[UPDATE] The Orange Dino and Route 1 Mini Golf Course Lives for Another Season

Photography by Toan Trinh

UPDATE, September 15: Here’s hoping you got a few good swings in this summer: Route 1 Mini Golf is officially closing for good on Sunday, September 25, the Saugus Advertiser reported. But this isn’t goodbye to the iconic, orange gatekeeper. “The dinosaur will stay where it is, or go into one of the hotels and have a pitch-and-putt. It’s definitely going to stay,” developer Michael Touchette told the Boston Globe.

PREVIOUSLY:

The lamentations over a Saugus amusement and its iconic, orange gatekeeper appeared to be premature. The owners of Route 1 Mini Golf & Batting Cages and ice cream stand just announced their park will reopen this summer after all, despite a previously announced sale agreement with developer Michael Douchette, CBS News reports.

“We are thrilled to be able to help the community create one more season of memories,” owner Diana Fay said in a statement.

The activity center will likely reopen in mid-April. The sale to Douchette is expected to go through this fall.

Route 1 Mini Golf first opened in 1958, and Fay and her husband have owned it since the 1970s. The orange dinosaur guarding the property, visible from Route 1, has been a North Shore fixture for decades. It even got its own memorializing beer from Mystic Brewery in Chelsea this winter.

“It’s been a cherished landmark for all of us for a very long time,” Mystic’s sales and marketing manager Louie Berceli said, when the double IPA came out in December. “Upon hearing that the mini-golf course it’s located in was going out of business, we wanted to pay tribute [with] a bigger, more assertive style to capture the spirit of the big guy (or girl, we haven’t heard anything definitive about how giant orange dinosaurs identify).”

Lynnfield’s MT Realty plans to build two hotels, luxury apartments, and retail amenities on the dinosaur’s land, the Saugus Advertiser previously reported. Douchette said he would close the sale when the necessary permitting came through for those projects; today’s reports don’t indicate an exact reason for the new timeline.

Douchette has said he is willing to keep the orange dinosaur on site, and gave the Fays until April 1 to decide his (her?) fate. That decision is now punted further beyond the Mesozoic Era.

See you on the green, big guy.

1575 Broadway, Saugus, 781-233-2811, theorangedinosaur.com.