Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 11, 1995 TAG: 9506130005
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY/STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In 1985, two railroad cities in the South set out to reinvigorate their economies by creating a tourist attraction capable of drawing 1 million visitors each year.
One was Chattanooga, Tenn.
The other was Roanoke.
In Chattanooga, the proposal was for an aquarium. In Roanoke, it was a zoo.
The goals of both cities were so parallel that it's instructive to study why the outcomes were so different.
Chattanooga accomplished its goal, opening the $45 million Tennessee Aquarium in 1992 with a minimum of fuss. The aquarium exceeded its 1 million-visitors-per-year goal its opening year, and now the city is primed to open a second attraction, a $16 million museum for children.
In the Roanoke Valley, the Explore project foundered and nearly capsized. Revamped as a living-history park, Explore finally opened in 1994, though the scaled-down version was but a shadow of the original concept. Open just three days a week from April to October, Explore has drawn about 25,500 paying customers in its first fiscal year.
Why did Chattanooga accomplish its goal while Roanoke didn't?
One reason may be that Chattanooga, a city dominated by "old-money families," has more philanthropic wealth available than does Roanoke. Chattanooga built the Tennessee Aquarium with private funds alone; Explore, unable to meet its fund-raising goals, has looked to state government - often unsuccessfully.
Another reason, though, might be how the two projects originated. Chattanooga's idea for an aquarium bubbled up from a communitywide planning process about what to do with downtown and was embraced by the city's top benefactor, who led a fund-raising drive. Explore was supercharged with controversy for years because many residents saw it as something imposed on the community by a handful of wealthy business leaders who seemed to come up with the idea out of the blue.
"I don't think you can dismiss the importance of the plan," said Jim Kennedy, president of the Chattanooga Area Convention and Visitors' Bureau. "It was the plan that enabled the city to bless it," and that allowed the project's primary benefactor "to step up and not be perceived as a rich guy saying 'this is what is good for the community.' Because of the process, it wasn't his idea, it was the community's idea."
That's a lesson experts on community leadership say many places could stand to learn, as they set about reworking their economies to find their niche in a global marketplace. The old top-down leadership style doesn't work well anymore, said Bill McCoy, who heads an urban policy institute at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. These days, communities don't need leaders as much as they need "facilitators" who make a point of molding a broad public consensus before they act, he said.
For a look at how the Roanoke region's leadership measures up on that scale, see today's Horizon section.
by CNB