THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 13, 1995 TAG: 9502130045
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: By MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
Their ideas for the Albemarle's rivers and sounds are as big as all outdoors.
First the planners talked about the millions of dollars in private funding they said they'll raise to create a vast watery showplace in which coastal North Carolina ``Harbor Towns'' will be linked by fast ferryboats full of free-spending tourists.
Then they talked about an American shipbuilding company - unidentified - that one of the Harbor Town promoters insisted would soon spend at least $30 million to build and operate the high-speed ferries.
Yet another waterfront planner, who toured 17 Albemarle communities last week, said his internationally recognized company will provide the Harbor Towns with $200,000 worth of guidelines that will show the towns how to remodel their waterfronts to bring show-biz attractions where none had ever been launched before.
Finally, William Rich, an Elizabeth City developer and waterfront entrepreneur, reported ``enthusiastic'' support for a plan to float a $15 million private-stock issue to augment a money pool that a consortium of N.C. bankers has proposed to finance the waterfront improvements.
Nobody arched an eyebrow at the soaring flights of optimism heard in Elizabeth City after the Harbor Town tour last Thursday and Friday.
``This whole thing will work if we get the fast ferryboats,'' said Robert Barron, president of a Columbia, Md., community planning organization. The company - Rouse Enterprises - was founded by James Rouse, the architectural visionary who was largely responsible for successful waterfront renovations in Baltimore and Norfolk. Rouse, retired at 80, is the chairman of the board of Barron's firm.
Accompanied by Vann Massey, general manager of Norfolk's Waterside, Barron and several other community renovation experts toured the principal harbor towns in the Albemarle.
The more they saw, the more they said the fast ferryboats were the key to everything.
When Barron returned to Elizabeth City on Friday evening he passed the ferryboat buck to Bunny Sanders, head of the tourist division of the Northeast N.C. Economic Development Commission.
``I can assure you that within two months a well-known American corporation will make a commitment to build the fast ferries,'' said Sanders.
``It's an established company and with any luck, we'll have one of the boats here to demonstrate this summer,'' she added.
Sanders' tourist group got a grant of $200,000 last month from the parent Northeastern Economic Development Commission to hire Barron's organization for the preliminary Harbor Town planning.
For nearly two years Sanders has urged development of the waterfront concept with an associated high-speed water-transportation system to shuttle tourists between the principal sound and riverside communities as far south as Belhaven and Washington and as far north as Weldon on the Chowan River. Even Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., is on record as saying that high-speed water transportation in the Albemarle is a good idea.
But like the radical notion of manned flight 100 years ago, the high-speed ferries until recently received more lip-service than solid support.
Only when officials in some of the Harbor Towns decided they might get their waterfronts gussied-up in a way that could bring in thousands of tourists did the concept begin to win support.
``The entire Harbor Town project will be done with private money. The only subsidy I can think of that might be necessary in the beginning would be for the ferryboats,'' said Sanders.
When Barron, Sanders, Rich and the other planners made their two-day tour, of 17 Albemarle waterfronts, they received generally enthusiastic receptions in towns like Hertford, Edenton, Plymouth, Columbia and Washington, N.C.
Some of the Harbor Towns lost no time in trying to lobby local projects for incorporation into the waterfront plan. Edenton officials, for example, pointed out that if their old military airport was improved it could make a regional landing site that would allow airborne tourists to step off their planes and onto the ferries.
``These ideas need support,'' said Jimmy R. Jenkins, chancellor of Elizabeth City State University, and vice-chairman of the NNCEDC . Jenkins attended the Friday meeting that was called by Sanders to discuss Barron's findings. With Jenkins was Sidward M. Boyce Jr., an Elizabeth City banker, who is also treasurer of the NEDC.
Sanders would not discuss the identity of the ``well-known and reputable American company'' which she said would soon come into the Harbor Town plan with a proposal to build and run the ferries.
``I don't want to jeopardize the present negotiations,'' she said.
Several months ago, the tourist division of the Northeast Economic Development Commission released an elaborate study of the water transportation plan. The study specifically mentioned several companies that made fast ferries, including a Louisiana ship-building firm that had sent elaborate drawings of a proposed ``surface effect'' ship designed to skim over thewater on an air cushion at 30 to 50 knots.
Similar but larger craft have been carrying cars and passengers across the English Channel for many years and are also used by the U.S. military services to ferry armored vehicles and fighting personell ashore.
But within the NNCEDCitself there may be political rocks and shoals ahead that will obstruct the Harbor Town plan.
Until recently, commission members have been generally cool to Sanders' ideas, which often took up hours of discussion at the commission's regular monthly meetings.
One of the problems has been Sanders' autonomy as head of the separate tourist division under the commission.
The rules were changed last year so that Sanders now answers to the full board and to James Lancaster, director of the commission.
Lancaster wasn't present during last week's Harbor Towns tour.
Another snag for the ferryboat idea is opposition from tourist interests in Dare County.
Sanders and other tourist division officials argue that the Harbor Town program would in the long run bring more tourists to Dare County, rather than less.
The full 15-member commission will have an opportunity to comment on the waterfront developments next week when the group meets on Wednesday at Hope Plantation in Bertie County. by CNB