DATE: Sunday, June 1, 1997                  TAG: 9705290004

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

NAUTICUS CORRECTING COURSE

Nauticus, The National Maritime Center, has yet to fulfill its promise as a magnet drawing families in great number to downtown Norfolk.

That's been due in part to high ticket prices; the expectation of more than 800,000 visitors per year to Nauticus was predicated on admission charges approximating the price for movie tickets. Norfolk City Hall's recent announcement that the price of Nauticus tickets is being slashed (starting slashed June 2) is the right, though belated, move.

Why was the tab at Nauticus stiffer than many cared to pay? For sundry reasons, some of them bad, facility costs were higher than planned. That handicapped Nauticus in its effort to generate enough revenue from visitors to meet operating costs and to service its multimillion-dollar debt.

And then there was Nauticus' image problem, which is still with it. What, the public wondered, is ``Nauticus''? That it is ``The National Maritime Center'' doesn't dispel bewilderment. Describing Nauticus as a maritime-oriented science-and-technology complex encompassing aquariums, interactive exhibits appealing to children, the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, the Aegis theater that involves audiences in defense of a warship under attack, a virtual-reality quest for the Loch Ness monster, a movie house, a source of oceanographic and and weather lore - and more - suggests to many that the enterprise is unfocused.

Nauticus' failure to be self-supporting compelled Norfolk City Hall to absorb the institution into the municipal-government structure and to assume its debt. That move cleared the way for the city to reduce admission prices and effect economies by merging functions and cutting staff. Nauticus now will be less pricey, which should weaken consumer resistance, especially if a way is found to sharpen and brighten its image.

That Nauticus could stand on its own bottom perhaps was unrealistic even before cost overruns pushed the institution's overseers into raising ticket prices. Virginia Beach never expected the Virginia Marine Science Museum to carry itself. The Beach contributes handsomely from the public treasury to defray VMSM's costs.

And the Beach gets its money's worth. The museum's image is not fuzzy and its prices are right. Attendance seems certain to exceed 800,000 this year.

Critics of the Nauticus venture were right in their prediction that the enterprise would not pay its way from operating revenue. But VMSM has proved wrong the assumption of many of the critics that no Hampton Roads attraction other than Colonial Williamsburg could expect to pull in 800,000-plus people annually. With its lower prices and the MacArthur Center superregional shopping mall downtown scheduled to open in 1998, Nauticus has a shot at becoming by 2001 that crowd-pleaser that its advocates hoped it to be. If it defines and markets itself in a way that brings people into the tent.

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