New plans announced for Geauga Lake

AURORA, Ohio (WJW) – There is new life planned for Geauga Lake .

The City of Aurora announced Monday that it had purchased Geauga Lake, along with 48 acres of lakefront property. The approved purchase was $5.3 million.

“This is such a great opportunity not only for Aurora, but for all of Northeast Ohio, and probably even beyond all,” Aurora Mayor Ann Womer Benjamin said.

The mayor said that $1.3 million of the purchase funding comes from the American Rescue Plan Act, the rest from general funds. The deal will be finalized in the fall.

“People are very excited and are very nostalgic about the parks and are glad to see that they’re not going to, you know, residential development,” she said.

The property will move into the beginning stages of a master plan, which starts with the assessment of existing structures and cutting back years of overgrowth.

According to a press release, the city is in the “master plan stages” to redevelop the property into a public park that would include a pool and a beach.

“We’re going to demolish those that we don’t want to use and refurbish those that we might be able to use,” Womer Benjamin said. “We expect to build a beach along the lake for swimming and we do expect to have boating available, probably non-motorized boating. The former wave pool from wild water kingdom we believe can be restored into a pool.”

The project will take multiple years to develop, with continual improvements being made over time. It’s too early to put a price tag on the entire project.

The purchase of the property also includes the Lake Loop easement for future trail projects at the site of the former Geauga Lake Amusement Park and Sea World.

One of the next first steps also will be to establish utilities as well, and a groundbreaking ceremony is expected to be held sometime in 2025. Some artifacts from the original parks are expected to be incorporated in the redevelopment.

A 55-and-older community is under construction on the other side of the lake, as FOX 8 has previously reported .

A new Menards and Meijer store are also expected to open in the area in late 2025 or 2026.

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