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

DATE: SATURDAY, January 8, 1994                   TAG: 9401080087
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WANT TO RIDE WITH DISNEY? CRANWELL SAYS IT'S WORTH IT

Virginia will need $75 million in road improvements to land a Walt Disney theme park, but House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell says taxpayers shouldn't balk at the price of admission.

For the past two months, Walt Disney Co. officials have refused to specify how much it will cost for the road improvements they want near their proposed 1,200-acre American history theme park in Northern Virginia.

But at a press conference Friday in Roanoke - held to convince Western Virginia that it stands to benefit from the development in Prince William County - Cranwell said the price tag was about $75 million.

"They may have been reticent with you all in discussing figures," Cranwell told a reporter after the press conference, "but they haven't been reticent with me."

Robert Sheehan, vice president of new park development for the $8.5 billion (in 1993 sales) entertainment company, said Cranwell's figure was "a fairly close number" for what Disney has in mind.

Disney wants the state to pay to widen Interstate 66 and U.S. 15 and to add an interchange to I-66. Cranwell said the state could pay for the road improvements "in the Virginia tradition of pay-as-you-go," using the additional tax revenues from the park construction to build the roads.

Though adding thousands of cars daily to Northern Virginia's already crowded roads has been a big issue in that part of the state, Cranwell said Western Virginia stands to gain from the park without being burdened by it.

Pat McMahan, director of the state Division of Tourism, said the theme park would serve as a "table of contents" for visitors interested in Virginia history.

Laying out the scenario for various marketing campaigns, McMahan Friday dropped maps on a table with themes such as "Famous Virginians" and "the Westward Movement."

The idea, he said, is to let Disney do the enticing with its commercial theme park, then draw people into the rest of the state by telling them they can see the real thing.

"We're going to have an opportunity to ride along with them," McMahan said. "Taking the `Capital of the Blue Ridge' and really making it into an attraction is going to be easy now."

by CNB