ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 26, 1997 TAG: 9704280016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
Western Virginia can make better use of its mountain resources. Doing so, though, will require more work to both promote and preserve them.
FOR EVERY tourism dollar spent along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, $5.60 is spent in North Carolina. In Virginia's Year of the Mountains, the state should narrow the gap.
So far, it has lacked the will to do so.
Granted, all things are not equal driving along the parkway in the two states. North Carolina's segment of the Blue Ridge Parkway has significant advantages for tourism: higher mountains, a longer drive, easier access from interstates and closer population centers. Virginia cannot improve any of these features.
Virginia can, however, improve its management of this region's most important economic asset - by recognizing the beauty of the mountains as a natural resource to be exploited more fully and, at the same time, more carefully.
Virginia may not boast the highest elevations along the parkway, but it does offer its own sweeping vistas. Such unadulterated access to nature has incalculable intrinsic value - and calculable economic value. The recent report by the Coalition for the Blue Ridge Parkway put the economic impact of out-of-town visitors to the parkway at $2.25 billion a year in North Carolina and Virginia.
Though a disproportionate share has gone to North Carolina, the benefit to Western Virginia has been significant - and could grow with better promotion.
Significantly, visitors to North Carolina spent an average of $50 on souvenirs per trip to the parkway compared to $15 in Virginia, where craftsmen and artisans complain bitterly about the state's lack of marketing help. Better promotion not only would boost their sales, but also would draw more visitors and increase overall spending.
Better promotion, though, will have to be accompanied by preservation. Otherwise, the main attraction could be subdivided out of existence.
Last year was North Carolina's Year of the Mountains. There, a state commission launched a Preservers of the Parkway campaign to raise money to buy land critical to parkway protection. The governor included $2 million in his proposed biennial budget to buy tracts and conservation easements along the scenic route. And the state Department of Transportation is being asked to use $5 million of federal highway enhancement funds for the same purpose.
The need is every bit as urgent in Virginia.
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