
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 1, 1993                   TAG: 9305010146
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BONNIE V. WINSTON
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

POOR POST-FAIR PLANS CAN BE A BIG HAZARD

Several U.S. cities that have hosted world's fairs have found themselves stuck with huge debts and empty, useless buildings once the crowds are gone.

According to a 1987 report in The Wall Street Journal, "huge chunks of real estate and thousands of square feet of potential office space" were left vacant and idle in New York; Knoxville, Tenn.; San Antonio, Texas; and New Orleans because of poor post-fair planning.

"What you will do with the site [after the fair] should figure very importantly in your plans for the fair," said Ewen Dingwall, general manager of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and a consultant to the Knoxville (1982), New Orleans (1984) and San Antonio (1968) fairs.

"That is frequently misunderstood and overlooked," Dingwall, 80, said in a recent telephone interview from Seattle, where he is retired.

Dingwall points to Seattle as more successful than the other cities in permanently using property developed for a fair. When its fair was over, the city was left with "Seattle Center," a 75-acre site of parkland and buildings, including a theater and exhibition complex.

The Coliseum has become the home of the Seattle SuperSonics, the city's National Basketball Association franchise.

And the U.S. Pavilion has been turned into a science center, Dingwall said.

Dingwall was the general manager of the Seattle Center until his retirement three years ago. He declined to talk about the other cities. But published reports indicate each has experienced major problems.

In New Orleans, organizers were operating under protection of the federal bankruptcy code in 1987. And in San Antonio, many of the fair's buildings were deteriorated by then, city officials having reached no consensus on their use.

Ten years after Knoxville's fair, the city still owes $46 million for purchase and development of the fair site, acquisition and rehabilitation of fair properties and for refinancing.

The debt is not expected to be paid off until 2005.

As recently as this March, blue-ribbon panels in the Tennessee city were trying to hatch plans to revitalize the fair site. Abortive efforts included plans for a Knoxville World Festival and efforts to save the now-razed U.S. Pavilion by turning it into the site for a Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Celebration.

Frank Jewell, director of Richmond's Valentine Museum and father of Virginia's fair idea, said a fair wouldn't be held unless "the campsite is left cleaner" than the fair organizers found it.

In addition to post-fair planning, Dingwall said, a successful fair needs:

To be staged in a well-populated area close to an urban area, "not out in the countryside where people can't get there and it won't have a strong daily attendance."

Solid funding and strong civic leadership backing it.

"I'm not going to say you need a united community, because that almost never happens," Dingwall said. "But there are sad episodes of fairs that have been half-baked. You want to avoid that.

"A fair is very much worth doing for a community only if they are serious about doing a first-class job."

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