How Hialeah saved Christmas: Santa’s Enchanted Forest finds a new home for 2021

Miami just experienced a Christmas miracle in August: Santa’s Enchanted Forest has announced it will reopen this holiday season.

And it’s reopening at historic Hialeah Park.

“We needed to bring happy back to Miami-Dade County,” said Maritza Gutierrez, spokesman for Santa’s Enchanted Forest, who added that Hialeah Park is “where it should have been all along.”

The holiday theme park, which opened in 1983 and is owned by the South Florida-based Shechtman family, officially lost its home at Tropical Park just before the coronavirus crisis hit Miami-Dade. On March 5, 2020, the county’s Parks Department ordered the festival to leave its 37-year home after its lease expired without an option to renew. Santa’s had hoped to reopen with a short lease in 2020 but didn’t.

Santa’s owner Steven Shechtman searched for a new home for the amusement park and its rides, games, shows and millions of lights. When he approached Hialeah Park about the property at 3100 E. Fourth Ave., he found a willing partner.

“Hialeah Park was fantastic,” Gutierrez said. “They immediately opened their doors for us to present a plan. It’s like it was meant to be.”

The new configuration will obviously be different than the original spot, but Gutierrez says the amount of overall space is about the same and that much of the original Santa’s will be recreated, including the iconic, photo-friendly entrance. Expect millions of lights — the Tropical Park venue had more than four million — and new rides. All of the vendors are returning, too, Gutierrez says.

Santa’s plans to open the first weekend in November with a party and is working on acts to perform for the opening weekend. It will stay open through the holiday season.

This story was originally published August 10, 2021 at 11:55 AM.