He Bought Cedar Point – Part 1

For many Northeast Ohioans, the warm weather means only one thing: the expectation of another visit to Sandusky's Cedar Point, the best amusement park in the country.

But many younger fans may not know that at one point in the late 1950s, Cedar Point was sold and came very close to being closed forever – and converted to a real estate development.

Read all about Emile Legros – the man who bought Cedar Point with the intention to close it and ended up saving it – in the article below. It was written by Journal Staff Writer Bob Cotleur (whose excellent work has been showcased many times on this blog) and appeared in the paper on April 27, 1969.

The article is a bit long, so I’m presenting it in two parts. Part 1 deals with Mr. Legros’ early career and business philosophy.

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Banker Emile Legros Took a Fling at Cedar Point - Part 1
by BOB COTLEUR
Staff Writer

EMILE LEGROS, 63, a tall, distinguished investment banker, spends a lot of time riding most of the rides at Cedar Point each summer.

He owns the place.

But he says it’s fun to ride. “What the hell, every guy ought to have a little real fun once in a while,” he explains.

Cedar Point is Ohio’s answer to Disneyland.

Legros bought it originally for a real estate development. But after the outraged cries of Governors and newspaper writers and people in general he built it up instead of tearing it down.

In addition to owning and operating Cedar Point, as chairman of the board, he is also board chairman of Erie Bank of Vermilion and board chairman of Miss Teen Age America, Dallas, Tex. He lives year-round at Waite Hill, Willoughby, Ohio and maintains a summer residence next to the marina at Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio.

He was originally and still is an investment banker. Even today he occasionally hangs his hat in Cleveland as a partner of Prescott, Merrill & Turben, Co., perhaps the largest investment banking firm between Chicago and New York, according to Legros.

But “I’m spending more and more of my time at Cedar Point, full time, you might say, in the summer,” he adds.

IN BYGONE YEARS Emile Legros bought, merged, modernized management and sold commercial banks, “lost my shirt” in boats and breweries, and smashed a bases-loaded home run with the purchase of Cedar Point.

Yet he began his business life as a college dropout.

After three years toward a degree in chemical engineering at Toledo University he decided he’d never  make a good engineer because he wasn’t detail-minded enough. He discarded the idea then of getting into commercial banks because “people didn’t go very far in the business.”

He quickly settled into investment banking.

“I wanted to be where the money was. I figured if you’re going to make money you’ve got to be where the money was.”

It was the first of his major and characteristic quick decisions.

“Most of my life has been decision making. I make fast decisions. If I make a mistake, I try to live with it, correct it if I can. But a lifetime of indecision would be the unhappiest in the world. You an go crazy with indecision. If you turned left and found you should have turned right you can turn around and correct it. But you can’t sit there for an hour saying 'I don’t know which way to go.’”

Emile was born on Christmas Day in 1905 and married the former Florence Francke (he calls her “Frankie”) of Toledo 16 years ago, two years after losing his first wife.

He’s the father of four, three who are married and who treat dad as an adult equal, close, friendly and sharing, and Deborah, 18, who treats Mom and Dad one way at home and another when they visit her at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.

“I think we communicate well with our daughter. Communications away from home are excellent. At home I think it’s different because we’re at her all the time. We don’t recognize she’s a grown young lady. We’re still saying she’s a mama’s girl and mama doesn’t want to give her up.

“WE DO THE SAME things with our children at home that others do. I’ve heard Debbie say ‘Mother get off my back, you’ve said that to me three times today.’”

Legros sounds, acts thinks and feels like an ordinary mortal with all the ordinary problems of life attached. The only basic difference in Emile Legros and Joe Doaks is that Legros studies the problem and acts.

“I got into investment banking by spending some years in an office and later in the field learning the business. Before long I was in sales, making some pretty good money,” he said.

In 1935 he opened his own firm labeled the First Cleveland Corporation and it existed until he first merged his people into Prescott & Company in 1963 and later merged in himself and the corporation in 1966. He said Prescott is currently capitalized at around $9 million, has 300 to 400 people covering principal cities throughout Ohio.

“Once I found out, after the banking holiday of the early 30’s, that you could buy banks for 30, 40 or 50 cents on the dollar, to me that was buying a dollar for 30 or 40 cents.”

The Depression made that true. But after World War II he found another way to buy banks for the same kind of money.

“Take a look at the history of banking,” he said and traced the formation of many small community banks to area business people who once got into the business because of the need and expected, as their father before them, to have sons take over in time.

“BANKING TOOK a peculiar turn after the war. Sons went to college, became engineers and went into engineering for $700 or $800 a month instead of working for dad at $250. I saw the opportunity of buying bank stock cheap because older people owned them and, in time, had no place to turn. And there were too many banks in the country.”

“Take Dover, O. There were four banks in Dover. I bought the Exchange Bank for about 30 cents on the dollar and then I bought the First National Bank and merged them into one, the National Bank of Dover.”

He had also noted another peculiarity of small town bank owners. “They wouldn’t sell out to each other, or ‘the competitor’, but they’d sell to a perfect stranger,” Legros said.

Legros bought. He brought the elusive dollar back from 30 to 40 cents to 100 cents “by improving management. I hired experts.”

He made similar purchases in Painesville and elsewhere. Banks were his strong point because “I studied the philosophy of banks and banking people.”

But he struck out with breweries “which I thought would make a comeback after the war” and with a Great Lakes pleasure boat called the Alabama.

He missed a chance to buy in with Bill Veeck and the Cleveland Indians, one of the area’s great sales stories, in favor of a brewery which finally folded.

Then, in 1957, “we purchased Cedar Point.”

Next: Part 2