Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 11, 1993 TAG: 9310110081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Gerald Baliles may be best remembered as Virginia's road-building governor, but in the Roanoke Valley one of his most enduring legacies is 1,300 acres of woods and fields just outside the city limits that are now in state hands.
The Explore Park.
It was Baliles who redeemed a promise from his 1985 campaign by including $6 million for Explore in his first budget - money that enabled the state authority governing the project to buy most of the site for the proposed living history state park.
Those were the days: The economy was fat, the state's treasury was flush with cash and, with a total of $11 million in state money already spent on the project in one way or another, Explore proponents were convinced more of it would keep coming their way.
They had good reason to think that: Candidates for governor saw Explore as the way to the hearts and minds - or, at least, the wallets and ballots - of Roanoke's business community. So in the 1989 campaign, the two men who hoped to succeed Baliles tried to out-do each other in pledging the strongest support for the project.
Of course, things didn't work out quite the way Explore supporters had hoped.
The state's economy went bust, and Baliles, in one of his last acts in office, turned off the spigot of state money for Explore and other local projects around Virginia. It's stayed that way through Douglas Wilder's four penny-pinching years in the governor's mansion.
Now, with Explore faced with what could be a do-or-die funding deadline next July, another governor has a chance to put a decisive imprint on the project.
But if either Democrat Mary Sue Terry or Republican George Allen feels any compulsion to save Explore - or assert that the state has no business paying to build a tourist attraction re-creating life on the Appalachian frontier - they're not saying so now.
Unlike in previous campaigns, both candidates this time greet questions about Explore with all the enthusiasm of a pending root canal:
Terry: "I'm not prepared to make any commitment, not just on this, but any funding in a lot of different areas I'm asked about, until we get a handle on the budget situation."
Allen: "We'll have to come up with an answer for it next year."
The state's projected $500 million budget shortfall, though, isn't the only reason why the candidates for governor don't have much to say about Explore.
The project doesn't offer the political mileage it used to in Roanoke's business community.
Lt. Gov. Don Beyer has been Explore's strongest supporter on the statewide level; the Democrat spoke at the project's ground-breaking in 1991. But Beyer - who can boast strong ties with some of Roanoke's most prominent business leaders - says he rarely hears them talk about Explore anymore.
"Much less so these past two years," Beyer says. "Now the standard topics are the Hotel Roanoke and the `smart' highway and [school-funding] disparity."
Has Explore's time passed it by? Beyer's analysis suggests it has.
"I have no doubt Explore would have been a big success if it had been [seeking construction money] in the middle 1980s," Beyer says. Instead, Explore didn't get around to that until the late '80s, just as the economy soured. "I think the timing was horrible," Beyer says.
This much is clear: Explore's immediate future may be decided by what happens in Richmond early next year.
Technically speaking, Explore is a state project, owned and governed by a board appointed by the governor. But through most of Explore's nine-year history, the River Foundation - the nonprofit group of Roanoke business leaders who gave birth to the project - has paid the bills.
In recent years, that's been about $450,000 annually, enough to keep a small staff on board, reassemble a 19th-century farmstead on the site and begin opening a scaled-down version of the park to school groups.
But the foundation said this past spring that funding arrangement has got to stop: The foundation served formal notice that come July 1994, it would stop paying the project's operating expenses and instead direct its contributions solely to construction.
On that score, Explore has made some noticeable progress in the past year: Two foundations connected with prominent Roanoke Valley families have made contributions of $250,000 and $65,000 to reassemble more old buildings.
But what Explore also needs, park Director Rupert Cutler says, is a reliable source of funds to pay salaries and other operating expenses, especially if the park is going to hire enough costumed interpreters to open full-time to the public next spring - and stay that way.
So Explore is now asking the state for $1 million in fiscal year 1994-95 and $1.3 million in fiscal year 1995-1996. Explore planners calculate that's enough money to pay for a 23-person staff, plus other operating expenses such as maintenance, equipment and insurance.
Without those operating funds, Cutler says, Explore faces two unpleasant alternatives. At best, he says, the park might be able to limp along on other private funds, offering little but the by-appointment-only visits it does now. Or, at worst, the project could fold altogether, he says.
But with state funding, Cutler holds out the prospect that the big national donors who have long eluded Explore will be more inclined to contribute for specific projects at the park, such as the environmental education center he envisions as the centerpiece.
"When I met recently with the executive director of the Coors Foundation, she told me, in effect, not to come back until we secure state operating funds, at which time she'd believe we're in business to stay."
But Wilder has already said he doesn't intend to propose money for Explore in the final budget he'll present this December.
That means Explore supporters must look either to the next governor, who'll take office Jan. 15, to propose changes in the budget - or hope that friendly legislators (read: Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County) can add the money when the budget's debated in the General Assembly.
The latter is a tall order, even under the best of circumstances. Besides, Cranwell is even more reluctant to talk about Explore than the gubernatorial candidates are. "I don't want to speculate on Explore's funding request," Cranwell says.
Basically, Cranwell got burned politically the last time Explore funding was debated in Richmond - the project got branded "Dickie World" by legislative wags - so he's not about to raise the subject again until he's good and ready.
In any event, to obtain the millions that Explore backers are seeking, it helps if the governor is on board - if not to push the project, then at least not to wield a line-item veto.
Unlike in years past, this time Explore planners have purposely avoided trying to nail down commitments from the gubernatorial candidates. "I don't want Explore to be, as it has been in the past, a political football," Cutler says. "As soon as the elections are over, we'll work with the victors to encourage their support."
On paper, Terry might seem the best bet to back Explore funding.
She's got the closest ties to Cranwell, and to the project's most prominent benefactor - Roanoke Electric Steel founder John Hancock. However, she also cautions that the state shouldn't support local projects unless other localities in that region endorse the idea.
By contrast, Allen, as a state legislator, led an unsuccesful Republican fight in 1988 to strip Explore funding from the state budget, saying the state shouldn't be in what he called "the theme park business."
But now, Allen says he recognizes "the project is changing."
And in an odd way, Allen at least sounds more interested in the project than Terry. Maybe it's just that he's naturally more talkative, or maybe it's that his sense of fiscal conservatism impels him to look out for the state's investment in Explore.
Either way, consider how the two candidates respond to the threshold question - does the state have any responsibility for the project?
"I think the state can define its responsibility," is all that Terry says.
But Allen is more definitive. "It's a shame we put all this money into it and nothing more ever happened," he says. "I think the state has some responsibility. After all, we authorized it and we put $11 million into it, and I'd hate to see that money completely wasted."
For that reason, Explore backers privately say they're not concerned with who wins the governorship.
Instead, they've focused on trying to build a new constituency for the project in the Roanoke Valley - working with school systems and service clubs to cultivate more grass-roots support.
"Explore is burdened with so many barnacles of past difficulties, it's hard for some people to see it as essential to the convention and travel business," Cutler says. He's hoping, as work on the Hotel Roanoke gets under way, that the business community will become re-energized about creating a destination attraction to help draw conventions to the hotel.
Even if it does, though, Explore's long-range prospects depend on state funding - and there the picture is gloomy.
"The state has a responsibility to do what it can to keep Explore alive," Beyer says, "but governance is to choose." And the budget shortfall makes the choices easy, he says.
"If we have to choose between raising tuition and lagging behind in professors' pay and funding Explore, then the choice is going to be higher education," Beyer says. "So I'm not optimistic there'll be state money for Explore in the '94-'95 budget."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB