Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 25, 1994 TAG: 9405250064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY ALEC KLEINSTAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAYMARKET LENGTH: Long
Mickey Mouse, that irresistably squeezable rodent, arrives in a quaint, historic town, then suddenly finds himself an outcast, rejected by neighbors, eminent historians, powerful environmentalists, even Ralph Nader.
Mickey-busters want to run him out of town so badly that they produce T-shirts with his likeness - only with the mouse dead. Then they sell buttons with Mickey's image - framed in a red circle with a slash through it, superimposed with three enigmatic but ominous letters: `FTM.`
`Fight the Mouse` `Flog the Mouse` `Flay the Mouse` `Fillet the Mouse` `Flense the Mouse` `Fricasee the Mouse`
`And then, of course, there's always that magic word, but you can't use that,` said architect Albert P. Hinckley Jr., who designed the button and, in the process, created an underground cottage industry. `You have to fight an obscenity with an obscenity.`
Something simply daffy is happening in this community of verdant hills and genteel Northern Virginia manners, like a Fellini version of Fantasia.
Mickey Mouse, in the form of a planned $650 million U.S. history theme park, is coming to Prince William County, on a bucolic site about 35 miles from the nation's capital - unless a growing number of opponents have their way. More than 60 groups have joined a cacophony of Mickey mashing. The world's most famous rodent is under siege.
`Mickey Mouse has one black eye, but he's not down for the count,` said Ellen M. Penar, head of a local residents' group, who vows to remove a long-cherished, gold-framed portrait of Walt Disney from her recreation room wall.
`Mickey Mouse has a bloody nose and his eyes are tearing,` said Christopher Miller of the Piedmont Environmental Council, a leading opponent whose members include luminaries like Knight-Ridder publishing heir Marie Ridder.
Whether the mouse is backpedaling is in dispute: Earlier this week, Disney proposed a scaled-back version of the development that leaves the theme park intact but includes slightly less commercial and residential space. Company officials insisted they were just refining their plans for final county approval.
`I wouldn't say it's a retreat at all,` said Dana Nottingham, the project's director of real estate development. `We didn't downsize it.`
Disney's America, expected to open in 1998 on a 3,006-acre site, has fueled legal threats and recriminations, prompting opponents to mobilize in what has become a dazzling swirl of competing interests, six-figure television advertising campaigns, opinion polls and counterpolls, government agencies and media coverage from here to Japan.
`It's a lot like a ride on Space Mountain,` Disney spokesperson Mary Anne Reynolds said. But all the turmoil has only strengthened the company's resolve, she declared: `Disney's America welcomes the scrutiny.`
Prospects for the project, which could include as many as 2,300 residences and 1.9 million square feet of commercial space, recently took a steep turn for the worse when a formidable group of historians asserted that Disney would trivialize America's heritage and overwhelm a region rich in Civil War sites.
`It's one of the dopiest places to put an amusement park,` said Robert Walters, executive director of D.C.-based Protect Historic America, whose advisors include authors Shelby Foote and William Styron. `It's going to obliterate the history, it's going to surround and overwhelm the history. Behind Disney comes the strip mall, T-shirts and reptile petting zoos.`
Disney boosters - including a mix of local business leaders and politicians - are dumbfounded by the sound and fury.
`A lot of people are shaking their heads, saying, `This is not a nuclear reactor,'` said Prince William attorney Michael R. Vanderpool. `This is a facility that generations of Americans have looked to for entertainment.`
Not to mention that Disney expects the project will generate thousands of jobs and $1.86 billion in tax revenue over 30 years.
But taxpayers had to pay a price: $163 million in subsidies, vigorously promoted by Gov. George F. Allen and pushed through the General Assembly. The largess so inspired a Fairfax County senior citizen that he waxed poetic in a note sent to one of Disney's critics:
You have had your way with me, George Allen.
You and the `gentlemen' of the General Assembly.
This against me and my family - the People.
I shall grieve greatly with them when your bastard comes forth.
Yes, the name MICKEY, and great grief will be on your head.
The attacks have made Mickey a bit meek. Disney officials from Virginia to Florida to California are religiously following a chain of command and strictly forbidding any talk about the project's creative process.
`We would like the freedom to succeed or fail and... we would like people to criticize us after they see the product, not before,` said John Dreyer, vice president of corporate communications for The Walt Disney Co.
The original design, mapped out in brochures that the company still circulates, contains nine theme sites, including attractions like `a harrowing Lewis and Clark raft expedition through pounding rapids and churning whirlpools` and `a high-speed adventure through a turn-of-the-century mill culminating in a narrow escape from its fiery vat of molten steel.`
The concept is evolving, officials insist, like a movie in the making. But on a recent Disney map submitted to Prince William County officials, at least some elements appear to be in place, including 245 acres for fireworks, air, light and laser shows and a Civil War reenactment area. The map also lays out plans for 108 acres for hotels, 199 acres for lodgings and time-shares and 283 acres for campgrounds.
Residents, fearful of suburban sprawl, have been making daily pilgrimmages to their local libraries to get the latest tidbit of information about the project; many say it's the only way they can find out what Disney is doing.
`I went to a Disney meeting and asked a question and got no answer,` said Sylvia W. Gilman, vice president of Protect, a local citizens' group. `Not only did I not get an answer, but I got patted on the head and told, `It's going to be okay.' Then I started remembering what Orlando looks like.`
The site of Florida's Disney World looms like a shadow of traffic gridlock, noise and pollution for many area residents.
`I don't think (the developers) care,` said Warrenton resident David A. Norden. `All they're concerned about is a good business deal, they're not concerned about the damage they'll cause in this area.`
That's one theme Disney has been trying to scrap - Disney as devious, Mickey as manipulator, the company as a well-oiled PR machine assisted by a phalanx of hired guns, like Jody Powell (Jimmy Carter's former press secretary), historian James Oliver Horton and environmental adviser Leon G. Billings.
Disney, an international symbol of childhood frolics, is entrenched in a decidedly adult game. `Millions` and even `billions` are dollar figures regularly bandied about, while slick-suited lawyers feed reams of documents to a menagerie of governmental agencies.
All the while, the Disney camp finds itself on the counter-offensive, striking back at critics whom they label `the landed gentry,` an elite set of Fauquier residents who don't want their idyllic lifestyle intruded upon, and environmentalists who just can't face the reality of progress.
`It's not like this is going to be farmland forever,` said Prince William engineer Scott E. Gibb. `These environmental groups are just totally out of hand. They will use any tactics - out-and-out lies, intimidating people.`
Yet he is philosophical about the clash between pro-growth and conservation forces; after all, Gibb said, the area has `always been one big battlefield.`
Indeed, more than a century ago, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. Jackon sat `like a stone wall` astride his horse as his troops collapsed then rallied around him on the bloody Manassas plains. And in more recent years, this was the site of a successful fight against a proposed shopping mall.
The passions still run deep. Disney's America has become so contentious that people are even arguing over where the site is located - in the town of Haymarket, or the Prince William County district of Gainesville.
Naturally, Haymarket Mayor John R. Kapp argues that Disney's in his own backyard. Kapp should know; he just won reelection against Mickey Mouse, who got three write-in votes.
by CNB