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Jud
Honaker, a senior executive with the Silver
Companies in Fredericksburg, was visiting Wisconsin Dells,
Wisc., last summer with his family on
vacation. The city's claim to fame was a cluster of
attractions that made it the indoor waterpark
capital of the world. And the biggest, most
grandiose of all the waterparks was Kalahari
Resorts. Honaker took one look at the African-themed
tourist magnet and decided he had to get one of
those back home. As
it happened, Honaker was president-commercial
development for Silver Companies, and it was his job
to find big-ticket draws for the
"Celebrate Virginia" tourist district on
the far side of Interstate 95 from historic,
downtown Fredericksburg. Silver Companies began
calling upon Todd Nelson, president of the Kalahari
organization, with the hope of persuading him to
expand to Virginia. As it happened, Nelson was
poking around the Williamsburg area, where industry
leader Great Wolf Lodge had opened a waterpark in
March 2005. Nelson
didn't respond at first, but the Silver Companies
didn't let up. "They're a pretty persistent
guys," Nelson says. Eventually, he relented,
meeting them at another Kalahari facility in
Sandusky, Ohio, to hear their sales pitch.
Intrigued, he let the Silver Companies fly him to
Fredericksburg. They made a good case, Nelson says.
The city on the Rappahannock River was closer to
major population centers than Williamsburg, and it
offered prime real estate right off I-95. After
months of negotiations, Kalahari announced in
November 2007 that it planned to build a $200
million, indoor waterpark, resort and conference
center in Fredericksburg. Silver Companies CEO Larry
D. Silver said he envisioned Kalahari anchoring a
complex of tourist destinations in Celebrate
Virginia, which in turn would become "the ideal
base" from which families would explore
historical and recreational attractions throughout
Virginia and the Washington region. Gov. Timothy M.
Kaine chimed in, stating that Kalahari would
"help make Virginia a top tourism destination
and bring millions of dollars in tax revenue for our
state and local economy." An
economic impact study suggested that Kalahari would
bring one million visitors a year, injecting $122
million annually into the local economy, creating
more than 800 jobs and generating $5.9 million a
year in local taxes for the City of Fredericksburg. The
announcement seemed an economic-development dream
come true. There was just one hitch. Kalahari was
demanding incentives. The proposed agreement called
for the city to exempt the waterpark from $1.6
million in water/sewer connection fees, waive
hundreds of thousands of dollars in planning fees, and rebate back to Kalahari 47.5 percent
of all local tax revenues generated by the project,
an anticipated $2.9 million a year, for 20 years.
All told, the incentives package amounted to roughly
$60
million -- a huge inducement for a city of only
20,000 inhabitants. Although
some Fredericksburg residents endorsed the project,
many others reacted negatively. Councilwoman Debby
Girvan, running for mayor against incumbent Thomas
Tomzak, contended that the city gave away too much
to Kalahari in the contract negotiations. Others
decried the idea of re-branding the city from a
historic town associated with George Washington,
James Monroe and Robert E. Lee into a theme park
noted for such rides as the Tanzanian Twister and
the Swahili Swirl. The project also fueled
concerns that City Council had gone incentive crazy
-- Kalahari was only the latest in a long line of
businesses receiving
inducements from the city. (Full disclosure: My mother, who lives in the
Fredericksburg historic district, is an active and
vocal opponent of the project.) The
Kalahari invasion, which may be the biggest uproar
in town since the Union army under General Ambrose
Burnsides crossed the Rappahannock in 1862, raises questions
that reverberate throughout Virginia. When it comes
to tax incentives, how much is too much? In an
increasingly knowledge-intensive economy, is tourism
an industry that a metropolitan region really wants
to build its economic base upon? Finally, how
decisive should historical heritage be in
maintaining a regional sense of identity and pride? For
the Silver Cos, the stakes are higher than
Kalahari alone. The waterpark, hopes Honaker, will
jump-start the "Celebrate Virginia"
development, which has sputtered fitfully since
its roll-out a decade ago. If City Council passes
the third of three resolutions required to approve
the project, as it appears poised to do in mid-May, the Wisconsin enterprise could catalyze
tourism-related development in the city's tourism
zone. Conversely, if the deal falters, it could
hopelessly taint the tourism initiative, which has
been marred by repeated setbacks. The
City of Fredericksburg annexed the land on the west
side of I-95 in 1985 with the aim of providing room
for growth. Around that time the Silver Companies
acquired thousands of acres of land west of the
Interstate, both within the Fredericksburg city
limits and north of the river in Stafford County.
