THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 23, 1996 TAG: 9607230011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: 44 lines
Regarding Norfolk City Councilman Mason C. Andrews' July 17 Another View concerning the MacArthur Center: Dr. Andrews stated that the center will attract ``some 12 million to 15 million visits annually by people not normally in downtown.''
Projections for attendance at Nauticus were very far off, and nobody associated with City Council or its staff seemingly questioned the annual-850,000-visit figure it projected, even though that number of visits was almost the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake visiting the facility annually, and even though Colonial Williamsburg, with a much-greater range of attractions, had experienced only slightly more than 900,000 in annual ticket sales in the 1991-95 period.
Tyson's Corner (a regional mall in the greater Washington area) had just 15 million visits last year. Notably, Lynnhaven Mall had 16 million visits which, according to Lynnhaven officials, was unusually high compared with other malls and ranked the mall second in the nation of more than 100 malls managed, behind the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., which is twice as big as Lynnhaven and apparently the largest mall in America.
A MacArthur Center feasibility study projects that for the first year of operation, sales will reach $300 per square foot, which is the level needed to break even financially in that year. Lynnhaven officials indicate that Lynnhaven mall reached the $300-per-square-foot level for sales after 15 years of operation.
Obviously, MacArthur Center will draw visits from Lynnhaven Mall, which won't help that mall a bit. Indeed, if few or no visits are drawn from Lynnhaven and MacArthur Center still achieves the 15 million visits projected, then between them there would be 30 million visits, or about twice what Lynnhaven experienced in 1995, which doesn't seem very likely. Thus, it will be surprising if MacArthur Center achieves 12 million to 15 million visits annually by people ``not normally in downtown'' and Lynnhaven still achieves 15 million to 16 million visits. Unfortunately, the problems with Nauticus, and earlier with Waterside, don't seem to provide much basis for confidence in consultant and city projections on major projects.
P. M. BOYNTON
Norfolk, July 19, 1996 by CNB