Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 11, 1993 TAG: 9311110168
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAYMARKET LENGTH: Medium
And Aikman says, "I'm going to HAYMARKET!"
Not to Disney World in Florida, you understand. But to this hamlet of about 400 people northwest of Manassas, where tourism handouts tout the hardware store and boast of "little modern-day significance."
That cherished sleepiness will get some media caffeine today at 11 a.m., when officials from the Walt Disney Co. are to announce plans for a theme park just across Interstate 66. The company will hold another news conference in Richmond at 2 p.m.
"It's gonna put some action around here," Gossom said Wednesday as he walked his dog in the middle of empty Jefferson Street. Ever since the news started leaking on Tuesday afternoon, residents and shopkeepers have been bracing themselves. Not all share Gossom's glee.
"We don't need it," said Glen Davis, owner of the Haymarket Grocery. "All this congestion. All these high-rise hotels and motels and fast foods. I'd like to see it stay like it is."
Haymarket is an old crossroads just beyond Northern Virginia's strip-mall sprawl, in the far corner of Prince William County. Driving west on I-66, this is the first point where you can see the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. The Disney site - 2,000 acres of rolling fields and pine saplings - is north of the highway at Virginia 15, past the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Civil War names are everywhere. The closest creek is Little Bull Run.
Robert Marshall can see a corner of the Disney site from the cinderblock rancher he has rented for 30 years. Two more years, he figures, and he'll be gone.
"Eventually this'll be a rent-by-the-hour motel," he said, watching C-Span from an easy chair with his Camels, the remote and a jug of Tums at his elbow.
Marshall, 60, learned of the plans from television Tuesday night. "Everything is in secrecy until it's all locked up," he said. "It's typical of the economic elite in this country."
Because he doesn't own property, Marshall won't benefit if real estate values take off. "The only people in this area who are for it," said his wife, Jane, "are property owners and business people who stand to make money off of it."
Davis, the grocer, fits both of those categories. He has owned the town's only market for 27 years and lives across the street from where the theme park is supposed to go. Already, his neighbors have called to suggest selling their homes in a group to try and make more money.
But Davis isn't excited. "I'd rather stay just like I am,` he said. He has been to Disney World and "one time's enough. That was three or four years ago. And it was in Florida; that's close enough for me."
Sue Claffy, picking up a package of meat from Davis, agreed. "I'm retired and I just want to be peaceful out in my mountains," she said.
Claffy and other locals opposed a housing development on the same property a few years ago. They are even more vehement in their opposition to a race track and equestrian center planned for another site near Haymarket.
But those projects are exactly why some in the village are enthusiastic about Disney as an alternative.
"Progress comes and growth comes, and if it has to come here, I'd rather it be something like this," said Ann Marie McCarty, who runs a lawn equipment business with her husband. "Life has got a lot of troubles in it these days, a lot of heartaches, you know? Let's have something fun."
"Walt Disney - that's family stuff, so I'm for that," said Tim Everett, owner of Gossom's Hardware. "And this wouldn't just help things around here; this would do it - this would turn things around."
Everett bought the store in 1988 and said his revenue has dropped from $1 million the first year to less than $480,000 in 1992. From a peak of six full-time employees, he is down to one. "I think it will be exciting to see things change like this," he said.
And excitement is just what Tony Gossom, whose family started the hardware store generations ago, is looking for. Sure, it's interesting that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette used to stop here way back when.
"But why let it stay stagnant for 1,000 years?" said Gossom, 36. "If somebody wants to live in the bushes their whole life, let 'em move to the bushes. . . . There will still be places like this - they'll just be farther out."
by CNB