Celebrate
Virginia. Map Source: Silver Companies. In
1995 the
city rezoned land at
the I-95/Route 3 interchange for intensive
commercial development. This project,
Central Park, became the largest retail complex in
the Fredericksburg region. By purely fiscal
measures, the project was a huge success. According
to Honaker, original forecasts predicted that the
complex would generate $7.2 million a year in taxes
for the city. In actuality, he says, the number
peaked around $16 million, although it has dipped
recently. On the other hand, critics
castigate Central Park as planning disaster.
Accessible only by automobile and arranged in an
disjointed strip of big boxes and shopping centers, the
retail district contributed to the
overloading of Rt. 3, now notorious for its traffic
congestion. Moreover, the project accelerated the
region's evolution into a totally auto-dependent
economy -- an attribute that is causing economic
hardship now with gasoline selling at $3.50 a
gallon. Around
1998, the city took up the issue of rezoning the
2,200-acre tract of land north of Central Park into a tourist zone. The land
had previously been zoned for housing, which would
have created a net tax burden on the city if
developed.
Calculating that they had maxed out the potential
for retail development in the area, the Silver Cos. came back with a big idea: Develop the
land as a tourism destination. Bring in
complementary attractions that would draw visitors
from hundreds of miles around, generating economic
activity and tax revenues the city would never
capture otherwise. Despite a massive public outcry,
City Council rezoned the land for commercial
development. Although
the name "Celebrate Virginia" technically
applies to all the contiguous Silver properties west
of I-95, in popular usage it refers to the tourism
zone. A Silver Cos. promotion describes the project
as a "unique blend of live, work,
play, shop, visit and stay." A narrator
intones, "We gave a lot of thought to the word
Celebrate Virginia. Celebrate the mountains.
Celebrate the ocean. Celebrate the music. Celebrate
the history of Virginia. Celebrate the foods, and
the culture of Virginia. There are so many different
themes and promotions and festivals that can be
promoted on our site by using that name." The
Silver Cos., founded by Carl D. Silver, is one
of the largest and most profitable development
enterprises in Virginia. Virginia Business
magazine guesstimates the family's net worth to be
$800 million. As the leading developer in the
Fredericksburg region, the Silvers moved from
successful project to successful project,
culminating with Central Park. But Celebrate
Virginia has been far more difficult than anyone
anticipated. Ironically, the project that may save
it -- Kalahari -- has
no
connection whatsoever to the music, history or
culture of Virginia.
When
you drive through Celebrate Virginia today, there's
almost nothing there. You'll see an Expo Center and
three hotels nearby, but they are surrounded by vast
parking lots and empty fields, some with overgrown
grass, others stripped bare to the clay. You'll find
islands of woods, segments of giant concrete
pipe laying scattered about, and black
plastic erosion fencing stapled to sticks in the
ground. And roads. Celebrate Virginia has broad,
empty boulevards that wind through the countryside,
seemingly for miles. At
the end of one of those thoroughfares sits a forlorn little
park, bordered on one side by a gravel road that
disappears into the trees and on the other by a
wooded hill. A wrought iron fence runs around the
perimeter. Inside the garden are well-kept walkways,
benches and beds of flowers. Museum-quality signs
elaborate upon
slavery themes: the auction block, runaways,
abolitionists and the like. There are a number of
elaborate African-inspired wood carvings. And in the center of the
park, a bigger-than-life statue of a slave reaches
to the sky, his shackles shattered.
