ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 8, 1995 TAG: 9512080045
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A20 EDITION: METRO
BREAKING ground for the Roanoke River Parkway marks a beginning, but also an end.
The start, finally, of construction of the road that will link the Blue Ridge Parkway to Virginia's Explore Park should put to rest any remaining uncertainty about the park's survival. With easy access for Blue Ridge Parkway visitors, Explore has the opportunity to draw many more nature-loving and distraction-hungry parkway motorists to its historical displays and interpretive trails.
Moreover, a parkway visitors center along the road spur or, perhaps, on Explore grounds, will mean those visitors will find out about other Roanoke Valley attractions worth their time.
The connector road is key to the ultimate success of Explore, already a pleasant, albeit modest, living-history park that has the potential to grow over the years into a top-notch educational and tourism center. With the expected visitors center, the road will boost the Roanoke Valley's efforts to tap into the Blue Ridge Parkway's popularity as the valley works to lure more tourists and the money they pump into the local economy.
The Hotel Roanoke, the City Market, Center in the Square, the Virginia Museum of Transportation - Roanoke has invested a lot in such attractions to improve the quality of life for residents, certainly, but also as investments in economic development. Explore and its parkway in Roanoke County will play a role in that growth.
Indeed, the entire region can expect to benefit if all these things are seen, and supported, as parts of an overall strategy to enhance quality of life and ensure prosperity that relies on preserving what is uniquely attractive about our urban and rural, man-made and natural features. Such initiatives are interconnected in purpose and should be interconnected in execution, despite the divisions of political boundaries.
The new parkway itself, which will run a mere 1 1/2 miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway across the now-closed regional landfill to Explore's main entrance road, shares the park's history of scaled-back plans and funding cliff-hangers. Rep. Bob Goodlatte made a critical, 11th-hour funding save by removing federal dollars for the parkway from this year's budget recisions bill. Other elected officials - Charles Robb when he was governor, John Warner and Paul Trible in the U.S. Senate - helped earlier to win state and federal appropriations to build the road.
The biggest hero, though, was Goodlatte's predecessor, Rep. Jim Olin, who not only sponsored the initial appropriation in the House, but saved the project when critics of the original plan for a 10-mile parkway raised an outcry about its environmental impact and $100 million cost. Taking, as usual, the reasonable road, he broke the opposition by scaling back the scope of the project, while saving the critical link between parkway and park.
Now, after a seven-year wait, the road finally is being built. A noteworthy milestone has been passed for Explore and for the valley.
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