Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 31, 1991 TAG: 9103310061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Explore planners say the Harpers Ferry center, which would re-create various North American wildlife habitats, will be sufficiently different and far enough away that it won't be competition.
On the contrary, Explore project director Bern Ewert says, Byrd's interest shows that Explore planners have had a good idea all along.
However, the Harpers Ferry project - for which $30 million has been quietly appropriated - has prompted Virginia Sen. John Warner's office to express concern about potential competition with Explore.
And a Waynesboro wildlife hospital warns that both it and Explore could be hurt by a similar federally funded project just up Interstate 81.
"I can't see how that would put them in anything other than a severe competitive disadvantage" in both fund raising and attracting tourists, says Ed Clark, director of the Wildlife Center of Virginia. "If I were the Explore people, I'd really be upset and I'd fight like hell."
Planning for the Harpers Ferry center has been going on for two years, but didn't attract notice until The Washington Post published a story this month about how Byrd is using his clout as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee to direct federal projects to his state.
One of the most notable was a project called the National Education and Training Center.
It started in 1989, when Byrd obtained $4.9 million to draw plans for a modest training center near Harpers Ferry for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service workers - although the service had not requested such a facility.
In 1990, Byrd obtained an additional $24.9 million to draw more plans for the project, which had rapidly evolved into an estimated $150 million proposal that would include both a "state-of-the-art" training center and a "world-class" tourist attraction.
The training center would be a $60 million complex that would include classrooms, an indoor boat-safety pool, a gymnasium, a firing range, housing for 300 and a video production studio.
The tourist attraction would be a $60 million re-creation of various North American wildlife habitats. A sketch in an internal report shows 18 habitats, from "The Eastern Forest" to "Prairie Potholes" to "The Desert" to "The Arctic" - much like Explore's plan to re-create the original North American wilderness.
Although a government report predicts the center could draw 1 million visitors a year, tight-lipped Fish and Wildlife Service officials gingerly play down the center's tourist appeal and play up its educational value.
The purpose of the habitat center, says Bruce Blanchard, a deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is to teach visitors about "the importance of habitat" and the impact of pollution on wildlife - just as Explore says it will do.
Beyond that, Blanchard says, plans for the habitat center are still vague. The federal government has hired Cambridge Seven Abstracts, a Massachusetts firm whose credits include the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the New England Aquarium in Boston, to spend the next year designing the tourist attraction.
So far, no money has been appropriated to build either the training center or the habitat center, although Blanchard says he expects a request to be made next year.
The federal government has, however, already started looking to buy at least 200 acres near Harpers Ferry, Blanchard said.
When news of the previously unannounced wildlife center broke recently, it was greeted with astonishment at both Explore and the Virginia Wildlife Center.
Clark called his friend, Rupert Cutler - director of Explore's proposed environmental center - and said, "It looks like someone slipped them your master plan."
A flurry of inquiries followed, but callers learned little. Byrd's office would not comment on the Harpers Ferry project and released only a four-sentence statement that attributed the project's origin to the Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency issued its own brief statement that attributed the project only to "Congress."
Even other politicians were stymied. "Right now what we know is what we've read in the paper," says Susan Magill, Warner's top aide. "We're working with the Fish and Wildlife Service trying to get more details."
Until Warner's office finds out more, "we do have some concerns that there could be some overlap with the Explore project and the Wildlife Center of Virginia," Magill says.
Clark, who heads the 9-year-old Waynesboro facility, worries that the Harpers Ferry center could wreck his own plans for a privately funded $1 million teaching hospital to train wildlife workers.
"We don't know if this is going to cripple us or not," he says. "But before we invest $1 million of hard-earned private dollars, we'd like to find out. We're in no position to compete with a bottomless bucket of federal dollars."
But Clark is more upset about the proposed habitat center at Harpers Ferry than he is about the training center.
He accuses Byrd of sticking "his snout in the federal trough" to bring home unnecessary federal spending.
"To justify what is essentially a theme park and a tourist attraction for West Virginia by piggybacking it on the Fish and Wildlife Service is pretty transparent," Clark says. "If the federal government wants to build a training center, let 'em. But if they want to build a zoo and a tourist attraction, don't cloak it in a veil of legitimacy."
Clark, who's been talking with Explore about collaborating on some programs, warns that the Harpers Ferry project could hurt Explore.
"If Explore is trying to raise money to create a regional North American wildlife facility, they're going to have a hell of a time to justify a $15 million first phase when they're competing with $60 million. To put something like this federal facility at Harpers Ferry is really going to pre-empt a lot of the draw Explore is going to collect."
The West Virginia address can be misleading to those not familiar with how that state's Eastern Panhandle juts close to Washington.
At Explore, Ewert and Cutler say they're not worried about the Harpers Ferry project posing competition to the proposed state park just outside Roanoke.
"People will ask that question: `[Don't] we already have one of those in the East?'" Cutler concedes.
However, the Harpers Ferry project apparently will be much narrower in scope than Explore, Cutler says. It won't depict the history of the American frontier. It won't serve as an environmental center organizing conferences or sponsoring mediation on environmental issues. And it won't work with breeding endangered species.
Insofar as the Harpers Ferry project does deal with environmental issues and try to make a tourist attraction out of North American wildlife, "the thing that occurs to us is this Harpers Ferry project only demonstrates the viability of the Explore Park concept," Cutler says. "If it's good for Harpers Ferry, it's good for Roanoke."
"It's a long way away from us - four hours away - twice as far as the North Carolina Zoo is," Ewert says. "For us, it's really way outside our market area. . . . I hope it gives everyone encouragement about the rightness of our vision."
by CNB