Country Fair Entertainment Park In Medford Closes Permanently

Country Fair Entertainment Park in Medford has shut down permanently.

The announcement was made public Wednesday after employees learned Tuesday that the park, which has been in its current location for 23 years and closed for the 2023 season in October, will not reopen in 2024, says Nichole Hausch, manager.

“We thought we would reopen but the owners had other plans,” says Hausch, who has worked at the park since 2009.

The outdoor park’s go-karts, mini golf, batting cages, driving range, laser tag and arcade will all be shuttered. “It’s not going to be an entertainment park again. There’s going to be something else here,” Hausch says. She does not know what that something else might be, she says.

Cathy Ann LoSchiavo, a board member of the Medford Chamber of Commerce who says she is speaking as her opinion, says she is “very upset” about the closure.

LoSchiavo, 66, has lived in Medford her whole life and had her daughter’s 5-year-old birthday party at the park more than 35 years ago.

“I think it’s absolutely terrible,” she says of the change. “It’s a loss of tradition and community. It’s an institution people have been going to for years.”

The park’s website thanks visitors for their patronage at the current location as well as other sites in its history since the 1970s. It instructs people with Fun Cards, used to purchase food, games or attractions at the park, to contact the park by Jan. 31.

Hausch says she also contacted summer camps that were planning to visit Country Fair this summer, including Driftwood Day Camp in Melville, Park Shore Day Camp in Dix Hills and the YMCA camps on Long Island.

“As a travel camp, we’ve been going there for years. It’s going to be a loss,” says Bob Budah, a director of Park Shore Day Camp. “It was a summer destination that the kids enjoyed.”

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.

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