At its regular meeting Tuesday, the agency that oversees Virginia's Explore Park was acting more and more as if it doesn't expect the site's future to include Florida developer Larry Vander Maten.

The Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority board has been working for several months on alternatives to Vander Maten's plan to develop the 1,100-acre site straddling the Roanoke County-Bedford County line.

The board has created an economic development consortium to come up with ideas for getting the park back into operation if, as most board members now seem to expect, Vander Maten walks away from the project he has dubbed Blue Ridge America.

The consortium has met several times and continues to solicit ideas on how to use the site, which have included opening a bicycle shop, using the reconstructed church for weddings and other functions and having a public-private partnership build cabins. The cabins would be rented to vacationers who could use the existing trails for hiking and biking, and have access to the Roanoke River.

In November, Vander Maten told the board there was no capital financing available for such projects and he was unlikely to be able to meet a June 13 deadline for beginning work on what he said would be a $200 million "overnight family vacation destination."

But Tuesday, board Chairman Fred Anderson said he's received no formal written request from Vander Maten to extend the lease he was granted in 2005. And, Anderson said, he did not have much expectation that he would get such a letter.

The original lease gave Vander Maten two years to study the viability of his development plan and obtain funding and regulatory approval. It also provided that he could receive extensions of that study period until June 13, 2010.

Vander Maten, who did not attend Tuesday's meeting, has said he's already spent some $1.5 million planning for the site.

With the final deadline approaching, and widespread expectation that the financing needed for Vander Maten's project won't be available by then, the Explore board has been examining its options.

As Anderson pointed out Tuesday, the board could simply extend Vander Maten's current lease option; it could renegotiate a new lease to address some concerns board members have raised over the past five years, such as public access to the Roanoke River and the extension of the Roanoke River Greenway into the site; or it can simply refuse to do either of those and allow the lease to expire.

Anderson appointed a committee headed by former Roanoke County Administrator and board member Elmer Hodge to contact Vander Maten to determine if he intends to make a formal proposal for an extension.

After the meeting, Anderson said he's excited by the ideas that have been generated so far by the consortium, and he believes the ingenuity of people who love the park will lead to a viable future that may include a variety of uses.

The board will hold a work session in February to discuss the consortium's recommended options.