OAKLAND, Calif. (KRON) — Another beloved Bay Area business is on the brink of closure.

In Oakland, Children’s Fairyland ran out of its Paycheck Protection Program – or PPP loan last week and was forced to furlough most of its employees yet again.

Fairyland was hoping to re-open this month but now with cases rising, the park’s future is unknown.

After serving Oakland and the Bay Area for 70 years, a cloud now casts over the future of Children’s Fairyland.

“If we don’t open in August, we’re going to have to look at a different situation,” Kimberly Miller said.

Executive Director, Kymberly Miller says the amusement park, which also serves as a petting zoo, green space and educational place for families, was supposed to open this month.

That was before all the rollsbacks from the governor after coronavirus cases sky rocketed.

“We furloughed our staff early in the process on March 13 and then we were benefiting from PPP so we had a couple months where we worked really hard to serve our constituency both online and preparing for a safe reopening and then we were hoping to ride the end of the PPP into a safe reopening on July 15 and that’s when the coronavirus catapulted,” Miller said.

Miller says the last of the PPP, which is largely used to keep employees on the payroll, ran out last week — and they were forced to furlough a majority of their staff yet again.

Originally, the PPP loans were to be used by June 30, however the government recently approved an extension. But unfortunately many businesses like Fairyland already used up their funds, unaware that an extension was coming.

“We would’ve deployed those funds differently from the beginning and just been able to do more protection of the organization while we protected staff as well,” Miller said.

So far, the park’s lost over a million dollars due to the coronavirus closure.

“Summer’s our biggest season. We’re normally open from June forward until the kids go back to school in August,” Miller said. “Through July we lost $1.2 million. Nothing like the zoo, but definitely for our scale, huge for us.”

Now that Alameda County’s allowed to re-open the Oakland Zoo, Miller’s hopeful for their park — but says she hasn’t heard any updates yet.

In the meantime, they’ve launched a Fairlyland fund.

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