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

DATE: TUESDAY, July 27, 1993                   TAG: 9307270233
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C5   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Short

VA. LANDS NEW AIR MUSEUM

For more than four years, Northern Virginia has been struggling to land a huge new aeronautical museum that will display the space shuttle Enterprise and the Enola Gay, the World War II plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Last week, with a largely unnoticed vote in the U.S. Senate, Virginia appeared to have won.

The Senate approved legislation requiring the Smithsonian Institution to build a proposed annex to the wildly popular National Air and Space Museum near Dulles International Airport.

The bill already has passed the House, and President Clinton is expected to sign it.

The vote appears to end a bare-knuckles political brawl that pitted Virginia against Maryland and the city of Denver.

No money has been set aside yet for the project and it remains uncertain when it will be built.

The original Air and Space Museum has been one of the most popular tourist attractions in Washington since it opened in 1976. But the Smithsonian has an extensive collection of historic aircraft that will not fit into the building on the Mall and wants to construct a huge annex where they can be displayed.

by CNB