The president of the organization that operates Lakemont Park has lashed out at Blair County, after the county filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking an injunction to prevent the organization from selling the historic Leap the Dips roller coaster.

“The Lakemont Partnership was shocked to receive the county’s complaint against us yesterday,” wrote Andrea Cohen in an email in response to a request for comment from the Mirror. “The complaint includes numerous baseless allegations and attacks,” naming her individually as a defendant, along with her brother, Philip Devorris, who’s not a partnership officer.

The parties had been working for more than a year to amicably resolve issues between them, “but the county wasn’t interested,” Cohen wrote.

That led the partnership to file a lawsuit against the county in August “seeking intervention and guidance from the courts,” she wrote.

The county hasn’t responded to that lawsuit, she wrote.

Instead, “we have the county’s complaint, which we view as a retaliatory act,” she wrote. “Instead of working to resolve issues or responding to our lawsuit, the county and its commissioners chose to attack the Lakemont Partnership and the Devorris family personally, despite their long history of philanthropy and dedication to the betterment of the Blair County community.”

The partnership’s August lawsuit alleged the county had falsely accused the partnership of violating the long-term lease under which it operates the county-owned park, while unfairly besmirching the partnership’s reputation.

The partnership suit was part of a filing that revealed that the commissioners have been working with a separate group to establish a sports complex at the park.

Two prominent local symbols of the family’s philanthropy are Penn State Altoona’s Devorris Downtown Center on 12th Avenue and the Altoona Blair County Development Corporation’s Devorris Center for Business Development.

Under a 2006 lease agreement, the partnership owns Leap the Dips and is responsible for maintaining and preserving it, according to the county’s lawsuit filed this week.

But according to the agreement, if that maintenance and preservation proved financially unfeasible, the partnership’s responsibility would end Oct. 8, after which the partnership had the option of giving the county 60 days to take the coaster back.

If the county declined to take it back, the partnership could then sell the coaster to a third party.

In a letter dated Oct. 13, the partnership declared that it planned to execute the “out” provision, and if the county wasn’t going to exercise its takeback option, that it planned to sell the coaster — a sequence of actions the county claims the partnership has forfeited the right to take, due to alleged lease violations.

Those alleged violations include “failing to properly preserve and maintain Leap the Dips through Oct. 8”; failing to pay “requisite percentage rent” for the park; failing to “open their books and records to the county”; and failing to operate the area within the fence line at Lakemont as a “public park” during the summers of 2024 and 2025.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.