NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A standing-room crowd heard a California company’s proposal for a sports complex at the shuttered Six Flags amusement park site. There’s also intense interest in a Baton Rouge company’s idea for a theme park bearing the Nickelodeon brand. The Six Flags site, once heralded as a tourist attraction and catalyst for economic development, has sat untended for four years. New Orleans residents and public officials alike are eager for redevelopment. But the theme park industry is suffering in the economic downturn. And enthusiastic proponents of the proposals put forward by Big League Dreams for a sports complex and Southern Star Amusement for a theme park have failed to note that both Jazzland and Six Flags did badly there. “It’s a very difficult market in which to operate a theme park. I say that based on the history and not just a gut feeling,” said Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services, a Cincinnati firm. Speigel studied the park as both Jazzland and Six Flags. “It was an ill-conceived concept in the wrong location and it just should not have been built,” he said. “It’s just one of those things you ought to bury it and let it go.”—-Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected]