THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 6, 1994 TAG: 9408060255
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: HAYMARKET LENGTH: Short : 30 lines
The state could earn $1.5 billion if a proposed Walt Disney Co. theme park were built at a Northern Virginia site along the extension of the Dulles Toll Road, a developer said.
Current plans call for the park to be built on a 3,006-acre site along Interstate 66 near the Prince William County community of Haymarket.
But ownership of the $336 million Dulles Greenway, the private, for-profit 14.2-mile extension of the Dulles Toll Road being built in Loudoun County by the Toll Road Corp. of Virginia, will revert to state ownership 40 years after completion, allowing Virginia to collect the tolls.
That would mean big bucks for the state, said Bernard W. Poirier, a former director of the Toll Road Corp. The developer now lives in Paris. He said Virginia could take in $1.5 billion over the next 63 years.
``This is an inheritance that Virginia cannot afford to ignore,'' he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in a telephone interview from France.
KEYWORDS: DISNEY'S AMERICA by CNB