Explore photos by Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Explore Park's grist mill has shut down. The original development proposal for the park in 1987 re-created the Lewis and Clark expedition and included a theme park.

The Roanoke Times | File

"If funding was available we'd be out there with a shovel in the ground," developer Larry Vander Maten said.

Josh Gilbert prepares for a 5K race at Explore Park, where trails are still open even though the living history portion is closed.

Deer graze at Explore Park in Roanoke County where interpreters once depicted life in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

The future of Explore Park remains as unsure as ever, but this much is clear: The board that oversees the 1,100 acres has soured on its agreement with developer Larry Vander Maten.

Vander Maten was notified recently that he won't get a third extension of his 2005 lease for the park, which straddles the Roanoke County and Bedford County lines. The lease will expire June 13 unless he begins construction by then, which no one expects to happen.

"There are a number of people on the board saying, 'Five years, that's enough,' " Fred Anderson, chairman of the Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority board, said this week.

That was the maximum time the lease gave Vander Maten to conduct feasibility studies, complete regulatory requirements and begin construction.

The question now, Vander Maten said in an interview this week, is whether the board's stance presents an "insurmountable" obstacle to proceeding with all or a good portion of his $200 million "Blue Ridge America" plan to transform the park into the overnight family vacation destination he's designed.

That plan includes such things as hotels, a marina, camping -- and a super-sized aerial rope slide known as a zip line.

The developer said he "was unaware they [the board members] were looking at the approach to turn down the extension request."

"I'm at a loss for what the reasons were," Vander Maten said.

Now, he added, "we're hoping they perhaps will reconsider ... [and] in asking us to renegotiate, tell us what they don't like."

He said he does not think it's a good idea to tear up the current lease.

A majority of the board's members apparently don't want to completely squeeze out Vander Maten -- and the millions of dollars he expects to have access to once the economy recovers.

"We've invited him to participate in Plan B," the alternative development the authority already has a committee working on, Anderson said.

Plan B -- which is being developed by a board committee -- at this stage involves looking at much smaller independent projects such as constructing a few rental cabins by one developer, finding another vendor to rent canoes along the river, having someone else start a bike riding and training center, and reopening the Mount Union Church for rentals. The authority would then incrementally expand the attractions, but not actually operate them.

The board is open to redefining its relationship with Vander Maten, whose lease would have given him control of the property for 99 years.

The board's negotiating committee is sending Vander Maten a list of modifications it believes are necessary to continue under a new contract with him.

Among the ideas the committee discussed at a meeting last month were to have Vander Maten make payments to help with park operating expenses in exchange for delaying construction of his project, and to require him to accommodate a publicly accessible route for the Roanoke Valley Greenway into the park.

Vander Maten spent the past five years and $1.5 million coming up with the Blue Ridge America plan, which he has said will transform the park from a near-bankrupt local history attraction into a family vacation destination.

He said there is no financing available right now for the plan, though, and he needs more time for the economy to improve.

That's why he came to the board in November and asked for an extension of the June 13 deadline.

Trying to craft a new agreement, as well as come up with an alternative vision for the park, will be the state recreational authority board's focus the rest of this year.

The General Assembly has voted to require the authority to come up with a viable Plan B -- which must "provide ways for the park to become financially independent" -- by December in order to continue its oversight of the park.

State law created the quasi-governmental authority with specific missions: recreation, education and research, tourism and economic development, conservation and preservation of open space.

The legislation also provides that if the authority "ceases to operate its projects and to promote the purposes" listed, the property will revert to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Since closing the living history portion of the park in 2007, the authority each year has asked the legislature to pass emergency legislation extending its oversight. That was done, Anderson said, because it feared the state might want to reclaim the land for a state park before Vander Maten could begin his project.

Some board members have argued that because the park technically remains in operation -- the Blue Ridge Parkway Visitors Center is open seasonally on the site, hiking and biking trails are available year-round, and public access to the river at the end of Rutrough Road continues -- the authority is continuing to fulfill at least part of its mission and shouldn't need legislative approval to continue its existence.

One bone of contention that continues to remain is just how small an attraction at the Explore Park location can be and still be financially self-sufficient.

Vander Maten insists that something along the lines of the $90 million first phase of his plan is essential to draw the overnight visitors he said the park must attract to survive.

Vander Maten and his Roanoke Valley development partner, Dale Wilkinson, point out that attempting to gradually grow the park's attractions has been tried before -- and failed.

The original 1987 development proposal, re-creating Lewis and Clark's trip across the West with a huge theme park that would have cost $300 million in today's currency, was stillborn for lack of financing.

The Walt Disney Co. took at look at investing, but decided that project was "too small" for it.

Interim uses as a conservation education center -- the first activity opened to the public in 1994 -- and a living-history park could never sustain themselves financially.

While there is a small but devoted following of hikers, mountain bikers and fishermen who use the park's free trails and river access, their presence doesn't generate revenue.

Wilkinson contends that if the committee does "come up with a good idea for Plan B aside from Larry, I still think it will require a developer's mentality to put together. And the natural party to consider would be Larry," who made his money opening nursing homes in the Midwest.

And Vander Maten seems to have few regrets about the way things have gone.

"I think the time [planning] was well spent," he said. "We got a tremendous amount accomplished, and I'd hate to see that go to waste. It is a good concept, but it will require the economy to improve" to initiate.

Financing, which he said was available before the planning was finished, "was the issue that crept up on us. If funding was available ... we'd be out there with a shovel in the ground."