Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9307300429
SECTION: DISCOVER PAGE: D-29 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And it has, sort of.
It's not the $185 million frontier-oriented theme park with flume rides and the world's largest zoo of North American animals once envisioned by planners.
Instead, beset by difficulties in obtaining both government and private funding, Explore's goals are now much more modest - and what happens to the living-history park in the long run remains in doubt.
This spring, workers finished rebuilding an early 19th century farmstead - a farmhouse, a barn and some outbuildings - at the 1,300-acre park site along the Roanoke River on the Roanoke County-Bedford County line.
With costumed interpreters re-creating life on the Appalachian frontier, this farmstead has served as the backdrop for school field trips now starting to flock to Explore. In the past school year, nearly 4,000 students visited Explore, mostly from Roanoke and Roanoke County.
For now, they're the only people visiting the park. It's not open to the public. But project planners say they hope that will change in the coming year, the state government willing.
Explore is owned and operated by an independent state authority appointed by the governor, the Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority. In 1988, the state gave the authority $6 million to buy land. But since then, the authority has received no funding. Instead, private donors in the Roanoke Valley have paid the bill for the park's planning staff - and most recently, operating the educational programs the park has started to provide.
But the River Foundation - the nonprofit group of business leaders who first proposed Explore in 1985 and who have run the park for the state since then - has announced that it'll quit paying the park's operating expenses starting July 1994.
Foundation leaders have complained that their private contributions have been eaten up by operating expenses, leaving little money for contributions. Besides, they point out, Explore is technically a state project - albeit one outside the normal structure of state government - so the state ought to fund it.
Explore leaders are asking the state for about $1 million a year so they can open the park full time next May. Will they get it? Outgoing Gov. Douglas Wilder says he won't be including any money for Explore in the state budget he submits in December, just before he leaves office. So it will be up to the General Assembly - and the next governor - to decide whether they want to fund Explore.
If they don't, Explore planners will be left in a financial crunch when the tap for private money for operating expenses gets turned off next summer.
In the meantime, they're pressing ahead with construction. This spring, they received a $250,000 grant from a Richmond-based foundation to rebuild an early 1800s barn that Explore will use as the park's education center and exhibit hall.
For information on Explore, call 345-1295.
by CNB