Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 3, 1994 TAG: 9401260003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JESSICA MATHEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Eisner needn't apologize for that; he's in business to make a profit. But his presumption merits a quick and permanent burial. People raising questions about congestion, pollution, strip development, effects on rural lifestyles and the allocation of their tax dollars are doing what there has been too little of in America in recent decades: thinking about their future. It's a public duty as important as voting.
The information Disney has made available so far is much too scanty to allow an informed decision. Local and state politicians who have leaped on the Disney bandwagon without sparing a moment to acquire an independently verified fact should be embarrassed. They are too eager to hand over to Disney the responsibility they and their constituents share to plan the growth and livability of a region that stretches from Frederick County down to the Piedmont, from the Chesapeake Bay into West Virginia.
All there is to go on so far in evaluating who pays and who will benefit is a 17-page summary of a study of projected revenues that was prepared for Disney by real estate consultants. It contains answers - 12,400 jobs and tax revenues of just under $1 billion in 1993 dollars over 30 years - but none of the assumptions or calculations by which they were arrived at. Are the numbers fair or inflated? How much of the projected residential and commercial development would have happened elsewhere, anyway? It's impossible to tell until the full study is released and scrutinized.
There is even less information about costs. Disney has offered no estimate, while making clear that it will not proceed without a large public subsidy for roads, possibly a rail line, water and sewer services. No one knows what these infrastructure costs will amount to, but they will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Without hard numbers, the public is being asked to buy a pig in a poke.
Up-front costs are just the beginning. Costs for public services such as schools and low-cost housing have barely been mentioned. The experiences of Orlando and Anaheim suggest that Virginia would be foolish not to pin down Disney's contribution in advance. The larger costs will be the forgone options and irreversible choices that will have been made for the region.
Some of these have to do with the development that will follow the park. Disney argues that Virginia won't end up looking like central Florida on a smaller scale because the park will just redistribute existing visitors. That's not how local tourism and real estate executives see it. Already other parks, malls and developments are being discussed. For all the spit and polish Disney lavishes inside its other parks, their surroundings are a dismal, congested terrain of tacky tourist traps.
The consequences that make the Disney decision the concern of everyone in the extended metropolitan area stem from recent federal air and transportation provisions that require this region, like all others, to meet air-quality health standards by 1999 and to plan transportation investments under a budget so that these standards can be met. Put bluntly, these requirements mean that transportation spending and air emissions for the whole metropolitan region are a zero-sum exercise.
The money that would be spent on making Disney's America possible comes out of the same pot that funds roads in Maryland, bridges into the District, and rail and transit improvements in Northern Virginia. Money spent on Disney, whether or not eventually repaid from park-generated taxes, will not be available for other regional needs for a couple of decades.
The clean-air requirements are not just a matter of money. By 1996, the region must reduce certain air pollutants to a level 15 percent less than they were in 1990. By 1999, additional reductions must bring smog down to healthy levels. This won't be easy. It will require things like new bus and HOV lanes, park-and-ride lots at transit stops, business-run car and van pooling, staggered work hours, parking charges and higher tolls in rush hours, as well as controls on land use, factories and businesses.
The addition of a park drawing 30,000 visitors daily on a 35-mile trip from Washington, plus 3,000 commuting workers, not to mention the associated development, is going to make the job much tougher, if not impossible.
Disney officials talk vaguely about a minor effect, suggest visitors will come by a train that doesn't exist and project an average of four passengers per car (the area average is 1.25; for commuters, 1.1). They know better. Accommodating Disney and its induced development within a fixed emissions ceiling will demand more stringent lifestyle changes for everyone else in the region and threaten such seemingly distant goals as rescuing the Chesapeake Bay.
The decision on Disney's America isn't just about rural Virginia towns that might like to stay that way, or whether Disney can create packaged history without ruining the real history that surrounds Haymarket. It is much bigger.
People in Maryland and the District who may never visit Disney's America or, like Virginians (myself included, with a place in Fauquier County) have to live with its sprawl, will feel its effects on transportation options and air quality in their daily lives.
The decision is about what it means to live together in a region united by economy and environment. It is, finally, about distinguishing public and special interests - just not the way Michael Eisner envisions them.
\ Jessica Mathews is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
\ The Washington Post
by CNB