![Carver’s Edaville Family Theme Park No Longer For Sale](http://townsquare.media/site/518/files/2022/04/attachment-Edaville-Featured.jpeg?w=980&q=75)
Carver’s Edaville Family Theme Park No Longer For Sale
Carver’s Edaville Family Theme Park announced that it is officially off the market and that two new operators are coming aboard to keep the train-themed park chugging along into the future.
“Rest assured, Edaville is no longer for sale,” the park’s official Facebook page posted Wednesday morning.
Owner Jon Delli Priscoli had previously said in April of this year that he was putting the park up for sale, with the asking price said to be $10 million. The Marion resident, who has owned the park for the past 21 years, had invested about $25 million into it in recent years but was looking to retire to spend more time with his family.
“Our preference would be to see that the park continue on,” he told the Boston Globe. “It needs new energy, new vision.”
It appears he found that new energy and new vision in the park’s new operators: Managing Partner Shervin B. Hawley and Operations Partner Brian Fanslau.
“The new operators…are committed to the long-term success of Edaville as a traditional family park centered on its historic steam locomotives and family-oriented activities,” the park posted Wednesday.
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Hawley, a Sudbury resident, serves along with Delli Priscoli on the Board of Trustees for Longfellow’s Wayside Inn. Hawley started a graphic design business and was managing bands while still a teenager, and started and sold a record label before he was 21, according to his bio, and went on to become Global Chief Creative Officer for IBM Interactive. He has a passion for American history and lives in one of Sudbury’s most historic homes, the 1773 Bigelow Parsonage.
Fanslau, from Alna, Maine, is the owner and operator of Maine Locomotive & Machine Works. He has more than 20 years of experience operating and restoring steam locomotives and other vintage railroad equipment, and is an expert on two-foot narrow gauge railroads such as Edaville runs. He previously helmed Edaville’s 75th anniversary celebration back in April of this year.
Now, the two are combining to steward the beloved theme park into the future.
“We’re very excited about it,” Hawley told WBSM. “We’re very excited mostly for the community and for the longevity of the place.”
The park announced last week that it will open in November for the annual Christmas Festival of Lights celebration. In Wednesday’s announcement, it answered one of the questions many commenters had about just what would be open in the park during the holiday season.
“Neither Thomas Land nor Dino Land will be open this year as we concentrate on how to make the Christmas Festival of Lights one to remember for our 75th anniversary,” the park posted.
Edaville expects to have a new website around Labor Day.
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