Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401070190
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Some blamed "grandstanding" Roanoke Valley politicians - namely, Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, and state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County - for suggesting that the museum join forces with the financially strapped Explore.
Outgoing state Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources Elizabeth Haskell - who is from Martinsville - called it simply an effort to bail out Explore and sneak the living-history park into the state budget.
"Explore is a theme park" and doesn't deserve state funding, she declared. "I don't think they should take scarce resources from a good operation to solve their problem."
Haskell will be out of the picture when Gov. Douglas Wilder leaves office next week. But Martinsville's three state legislators still will be around, and their attitude toward Bell's call for a merger study seemed to harden Thursday.
"I'm not inclined to have a study," declared state Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount. "I'd like to see the museum's expansion here."
Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Henry County, agreed. If the study's purpose is simply to pave the way for a merger and an expansion to Roanoke, "you can count me out."
Museum Director Connie Gendron has insisted that the museum's headquarters would remain in Martinsville, and Explore would simply be a branch, but that did not reassure Martinsville's legislators.
"I'm not so concerned where the nameplate goes, as to where the building goes," Armstrong said, referring to the museum's proposed $16 million expansion - which the museum's leadership now envisions being built at Explore.
The Martinsville legislators' comments suggest there could be a fight brewing with their Roanoke Valley colleagues over the fates of the museum and Explore when the General Assembly convenes next week.
It is a fight that could bring in Gov.-elect George Allen. Bell has briefed Allen on his proposed study, which Bell says fits in with Allen's call to restructure state government - although an Allen spokesman said Thursday he "couldn't comment on it at this present time."
For now, though, Martinsville leaders directed their fire Thursday at the museum's director and executive committee for quietly drawing up plans over the past months to merge with Explore and expand there.
After all, some pointed out, Martinsville businessman George Lester had offered to donate an 80-acre site worth $800,000 near Patrick Henry Community College for the expanded museum, and most Martinsville leaders assumed the facility would go there.
Now, Lester said, "most people feel there's been deception and a feeling of being lied to. It's created some unfortunate feelings."
In an effort to soothe those feelings, Gendron made a special appearance Thursday night before the community's economic development board to plead the museum's case for at least studying an Explore/museum merger.
"Please tell me how you're going to lose anything," she said, assuring Martinsville leaders that the museum's exhibit space and research center now in that city would stay there.
"The thing everyone is zeroing in on is the new building," she said. But she warned it is unlikely that the state ever would provide the funds to build the proposed expansion in Martinsville, anyway.
Without a presence in a bigger city - such as Roanoke - where the museum could generate more tourist traffic and win more political support, the museum could face the same extinction as many of the prehistoric plants and animals its exhibits showcase, she warned.
Gendron told the commission that the state's Department of General Services had listed the museum's expansion as its highest priority for new construction in 1994-96.
But she said that Secretary of Finance Paul Timmreck - who will continue in that post after Allen takes office - had vetoed the building, on the grounds that Martinsville doesn't generate enough tourist traffic to pay off the debt.
"We crunched numbers left and right," Gendron said, and the best projections showed an expanded Martinsville museum would draw only 55,000 tourists and generate $400,000 in revenue.
But her staff's projections showed a Roanoke site would draw 300,000 tourists. Those projections seemed so optimistic, she said, that she slashed the numbers to 155,000 tourists - who still would shell out enough money to cover the project's $1.4 million annual debt.
If the museum doesn't start to pay more of its own way, Gendron warned, the state might shut it down entirely.
She said Haskell has saved the museum from that fate during the Wilder years, but the museum's operating budget was still cut 32 percent over four years. Once Haskell is gone, she said, "we are at risk."
She also warned that the Science Museum of Virginia, in Richmond, covets the Martinsville museum's exhibits and programs - and the state could move everything there.
For about an hour, the commissioners, mostly key Martinsville business leaders, peppered Gendron with questions:
If the state is not funding the museum well now, and is not funding Explore at all, why does anyone think the state will provide more money for the two together?
The museum now has two small branches, at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, that the state wants to eliminate from its budget. What is to stop the state from deciding someday that the museum's budget needs to be cut further and direct it to close its cramped Martinsville headquarters but keep open a much bigger "branch" at Explore?
If the museum has had financial problems, why has it not alerted local leaders, so they could help raise money? And why has the museum's leadership not been more forthcoming about talk of expanding to Roanoke, instead of having the information leak out in the news media?
Gendron acknowledged that the museum's executive committee violated the state's Freedom of Information Act this week when it met by conference call to informally endorse Bell's request for a study. She called this an "oversight."
But she defended the secrecy with which she and other museum leaders have cloaked their studies. "This discussion was appropriate within an administrative section of the museum and not appropriate for the public," she said.
She also said Martinsville's business community has not been generous enough with its contributions to the museum. Except for donations from Tultex Corp. and Sara Lee Corp., corporate contributions from Martinsville have been "minimal," Gendron said.
by CNB