Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993 TAG: 9302160333
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MORE THAN A ZOO
AS ROANOKE Times & World-News readers know, Explore Park is a "work in progress." Its master plan has been revised considerably since the mid-'80s when the state was flush with money and the private sector was enjoying good profits. But the build-out of the current plan, emphasizing historical authenticity and environmental protection while retaining the fun-for-all-ages major zoo and recreated frontier-settlement features, will create hundreds of jobs for the Roanoke region, both on site and in the surrounding community's motels, restaurants and shops.Local-government leaders and those directly responsible for Explore Park agree that Explore's two major goals are to help the general public and especially our children understand their cultural heritage and the importance of protecting their environment, and to help keep area workers fully employed and enlarging the local-tax base by providing hundreds of construction, interpretation and service jobs. Explore Park will attract a million or more tourists to stay overnight and longer in the Roanoke Valley every year.
We at Explore Park strongly support the reopening of Hotel Roanoke and construction of a convention and trade center adjoining the hotel, in part because we view those people who will stay at the hotel and attend conferences and conventions there - particularly spouses and families - as an important fraction of the visitors we expect to welcome to Explore Park. An up-and-running Explore Park represents a major destination-attraction 15 minutes from downtown Roanoke, which local hotel-motel salespeople and the Convention and Visitors Bureau staff will be able to point to - to convince large groups to choose Roanoke over competing sites for their meetings. It will be needed to make the hotel project a success.
On a trip to Georgia last year, I visited both Stone Mountain Park, with its Evergreen Conference Center and Resort, and Callaway Gardens and Resorts, with its horticultural center and live tropical butterfly center. The local economic impacts of these typical park and resorts are substantial:
Stone Mountain park outside Atlanta - about the same size as Explore Park - employs 1,900 people and attracts 6 1/2 million visitors a year. (Incidentally, about the same number of tourists visit Michigan's Greenfield Village, after which Explore Park's Blue Ridge Settlement now is patterned.) Stone Mountain's master plan was based on a projected 1 million visitors a year; it now attracts more than six times that number.
Callaway Gardens, a more upscale place farther from a major city, uses some 450 volunteers and 500 seasonal employees to supplement a permanent, year-around staff of about 1,000 to serve more than 525,000 guests annually.
Our response to the question, "How should the region respond to job losses?", is to get behind the full development of Virginia's Explore Park now. It will put Roanoke on the map. M. RUPERT CUTLER Education Director Virginia's Explore Park ROANOKE