After years of speculation and fan anticipation, Utah author Brandon Sanderson announced he and some partners are buying the land where fantasy attraction Evermore Park once operated in Pleasant Grove.

The news, which Sanderson delivered in his weekly update to fans, posted Tuesday on YouTube, is bittersweet, he said — because his plans don’t include reopening the park.

“None of the buildings are usable. Nothing on Evermore really works,” Sanderson said in the video. “Our architects and people said, ‘You can’t have people go in these buildings. They have degraded too far.’”

Sanderson said he and his family visited Evermore Park several times before its closure was announced in April 2024, and enjoyed it. “A lot of people who worked there put a ton of effort and sweat and heart into making Evermore nice,” he said.

When the park closed and the land was put up for sale, Sanderson said, “a lot of people assumed I would buy it,” because it’s near his home in Utah County. Also, Sanderson bought land near the park to build Dragonsteel Plaza, a bookstore and business headquarters he announced at the FanX pop culture convention in September 2024.

He declined to buy the park then, he said, because “basically, I was not interested in running a theme park.”

“I’m still not interested in running a theme park,” he said, “so don’t get your hopes up in that regard.”

Evermore Park was the dream of entrepreneur Ken Bretschneider, a 14-acre theme park that “lends itself to the idea of fantasy and romance [and] theatrical immersive entertainment” for visitors, he told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2018, ahead of its opening.

The park’s six years were often bumpy. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, decreased the number of visitors. In 2021, the park sued Taylor Swift, arguing that the title of the singer’s 2020 album “evermore” infringed on the park’s trademark; Swift countersued, and both suits were quickly dropped. And in 2022, YouTube influencer Jenny Nicholson posted a nearly four-hour video review, detailing her negative park experience; the video has been viewed 16 million times.

Shortly after Bretschneider and the park’s landlord confirmed the permanent closure in April 2024, prospective buyers announced that they were aiming to reopen the park, but the sale fell through a few months later.

Sanderson had hoped they would succeed, he said in Tuesday’s video — it’s one reason he waited before buying the land. “I wanted someone to come in who could bring Evermore back the way it had been, because I knew I couldn’t do that.”

He said demolition on the Evermore site will begin soon. He declined to detail his plans for the land, because he wanted to give the park’s fans a moment to absorb the loss.

“I don’t want this to be a celebration of the fact that Evermore didn’t end up working, the dream didn’t end up working,” Sanderson said.

“Every story needs to have an ending,” Sanderson said at the end of the video. “And that’s part of what makes stories powerful is when they end. This is an ending, but every ending is, as we know, a new beginning.”