The Fun Zone - Memories

Balboa Fun Zone - Newport Beach, California

"The Early Years"

I got a letter from my brother, Francis, this past week along with a newspaper clipping from the Los Angeles Times newspaper telling that the Fun Zone is proposed to be transformed into a sprawling $40-million ocean exploration center. He wrote that reading this was a "memory maker" for him and he thought it would be for me as well, if fact he gave me a little 'nudge' to perhaps blog about our shared memories. 
 

The site back in 1906 was a boat yard in an area on the waterfront of old Balboa. The owner was Fred Lewis and for years he operated this boat yard where he would store and repaint boats. By 1936 the boat yard business dwindled and he leased the land to Al Anderson and the Original Balboa Fun Zone was born.

There were stories that during World War II Anderson would hold secret poker games in his upstairs apartment there on the Fun Zone property. The Ferris wheel which you can see in the distance in the above photo was a used 1918, 45-foot version that Anderson bought from a Seattle company and he also owned the merry-go-round. Harold Hannaford owned and operated the other kiddy rides and the arcade zone games at that time.

In 1948 Al Anderson purchased the property from Fred Lewis and by that time the Balboa Fun Zone had become quite an attraction to kids and families far and wide.
 

 

If you were headed to Newport Beach it would be a must stop, certainly a precursor to Disneyland today. And if you lived in the area it would be where you had your summer job. For local kids like myself it was where we would hang out during spring break and the summer months.

In 1972  there was a lawsuit over a diving accident from a platform on the beach and Anderson was forced to sell the Fun Zone property. For several years the property passed from one lending institution to the other. In 1985 Jordan Wank purchased the property and got a permit to bulldoze and rebuild. And in 1985 the 'new' Fun Zone reopened to the delight of kids of all ages.

In 1988 the property was purchased by Doo and Sons, a Japanese investment group who wanted to turn this prime waterfront property into an upscale condominium project. As leases expired Doo and Sons would begin accumulating the empty spaces. Finally when they had enough space they went to the City Council for project approval. There had been such an outcry from the local residents that the condominium project was turned down.

Doo and Sons stopped making payments on the property and it went into receivership. One of the tenants, Balboa Fun Zone Rides, Inc. bought the property in 1994 and continued to run the property as it was.

 In 2005 the property was purchased by the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum. The old carousel has been closed and auctioned off, leaving only the old Ferris wheel as a memory of what was know as the Balboa Fun Zone.

 

An artist's rendering shows an aerial view of the proposed ExplorOcean sea exploration center with the Ferris wheel as the only remaining memory of the fun Fun Zone Days.