THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 17, 1997 TAG: 9701180335
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SPECIAL REPORT: PART 1 Nauticus: What went wrong?
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 138 lines
Early in the morning of June 1, 1994, opening day for Nauticus, director Michael Bartlett walked over to a knot of his staff members, young and enthusiastic, eager to please, and asked, ``How're we doing?''
``We're slammin','' said his public relations chief, Jim Myers.
In fact, before the first paying customer came through the doors, Nauticus was already off course, crippled by disagreements among its founders, soon-to-be shrinking advertising budgets and a heavy cargo of expectations.
The city's consultants said Nauticus could draw more than 825,000 visitors a year. The city, in turn, made that promise to its residents.
Instead, the $52 million downtown tourist attraction hasn't reached even half that attendance figure in any of its first three years of operation. Attendance actually has declined since the first year. Nauticus can't meet its expenses and the city - meaning the Norfolk taxpayer - has taken it over.
What has gone wrong?
In an undertaking this complex and ambitious, everyone has a theory. But interviews with city officials, the consultants and others involved in the project point to three significant problems:
The founders of Nauticus had a falling out after disagreeing over what it was. That also added to the cost.
The city and the project's private backers may not have spent enough money on it, particularly in advertising budgets after the first half-year.
Norfolk was not already considered a major tourist destination, and expecting Nauticus to bring that about was too tall an order.
None of this was deliberate; everyone involved had the best intentions. As Herb Rosenthal, the original designer of Nauticus' exhibits, put it, ``It's a little like being in show business. No one intends to put on a bad movie, or a bad play.''
Nor is Nauticus all bad news. Norfolk officials have said all along that the facility is one piece in the downtown puzzle, one more step in the ongoing renovation of downtown Norfolk, which represents hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private investment.
Nauticus customers, even if there aren't as many of them as the city would like, are spending money in Norfolk. And if an out-of-town visitor to Nauticus stays at the Waterside Marriott, the room taxes and meal taxes accrue to Norfolk's benefit, but they don't show up on the Nauticus balance sheets.
``It's a piece of a package that had to be done,'' said Councilman Mason C. Andrews. ``The ongoing success of that package reflects on Nauticus, too.''
Nauticus rose from the wreckage of a similar project proposed for Norfolk in the 1980s, a maritime attraction to capitalize on the fame and exploits of explorer-inventor Jacques Cousteau. The city withdrew its backing from Cousteau's project in 1986 (he went on to build Oceans Park in Paris, which went bankrupt before Nauticus opened), but the basic idea remained.
In the late '80s, the city hired two consultants: the Harrison Price Co. of Los Angeles to do the economic analysis, and Herb Rosenthal, also of Los Angeles, to design the exhibits.
The city often extolled the quality of both consultants, and praised the results of their work. Rosenthal proposed an attraction that would aim to excite visitors with the power of science, sail and the elements.
Before Nauticus opened, both consultants were gone. They disagreed with the project's first professional director, Michael Bartlett, hired in September 1992.
That disagreement went right to the core of the city's challenge, defining what Nauticus was. Nauticus was intended to cash in on the latest hip trend in science and technology-oriented tourist attractions: to both educate and entertain.
The trick was drawing the line between the two purposes.
Rosenthal said Bartlett ``leaned more to the entertainment side of it. His was more of a theme park approach. My feeling was that if that's what they want, then it might be better to scrap the whole thing and start over.
``Instead, what Bartlett tried to do was tack this theme park attitude onto what was originally a fun, entertaining museum. It was neither here nor there. It was neither a good theme park, nor a good museum.''
Bartlett came from a theme park background. He had been president of Expo '86 in Vancouver, Canada, and a senior vice president at Universal Studios Florida.
Bartlett, who still runs the firm of Leisure Capital and Management in Winter Park, Fla., could not be reached for comment.
When he became director of Nauticus, he moved to emphasize the entertainment aspect, beefing up the AEGIS Theater and adding a virtual-reality ``ride.''
Richard Goldbach is president of Metro Machine Corp. He was chairman of the board of Nauticus at the time of Bartlett's hiring and is still on the board. He said the board fully backed Bartlett's ideas.
``There certainly was an artistic difference between (Bartlett and Rosenthal),'' Goldbach said. ``Herb said he wanted nothing more to do with it. I'd say that was greeted with some element of sadness by me and other board members. We all kind of liked him.''
Harrison Price ended his relationship with Nauticus about the same time. Goldbach said that's no surprise, because Price was hired primarily for pre-opening work. But Price said he has an ongoing, advisory relationship with many of his clients, including Disney and the Smithsonian, and would have liked to do the same with Nauticus.
``We were taken out of the loop and we didn't really know anything after that,'' he said.
Ask Price a question about his attendance projections, and he responds, ``Attendance is a function of the size of the market, the quality of investment, the quality of leadership, and marketing skill. All of those have to be present, and maintained, to reach the attendance figures.''
City Councilman Mason C. Andrews, a longtime supporter of Nauticus, said it should be noted that Price's attendance projections were based on a $4.95 ticket price. The price later rose to $10.95.
``What happened is we got a very enthusiastic director in here, he built something different, and the something different cost more money,'' Andrews said.
Some of that cost was Bartlett's doing - he invested at least $2 million more into exhibits - but not all. The city had to kick in an extra $3 million to make up for state funds that didn't come through.
In the end, construction of the building and exhibits reached about $44 million. The city also contributed the land. The whole package cost about $52 million.
Bartlett boosted the ticket price only by $1.75. It has seesawed in the past few years, going down to attract customers, then going up to include more exhibits in the overall price.
Andrews said he considers the virtual-reality feature Bartlett installed to be a mistake.
It's clear to him, he said, that the difference between the visions of Bartlett and Rosenthal has been one of Nauticus' problems.
Goldbach, while complimentary of Rosenthal's work, said he thinks Nauticus would be in worse shape, not better, if Bartlett had not taken Rosenthal's ideas and improved on them.
``I think there is absolute agreement on the board about the excitement built in by Mike Bartlett's changes,'' Goldbach said.
Rosenthal said, ``We'll never know how mine would have done, because mine wasn't built.'' MEMO: Staff writer Alex Marshall contributed to this report.
INSIDE: The city of Norfolk is looking for a group, possible even
Disney, to buy or run Nauticus/A6
SATURDAY: Part 2
Advertising budgets shrank, and the expectations piled on Nauticus
proved to be too much. What happens next? ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
[Nauticus]