Cerullo Close to Buying Out Bakkers’ S.C. Theme Park

Local evangelist Morris Cerullo may be just a few days away from closing a $45-million deal to purchase the Heritage USA theme park in South Carolina. If the sale goes through, Cerullo may move his San Diego-based ministry to the park, a spokesman said.

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Thurmond Bishop of Columbia, S.C., approved the previously announced deal Wednesday but the transaction is conditional upon the consent of two PTL creditors who are out of the country. The creditors’ lawyers, however, have said their clients will approve the agreement.

Cerullo, who heads World Evangelism of San Diego, agreed in May to a two-part deal to acquire the scandal-plagued religious empire formerly run by defrocked evangelist Jim Bakker. Cerullo is in escrow to complete the first phase, the purchase of the PTL cable TV network for $7 million. Last month, Cerullo paid a $1-million deposit to acquire the real estate and theme park segment of PTL.

“We are obviously happy with Judge Thurmond Bishop’s decision to conditionally approve our offer,” Cerullo said in a prepared statement. “We are extremely hopeful that, by next Tuesday, all the creditors will issue their approval and we can go forward with the New Heritage USA. . . . As soon as final approvals are achieved, we will be assembling a team of top-notch professionals to oversee and operate the facility.”

About 100 PTL creditors have already approved the agreement. Cerullo will withdraw from the bidding for the park if the two remaining creditors balk at the agreement, Cerullo spokesman Alan Elias said.

Dennis W. Shedd, who was appointed trustee by the bankruptcy court to manage the liquidation of the PTL estate, has said he will sell off the park piecemeal if he cannot find a buyer for the entire property. He did not return calls to his Columbia office Wednesday. Cerullo will not comment on his plans for Heritage park until the sale is final, but he does intend to renovate the facility, according to his statement released Wednesday. Dormant since September, the park would not be ready to operate again until sometime next year, Elias said.

“He intends to run it as a for-profit business, with all the money going back into the ministry, just like a business,” Elias said. “They have $52 million in bills to pay.”

Of the Heritage USA park’s 2,200 acres, only about 500 are developed. The park now includes a 500-room hotel, another hotel of the same size under construction, a water slide, a shopping mall and miniature railroad. Ownership of the land is disputed by an Indian tribe that has claimed in a lawsuit that it was illegally taken from them by the U.S. government in the 1800s.

Elias declined to reveal details of the financing of the deal, except to say that it “has been secured through a line of credit by established institutions.”

Morris Cerullo World Evangelism ministry acquired the cable TV network by outbidding evangelist Oral Roberts, who offered $6.3 million. That part of the deal is scheduled to close Aug. 29, pending Federal Communications Commission approval, Elisa said.

PTL broadcasting headquarters are inside Heritage USA in Fort Mill, S.C., and Cerullo will move his TV studio and possibly his ministry’s headquarters from San Diego to the PTL facility if he purchases the park, Elias said.

“That’s being considered by the board of directors,” Elias said. Cerullo’s headquarters office in San Diego nowemploys about 40 people, he said.

Cerullo, a 58-year-old faith healer, has in the past declined to discuss his ministry’s finances. Founded in 1961, Worldwide Evangelism produces a daily TV program called “Victory With Morris Cerullo” that is carried by 40 stations nationwide. The show is also broadcast in Canada, and the ministry has operations in Great Britain, the Philippines and Zimbabwe.

The evangelist has been known for ambitious but failed attempts to expand the reach of his ministry in San Diego. He bought the downtown El Cortez Hotel and tried to convert it into an evangelism school before selling it in 1981.

He also proposed a 200-acre retirement center and religious education center on land the church owned in the Mira Mesa area, but he ended up selling the property to a home builder.

PTL has been under the control of a U.S. Bankruptcy court since June, 1987, two months after Jim Bakker resigned the ministry following a sex-and-hush-money scandal involving former church secretary Jessica Hahn.

Bakker is serving a 45-year federal prison term in Minnesota on fraud and conspiracy convictions last October for allegedly deceiving Heritage USA investors.

Cerullo was once a friend of Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy, and occasionally appeared on the Bakkers’ TV program.