Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 15, 1994 TAG: 9404160013
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MANASSAS LENGTH: Medium
If transportation officials refuse to do the study, environmental opponents said they will sue to stop more than $130 million in planned improvements to Interstate 66 and other roads west of Manassas that have been earmarked to serve the 3,000-acre project.
The 30-second ad, produced by media consultant Squier, Knapp, Ochs Communications - which worked for Bill Clinton's winning presidential campaign and Mary Sue Terry's losing race for Virginia governor - apparently is the first time in the Washington area that activists have taken to the airwaves to stop a development project.
``You think traffic is bad now?'' a male narrator in the TV spot asks over a background drumbeat, as pictures of trucks and cars backed up on I-66 are displayed. ``Wait until the Disney corporation builds near Manassas. ... Don't let Disney's theme park become your parking lot.''
The TV ads, airing on four broadcast and cable stations, cite Disney studies showing that the park, housing and office complex would double traffic on I-66 in Prince William County, adding about 77,000 car-trips a day to the highway.
The way to stop the park, the environmentalists say, is to stop the roads intended to serve it.
Wednesday, Disney officials challenged the environmentalists' argument that blocking new roads will ``somehow ease traffic congestion.''
``Most of the road improvements recently approved [by Virginia legislators], including the addition of lanes on I-66, have been in the regional transportation plan for years and are needed ... with or without Disney,'' project spokeswoman Mary Anne Reynolds said.
She said Disney is confident its project could ``meet all applicable clean-air regulations'' and noted that the company has dealt extensively with California's air quality standards, which are among the strictest in the nation.
The 85-spot campaign, funded by the Piedmont Environmental Council, a land preservation group based in Warrenton, is timed for a critical phase of government review of Disney's plans.
By Wednesday, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' transportation planning board is scheduled to decide whether to include Disney-related road projects in the area's long-range plans.
If the board adopts those road improvements, approval for the project would be increasingly difficult to reverse, opponents said.
Some political scientists said Wednesday that they were surprised at the environmentalists' high-profile ad campaign.
``To my memory, it's unprecedented in Virginia, and I've been doing this for 24 years,'' said Larry Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia. ``I don't recall any public construction project or any public project resulting in someone bringing in a consultant to do media ads.''
Company officials have said that they expect park-related traffic to be manageable because visitors would arrive several to a car and in buses, and during nonrush hours. They also have said that many will be tourists who already are in the area and are coming to Disney from other Washington sites.
But Disney's environmentalist foes, using the name Citizens Against Gridlock, said that even widened roads would be swamped if a fraction of the area's 19 million annual tourists try to get to Disney using I-66.
East of Manassas, ``moving bottlenecks'' will slide into Fairfax and Arlington counties and around the Capital Beltway, predicted Sandy Hillyer, director of the National Growth Management Leadership Project, a policy consortium of 23 environmental groups, several of which oppose Disney's America.
Mark Rozell, a political scientist at Mary Washington College, noted that the activists did not identify themselves as such in the ad, but sought to reach a broad constituency on two basic issues: smog and traffic. ``I thought it was very effective, actually," Rozell said. "I live in Northern Virginia, and like any citizen, I bemoan the air in August.''
by CNB