pierce, chief engineer for William L. Cobb Associates, a Dallas-based coaster design company that evaluated the Comet for the State Fair last year. Although he acknowledges it would cost roughly $30,000 to open the ride and perhaps $500,000 to get it in excellent condition, Pierce says, “I wouldn’t hesitate to go out there, walk the track one time, and ride it today.” Adds Slade, “The board thinks, ’Oh, my God, it’s forty-one years old. It’s going to hurt somebody.” What they don’t understand is that as long as you maintain it, a wood coaster can last forever.”

Unless, of course, it’s torn down. If State Fair officials decide to raze the Comet, they must seek a demolition permit from the Landmark Commission. If this request is denied-a strong possibility-they can appeal to the Dallas City Council. Even if the council rejects the proposal, State Fair officials can still get a permit simply by waiting 240 days past the date of their original application. And nobody doubts that they’re prepared to do just that. “It comes down to one thing: the State Fair does not want that ride on the midway anymore,” Slade says. “End of story.”