Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 16, 1994 TAG: 9408160085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After a local tourism brainstorming session Monday, a Disney representative said the company is too busy moving a proposed theme park in Northern Virginia off the drawing board to be of much assistance to tourism boosters here.
"The Walt Disney Company right now is involved in becoming a citizen of Virginia," said Berta Maginniss, Disney America's director of community relations. "We have our hands full right now."
Maginniss' comments did little to cool a growing steam cloud of ideas that emerged from the afternoon-long powwow of more than 50 local politicians, businessmen, tourism experts, architects and railroad buffs who aim to transform the Roanoke Valley into a major tourist destination.
If anything clear emerged from the session, it was that money - perhaps a huge amount during the next 15 years - may be required to pull off a tourism bonanza.
The meeting at the Roanoke Civic Center auditorium was the brainchild of Mayor David Bowers and City Manager Bob Herbert. They have proposed a $2.3 million boardwalk-like park along the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks connecting the City Market with a revamped Virginia Museum of Transportation.
Their long-range idea is to build the transportation museum into a first-class attraction that tourists will flock to, leaving their dollars with city merchants, hotels and restaurants.
A state tourism official called that a good first step but suggested that valley leaders market area attractions jointly rather than build a tourism base off a single entity.
Shopping, the natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Explore Park, Center in the Square, the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center, Mill Mountain Zoo and other attractions should all be ingredients in boosting tourism, said Patrick McMahon, state tourism director.
"Roanoke is positioned to grow a group of attractions and comprehensively package them and bring those people in off I-81," he said.
The putative stars of the symposium were Maginniss, a 20-year Disney veteran, and Jim Myers, vice-president for public relations of Norfolk's Nauticus, a $52 million interactive maritime theme park built along the city's waterfront that opened this year.
Maginniss opened her remarks by revealing that Walt Disney was a diehard model railroad collector and amusement train rider.
The idea for Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., grew out of the famed cartoonist's disdain for unkempt amusement parks and their rude employees, she said. She suggested Roanoke market its friendly people and hospitality, two elements Disney theme parks emphasize.
Myers told local leaders that the lesson Norfolk learned in developing Nauticus is that interactive museums will draw, but they are expensive.
"It takes money to get in this business these days. If it's not spectacular, people will come - but they won't come back," he said.
One move key to the success of Nauticus was hiring a specialist in attractions who knew what draws tourists, Myers said.
The suggestion was noted by Brian Wishneff, executive director of the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center Commission.
The next step is to form a panel of 25 to 30 business and community leaders, a recommendation Herbert is expected to bring to City Council some time in the future, Wishneff said.
Available funding, whether it comes from the city, state, or private industry, is key to the project's future, he said.
"The reality is that with a lot of these types of projects, you follow where the money is and where the opportunity is," he said. ``That often ends up shaping the character of the project.''
by CNB