Sunday, March 14, 2010
What path to Explore?
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- Independent voice is silenced in merger
- TOP takes a hard knock
- Lagging on college access
- Alzheimer's drains minds and finances
From the RoundTable blog
My idea for Explore Park, Plan B: Lure visionary Bern Ewert and businessman Larry Vander Maten into a partnership, wedding Ewert's ideas with Vander Maten's bucks.
I'm kidding. Well, halfway -- but only because the two could never make it work.
Ewert, Roanoke's former city manager and a brash genius, would insist on having everything his way because Explore was his dream, built in his head.
Vander Maten, the history buff with a fortune made from nursing homes, would insist on having everything his way because, well, he has his own vision of a history theme park -- not so grand, but one that he's willing to underwrite.
Willing even now, though he certainly won't raise enough money to break ground in time to meet the terms of his contract.
As with Explore before it, even the wealthy Vander Maten's plan for a large-scale tourist attraction is all about raising money. Lots of money.
Because that has turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, his opportunity to build his brainchild in the footprint of Ewert's is about to run out.
Which leaves the institutional keeper of the Explore dream, the Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority, with a choice: Keep alive some semblance of Ewert's audacious scheme, dating back to 1987, to create a public/private history theme park on state land. Or not.
Vander Maten has until June 13 to start building something, which hardly seems possible, or his contract for free use of Explore Park's 1,100 acres will run out. After twice extending his original three-year lease, the authority won't be going there a third time. It's looking for a Plan B.
One realistic option: Give Vander Maten a chance to renegotiate his contract for turning Explore into Blue Ridge America. He already has spent $1.5 million on planning. If he can arrange financing, he is prepared to invest $200 million to make the site an overnight family vacation destination that he says would draw people from all along the East Coast.
Frankly, I'm not enthusiastic about what he has revealed of his plan. If the authority still hopes for a large-scale tourist attraction, though, Vander Maten remains the only prospect for an idea waiting for decades on a financial savior.
So, I'm not surprised to read that most authority board members are open to renegotiating his lease, a sweetheart deal for free use of public land for 99 years, with virtually no public control over its development. I'm pleased that the board at least wants a right of way for the Roanoke River Greenway to be part of any deal. It also should guarantee continued public access to the river at the bottom of Rutrough Road.
Anyone bankrolling a project should be able to expect to exercise reasonable control needed to guard its success. But the public contribution of land in this venture would give it a substantial stake. The public should have some access, whatever the tract's eventual use.
Blue Ridge America is not the only, or even the most realistic, choice.
An alternative Plan B: Forget about creating a large-scale tourist destination that would suck megamillion tourist dollars directly into the economy. Go with a soft approach to economic development, an array of smaller uses that would offer amenities for the community, draw more outdoor recreationists and add to the region's appeal to business prospects.
This, essentially, is what the recreational authority and its Explore Park Economic Development Consortium have been working on as Vander Maten's deadline has neared.
Ewert envisioned a world-class zoo and theme park that would rival Disney World, an economic engine to power the region's growth. For a few years, it seemed he had the brains and chutzpah to pull it off. As it turned out, he did not have the money. He couldn't raise enough from private donors to keep millions of dollars of state and federal support flowing.
Explore Park eventually opened, but never the Explore of Ewert's dreams. In these days of tight money and cramped vision, it's hard to imagine ever coming close.
City Councilman Rupert Cutler, a former Explore director, suggests including it in a planned Blue Ridge Parkway expansion. The National Park Service would be an ideal caretaker of the land and the now defunct interpretive history program. But the parkway's expansion goal is to protect threatened viewsheds. Explore hardly qualifies.
State Sen. John Edwards wants simply to bring Explore into the state's park system if there is no viable Plan B by year's end, and environmentalists are kind of warm to the idea. With a state so short on resources that the governor wants to close some of its parks, that seems overly optimistic.
As government shrinks, private investment -- large, small or a mix of both -- seems the more promising trail back for Explore, or something like it.
Strother is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
