Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501270001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: M. RUPERT CUTLER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Explore Park is a newly born and fragile institution but is on its way toward accomplishing its twin goals of becoming Western Virginia's major tourist destination attraction (as a living history park and zoo) and a nationally recognized center of excellence in environmental education, in-service training and conflict resolution. Given support, it eventually will attract as many visitors as Colonial Williamsburg and the North Carolina Zoo - a million or more a year. Those visitors will help ``keep Western Virginia green'' with the dollars they spend here.
A decade of hard work by far-sighted Roanoke Valley leaders has resulted in the dedication of some $30 million from both public and private sources to the sustainable economic-development and education project on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Roanoke and Bedford counties called Virginia's Explore Park, together with an essential access road from the Blue Ridge Parkway called the Roanoke River Parkway.
Last July, this 1,300-acre living history and wilderness recreation park was opened to the public, on weekends and Mondays, to rave reviews. More than 20,000 visitors from all over the nation and the world - a third of them Blue Ridge Parkway travelers - paid their way into Explore between July 2 and Oct. 31 to enjoy our well-interpreted outdoor living-history museum of local 18th- and early 19th-century farm and school buildings moved to the site - the so-called ``Blue Ridge Settlement'' - and to hike on the park's several miles of self-guiding nature trails along the Roanoke River and its tributaries.
We will reopen Explore on April 1, and expect to welcome some 50,000 paying visitors this season. Explore's regional information-center staff will direct thousands of footloose, well-to-do parkway travelers to other attractions and businesses in the Roanoke Valley and throughout Western Virginia.
Since 1991, more than 15,000 schoolchildren have accompanied their teachers to Explore Park on educational field trips to see and understand their cultural and environmental heritage.
Fund raising for additional capital-construction projects, to increase the park's appeal as a tourist destination and its value as a learning center (including a historic church and a 1790 stagecoach inn, both from Botetourt County, and a four-building education campus with modern classrooms and laboratories) is on a roll: We have received written and oral pledges totalling about $1.5 million toward the construction of these future facilities.
The governing bodies of both Roanoke County and the city of Roanoke have made generous grants to Explore's operating fund and have contributed important in-kind support as well. The private sector, in perhaps an unparalleled example of a public-private partnership, has contributed more than $6 million to Explore to date. Much more will be forthcoming, but only if the financial stability of the Explore Park project is not in doubt.
Two-thirds of Explore Park's million-dollar budget goes for personnel; a living history museum is a labor-intensive endeavor. Explore's staff members, like those of any educational institution, are of two kinds: administrative and teaching. (Our costumed interpreters at each of our historic buildings are in fact history teachers.)
The balance of our budget provides for maintenance and repair of those historic buildings, utilities, advertising, and repaying of loans and notes. Our administrative staff is minimal. My salary as park director does not come from public funds; it is underwritten by two national foundations. I have an executive assistant, a development assistant, a bookkeeper, and a part-time business manager (consultant).
The education staff makes up the balance of our payroll. To lay them off is to cut the heart out of our tourist-attracting and learning center capability. A living history park without costumed interpreters to show visitors how life was like here 150 years ago is an empty shell.
Explore Park has been through a long gestation period - nine years, in fact. Now it is open and growing. Public acceptance and support is clearly evident. Explore Park has its finances in order now and is at the brink of success. Money-making ventures such as a museum store and a high-quality restaurant are planned, to help the project become partially self-sufficient. But a major blow to its operating budget now will severely cripple our infant project.
If the governor's budget recommendation for Explore stands, I will have the following options: (1) lay off most of our education (interpreter) staff on July 1 and close the park to the public, in effect ``mothballing'' the project until sufficient funding materializes to restaff and reopen the park; (2) increase the price of admission to the park, lay off most of our interpreters, keep the park open, and provide visitors with a less-than-satisfactory experience, leading to negative publicity for the project; or (3) try to obtain additional financial support locally, from the city of Roanoke, Roanoke County, and other nearby local governments and school systems, to make up the $200,000 difference created by halved state support, an option I'm not optimistic will fly.
We can live with the same percentage cut in our state support that state agencies, such as the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, are slated to receive.
If the state can continue the current, already appropriated level of state operating support for Explore Park for the 1995-96 fiscal year, we in turn will do our best to make the investment pay large dividends as a regional economic-development project.
M. Rupert Cutler is executive director of Virginia's Explore Park. This is adapted from remarks last week before a legislative hearing on the governor's proposed state budget.
by CNB