EXCLUSIVE: After 37 years, the Golden Horse Carousel at Paramus Park stopped spinning today.
“My daughter and I took our last four rides tonight. Then they shut the place down,” Laura Hofsommer of Paramus told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
“They left with love and support, surrounded by workers old and new, including one who remembered buckling me in as a tot. I don’t believe it’s gonna be the same ‘atmosphere’.”
David Bowen, who co-owns the carousel with his brother, Tony, said the mall owners revoked their lease and told them the carousel had to cease operating today.
They have two weeks to get it out, he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT, adding that he and his brother received the notice five days ago.
Dismantling will be done at night when the mall is closed, he added.
“They said have a different direction for that area,” said Bowen, a partner in the Bowen & Bowen accounting firm in Hackensack. “They said they aren’t putting in a different carousel. It’s a decision that they said was made at the top.”
Paramus Park is one of 123 malls owned by Chicago-based General Growth Properties, a real estate investment trust publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Installed two years after the mall opened in 1974, the ride is unique in that it features full-sized horses but is small enough to fit inside that particular area.
Twenty or so years ago, the Bowens dismantled the carousel so that an amusement company could add 1,400 lights. It was quickly returned to the same place.
“We would like to continue. My brother and I have been in this for a long time,” Bowen told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this afternoon. “But they have other plans.”
So now they’re trying to sell it.
“A good offer would be entertained,” Bowen said.
PHOTOS by Boyd A. Loving, who contributed to this story