The Fayette County commissioners squabbled Thursday over a private zoo owner’s plan to purchase the long-shuttered Great Meadows Amphitheatre in Wharton Township for $600,000. Darwin E. “Sonny” Herring II, the owner of the Woodland Zoo, south of Farmington, said he wants to buy the site and relocate his business there to open an expanded venture, with bears, mountain lions, bison, deer and other animals once native to the area. “We want to bring the entertainment value back to that site. It would be a large benefit to the whole area,” Herring said. Fayette Films LLC, a partnership of a Wyoming writer and a California individual in show business, signed a lease last year to operate a filmmaking facility and tourist attraction at the site. But Fayette Films has not made lease payments, and land-use restrictions that had to be removed by the state Legislature are still in force there. Fayette Films principals had said the restrictions had to be removed before the business could operate successfully. While Herring said the restrictions have to go for his business as well, he and Commissioner Ron Nehls maintain that the county can simply pay a $93,000 penalty to the state and sell the land free of restrictions. Nehls and Commissioner Sean Cavanagh said they wanted to go ahead yesterday and approve the county solicitor to start negotiations with Herring. “We put the property on the tax rolls and put it to productive use. If he wants to put $600,000 in our pocket, we work it out,” Cavanagh said. But a procedural rule, stipulating that approval is needed from all three commissioners before the agenda can be amended, gave Vicites the upper hand. Vicites said he is not opposed to the zoo relocating to the amphitheater site, but he said the decision requires more than a few moments’ thought. “I called (Herring) three times yesterday. I want to see it put on the tax rolls. (But) I want to maintain a good working relationship with other government agencies,” Vicites said. The National Park Service, which operates the Fort Necessity National Battlefield next to the amphitheater, had voiced strenuous objections to the Fayette Films plan. Thanks to that, together with opposition from Uniontown philanthropist Robert E. Eberly and a raft of environmental and historical organizations, the necessary changes to drop the property restrictions never were taken up in the Legislature. Vicites’ decision was lambasted by Cavanagh as opposition masked as stalling. “First he sets a Burmese tiger trap. Then, he lays out a minefield. Then, bureaucratic babble. He’s so phony, his face is there in the dictionary next to the word,” he said. The commissioners have not yet set a special meeting to consider Herring’s offer.

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