Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 17, 1994 TAG: 9403180056
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, not for ever after, actually. Living with Disney is a continuing story, so there's no happy ending.
But an editorial that appeared in The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, reprinted on today's Commentary page, suggests it doesn't have to be a life of misery, filled with the tacky consequences so feared in our lovely state.
Disney's reputation is of a good corporate citizen, and Orlando has found the reputation well-deserved. What Prince William County, and all Virginia lovers, have to worry about principally is the spin-off development.
Much energy and passion were spent, quite appropriately, on the question of how much state aid a multigazillion-dollar business must be promised before it dares to risk a few hundred million of its own on a new venture. Legislators who grumbled that they could have cut a better deal had they had more bargaining time are probably correct. We'll never know.
What we do know is that Gov. George Allen won bragging rights for bagging a major tourist draw. And Prince William County and its neighbors will face a future filled with, well, a whole lot of zoning fights.
That's right. More important than the incentives to Disney, most of which involve road improvements on the drawing board anyway, is the degree of planning - or lack of it - applied to the whole process, including the long-term ripple effects of the Disney development.
The golden promise of prosperity beckons, of course. But zoning fights are about guaranteed wherever there is a development buck to be made in a place pretty enough to attract investment.
It doesn't take a miracle of imagination to picture the "urban blight" along a part of International Drive that the Sentinel's editorial cites: clusters of signs of various sizes and heights, clumped at the edge of a congested road, a visual cacophony that unfortunately isn't extraordinary, but which clutters and degrades landscapes homogeneously across America.
No one has to travel to Orlando to see that scene. Yet the profits to be made from Disney-related growth - and there surely will be plenty - do not have to come at a terrible loss of quality of life.
The lack of regional planning, evident in the contrast between Prince Williams' laissez-faire come-hither comprehensive plan and neighboring Fauquier's preservation orientation, will greatly complicate and confound land-use policy-making.
But on such policy-making will depend the nature of Disney's impact outside the park itself. Ensuring that the development's presence is an asset to the entire region will require a shared vision, close governmental cooperation, solid planning and a zoning law with guts.
That's a lesson all of Virginia's cities and counties could learn from Orlando's experience.
by CNB