He Bought Cedar Point – Part 2

Emile Legros’ Favorite Ride

Here’s Part 2 of the Journal’s profile of Emile Legros, the investment banker who bought run-down Cedar Point in the 1950s with the intention of closing it down and converting it into a real estate development. Instead, he and his partner George Roose launched the beloved park’s comeback, leading to its status today as the best amusement park in the country.

The full-page article appeared in the paper on April 27, 1969. Part 2 begins with his just having purchased Cedar Point.

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Banker Emile Legros Took a Fling at Cedar Point - Part 2
by BOB COTLEUR
Staff Writer

“AT THAT TIME it was physically run down. A terrible place. A place not to come to. And quite frankly we bought Cedar Point because of the real estate. We were going to tear it down and make a real estate development of it. Governor Launch decided that was a wrong thing to do and he went so far as to call the legislature together to introduce a bill which would have the state take it over,” Legros said.

“So we had a feasibility study made and it looked like it was feasible to rebuild it, although it would be a long hard job.

“Now if you have the money to spend and rebuild the physical part, that’s one thing but the moral part – so the people will bring children here and be able to turn their children loose in the park without fear of being molested – well, that’s what we have today.”

That’s how an investment banker got into the field of amusement parks, but what gives him the special talent to run it as board chairman?

“I don’t have the talent. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to run that hotel (Breakers Hotel), not the slightest idea of how to run the rides. And I don’t know how to run a marina.”

At first, he stole people from Disneyland.

“Sure, I did. I got Doc Lemmon, general manager here for a while, and a fellow named Jacobson that we put in as rides manager and four or five others,” he smiled.

They made their mark and set the pattern for how the Point operates today. Legros hires experts, gives them budges “which are their bibles” and concerns himself with decisions based on logical criteria any investment banker would understand.

Such things as the rate of return on an investment (the newest is un-banklike and called the Runaway Mine Ride and cost $600,000 plus), safety, maintenance, and operator needs.

“I LOOK FOR ability and honesty and loyalty in hiring people and I don’t second guess them. They’re supposed to be the experts. I think where many people make mistakes is in second guessing.”

He recently lost two of his top lieutenants who will soon open a new amusement park at Geauga Lake, east of Cleveland. How does he feel about Gaspar Lacocco and Earl Gascoyne?

“Anyone that is afraid to train someone for his own job won’t go very far. Should I have not given them their heads and trained them and told them everything so they could go out and do this on their own?

“I think there’s a lot of things they don’t know, but they’ll learn. They have the ability to learn. I want them to be successful. I don’t want them to fail.”

He said the park they took over “is a tough one. It has the same weakness Cedar Point had when we bought it. It’s physically as well as morally run down.”

But the two have one big break. Emile Legros was their teacher.

Cedar Point today runs about $15.5 million in sales a year with earnings last year of $1.058 millions. It has 425 acres and Legros says “we’ve only scratched the surface.”

He plans to continually build, but highway access is today’s major problem. “Not the people. We can handle the people, but one time last summer we had them backed up three miles on the Oho Turnpike and along SR 250.”

The interest in Cedar Point and the 2,500 college youth who staff it in summer led to Cedar Point (and Legros’) acquisition of Miss Teen Age America “which fits in with our motives of what we want to do with the young people we’re working with,” Legros said.

“Believe it or not we can do things for your children that you can’t do yourself. For instance, this is the age of resenting mother and daddy yaking at the kids too much.

“HERE WE SET DOWN the rules. We tell our teenagers what is expected of them. They come in knowing what is expected, that there is a curfew law, that they must be courteous, must be clean, how long sideburns can be, that they can’t have mustaches, beards, clothes must be clean and they must pick up dirt on the midway.

“You try to tell the same things to your children and they get resentful of you.

“My own daughter is part of the new Cedar Point Courtesy Corps of hand picked youngsters and she love this. She likes the discipline.”

Debbie has a beautiful room in the splendid cottage Legros built for his wife and himself next to the Marina at Cedar Point. But when Debbie works with the corps, she stays in the dormitory – a fact that Legros is still pondering in the good old way by scratching his head.

But he’s proud of his daughter’s special qualifications for the Courtesy Corps, which Legros hurriedly founded last summer when he found customers had a million questions which they needed answered. Where’s a washroom? How far to Detroit? How many employes at Cedar Point? “She speaks Russian and various Latin American languages. And we have girls that speak French and other languages.

“Yes, we get visitors from all over the world.”

He admits to being second to Disneyland but you can see the light of first place in the nation shining in his eyes.

“THE RIDES? Yes, I guess I rode all of them last year. If you’re my guest and go on a ride, I’ll go too. My favorites are a tossup between the riverboat and the railroad. I’ve ridden everything but the [Wild] Mouse and the Rollie Coaster. Had a heart attack a number of years ago so I don’t go on them.”

He plans to ride again this summer. He’s the man in the Cedar Point coat who looks a little bit like he might be the official ride tester at the park.

Which he is.

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A lot of changes have occurred since this article was published in 1969.

One of Mr. Legros’ favorite rides – the riverboat cruise – closed on Labor Day 2011. The Runaway Mine Ride, which opened in 1969, is now the second oldest roller coaster at Cedar Point, behind the Blue Streak. (Here’s a link to a Wiki page about former Cedar Point attractions.)

Emile Legros passed away in 1975. At the time of his death, Cedar Point was earning about $24 million annually.

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Click here to visit the Cedar Point page on the Ohio History Central website for a nice capsule history of the park.

And click here to check out all of my Cedar Point posts over the years. There’s been a lot of them in the last ten years, and if you happen to scroll down to the bottom of the page, there are more if you click on “Next Posts” on the lower right.

Topics include: vintage Cedar Point postcards; going to Cedar Point via the Causeway or the Chaussee; the Cedar Point Totem Pole; Visions of Cedar Point 1966 (one of the all time most-visited series on this blog); its follow-up series, More Visions of Cedar Point 1966; a visit to Cedar Point in 2012 after not being there in decades; the opening of the Causeway in 1957; the 2014 demolition of the 1905 Auto Entrance to the Breakers; Cedar Point Then and Now; the opening of the Frontier Trail; the closing of the Paddlewheel boat ride; more Paddlewheel Memories; some 1964 video of the park; and the (*sniff*) demolition of the Space Spiral.