By Greg Masse

Post Independent Staff

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The fun is coming to an end at Funland.

After nine years of joyful shouts and smiling faces, the go-carts will stop and the batting cages will fall silent on Sunday.

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Saturday and Sunday will be the last two days for folks to have fun at Funland before it closes for good. Heuer said the faltering economy is mostly to blame for the demise of his business; he saw a 25 percent downturn in 2003.

“The only ones who ever made any money on this was the lenders,” he said.

The Heuers opened Funland in May 1995, with dreams of making it the family activity hub of the Roaring Fork Valley. And to some extent, it was.

But unexpected expenses right from the start curtailed those plans.

Heuer said he had planned to erect a large building for indoor, year-round Laser Tag and a large arcade. But the ground was not level and the family had to build retaining walls, draining their pocketbooks.

Still, Funland expanded over the years to include batting cages, go-carts, a giant human maze, horseback riding, a small arcade and a climbing wall.

“We’re sad,” Heuer said. “It’s kind of bittersweet. It’s an awful lot of work.”

Heuer tried to sell the business as a whole, but nobody wanted to buy a business that doesn’t make money. So, like so many other parcels on the valley floor, the Heuers’ 11 acres will be subdivided and sold.

Possible tenants on the commercial-industrial zoned property are a gas station, a car wash or a hotel on the corner and some type of industrial businesses, such as a trucking company or welding shop, in the parcels further back, Heuer said.

He plans to sell the go-carts and human maze separately and he’ll market the climbing wall as a separate business.

“We did have a lot of fun. Seeing the smiling faces on the kids was rewarding,” Heuer said.

Contact Greg Masse: 945-8515, ext. 511

gmasse@postindependent.com