Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 5, 1993                   TAG: 9403180029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

RV CONVENTION

Officials of the town and Virginia Tech sold the community on hosting last summer's Family Motor Coach Convention on the basis that the gathering of big-rig recreational vehicles might bring in $10 million in extra revenue.

Revenue, schmevenue, some grumbled.

Beforehand, they warned it would be a traffic-control calamity. (It wasn't.)

Later, the complaint was that conventioneers stayed too close to their homes on wheels and Tech's campus for local merchants to benefit from having 5,000 motor coaches and 10,000 visitors in the town.

But the conventional wisdom has been proven correct. The results are in: Increased sales-tax, meals-tax and hotel-tax receipts during July and August indicate the convention indeed brought in more than $10 million for the local economy.

That ought to be enough to buy a welcome mat if Blacksburg and Tech bid to get the convention back again in 1997.