Blue Ridge America? Just Say No!
I have just had time to review the promotional video for the proposed “Blue Ridge America” project that Florida-based developer Larry Vander Maten is planning for a site just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, at what has for the last decade or so been known as Virginia’s “Explore Park.” This site, unlike other locations developers might be eyeing, is favored with a special access road that connects it directly to (and really makes it part of) the Parkway.
While the Roanoke Times initially reported that the proposed project was warmly received by Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority board, which controls the Explore site (and has leased it to Vander Maten), and the Roanoke County Board of Supervisors at a presentation on April 28, I was relieved to see that an article two days later noted that some questions were being raised about this preposterous and overinflated plan. Comments on the newspaper’s discussion board also included a number of critiques.
The “Blue Ridge America” resort — complete with luxury spa, “sprawling” riverside village, cable car, swanky hotel, riverside light show pageant, super-big zip line, and golf course — is wildly out of character with the Blue Ridge Parkway. Marketing itself as the “prettiest place on the Parkway,” it would single-handedly redefine what has been for millions of Americans an escape from the “business of life.” This development would implicitly make the Parkway an appalling and sickening promoter for business-driven, man-made extravagance and wealthy self-indulgence. Indeed, the only thing that isn’t new about it is that it represents the latest in a long line of privately-promoted tourism schemes seeking to capitalize on their proximity to America’s most beloved national park site.
Vander Maten admitted as much during his presentation when he noted his hopes to “brand” the site based on its proximity to the Parkway. “That’s the selling experience. . . . I want to take it and make it like a national park on steroids,” the Roanoke Times quoted him as saying.
I’ll be writing more about this in the next little while — there are so many parts of the proposal as projected in the video to take apart that I hardly know where to begin. But the public needs to take a careful look at this before it’s allowed to go forward. With favored direct access to the Parkway, this is a development that could fundamentally change this park and what it’s been about for the last 75 years. Is this the way we want to begin the next 75?
Stay tuned.
I used to work at Virginia’s Explore Park, and I would go back to work there in a heartbeat. I am not disappointed with this new plan for Explore Park. I expected this commercialization of history. The video plan sounds like the old rehashing of Bern Ewart plan the creation of a park. Lets face it, the park opened before enough of it got built. Visitors are not going to be drawn to the park by overhead gondola rides. You need to develop the park land on the other side of the Roanoke River which has the best vista views. then you need the loop the Park with a real steam train. You need more historical buildings assembled throughout the park, for example: Mills types in different historic areas. There needs to be a saw mill, a covered bridge, an iron furnace, general stores, a trading post, and you need to expand the time periods into the 20th century, and celebrate the construction of the Blue Ridge ‘Parkway with a CCC Camp, and Route 11. I just see this plan as taking history, and living history, and commercializing upon it. With all of this talk of Disney World, Branson, Missouri, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, etc., they are going to bring Disney’s high price admission prices, and the imagineering factor into the park, and create the historical theme park from Hell.