"Hallelujah," reads the title. The
"Spirit of Freedom" park is carefully
tended. There was freshly laid mulch when my mother
and I visited a week ago. But not another
soul was there. The only sound was the hum of cars speeding along the
Interstate on the far side of the hill. The
U.S. National Slavery Museum was launched with great
fanfare in 2006. Former Virginia Gov. (and now
Richmond Mayor) L. Douglas Wilder had made a
personal commitment to erect a museum that would
tell the story of American slavery. Entertainment
superstars Bill Cosby and Ben Vereen lent their
prestigious names to the campaign. Plans called for
building 100,000 square feet of exhibition space and
erecting a library and archives to store artifacts
and aid the study of America's peculiar institution. The
Silver Companies helped kick off a $200 million
fund-raising campaign by donating a 38-acre site
overlooking the Rappahannock River. While no one
questions the Silvers' philanthropic motives -- CEO
Larry D. Silver sits on the museum board -- clearly
the company stands to benefit commercially from the
project's success. In its
launch publicity, the
museum boldly projected 450,000 visitors annually in its
first years of operation and one million as it
developed a national reputation. An attraction of
that magnitude would create critical
mass for the Celebrate Virginia development. But
the museum has yet to materialize.
Wilder, the rainmaker, became embroiled in Richmond city politics,
while another museum competed for financial support:
The proposed $500 million National Museum of
Africa. American History and Culture is slated to open in
2015 as part of the prestigious Smithsonian Museum
complex in Washington, D.C. No one is sure if the Virginia
museum will ever be built. Honaker doesn't have much
to say about it. "It's not moving as fast as we'd like
to see. I don't have a lot of information on
that." The
major achievement of Celebrate Virginia to date has
been attracting the
Fredericksburg Expo & Conference Center, which
opened in January 2006, and three conference hotels
nearby. (A fourth is said to be in the works.) The state-of-the-art
facility sells itself as a meeting place that
Fredericksburg area groups can "call their
own." Currently on its list of events are two
high school proms, a Marine Corps
healthy lifestyle expo, a Harley riders convention,
and "Bustin' Out of the Cave," a martial
arts cage fighting event presented by Barbarian Fight
Club. But even the conference center is having
trouble.
Late
last year, the public learned that the Expo Center
was encountering financial difficulties. In a City
Council meeting, it was revealed that the Silver
Companies were subsidizing the facility to the tune
of $140,000 a year. One reason
the Expo Center was struggling was that other major
tourism venues anticipated for Celebrate Virginia --
the World Street retail mall and the Rappahannock
Ridge Entertainment District -- had never came to
fruition. Contending that the facility
generated $700,000 annually in direct and indirect tax
revenues, Silver Cos. asked the city to help keep the enterprise afloat.
Several members responded they did not believe it to
be the responsibility of the city to make up for
private-sector failures, and the council tabled the
issue.
The
Silver Cos. had rolled out its World Street project
with great fanfare in 2006. The idea was to combine
restaurants and markets featuring cuisine and goods
from around the world, all under one roof. The
company saw World Street as a unique retail concept
that, like the massive Potomac Mills mall off I-95
in Prince William County, would draw visitors from
hundreds of miles away. Plans called for a
700,000-square-foot facility with a grand hall,
mezzanine, showroom and performing arts center. Honaker
says his company sank $6 million into World Street
before pulling the plug. It turns out that "the logistics were
horrendous," he explains, and after 9/11, it
was hard to get visas for the merchants. "We
decided not to move forward." The
music venue also met with disappointment. Silver
Cos. had recruited John Elkington, the CEO of
Performa Entertainment, to develop a musical venue
in Celebrate Virginia. Elkington is the man widely
credited with restoring the historic Beale Street
district in Memphis, which bills itself as the place
where the musical genre of the blues was born. He
spearheaded revitalization by developing a musical
entertainment theme through a careful selection of
tenants, and he leveraged his success there into a
national business. Plans in Fredericksburg called
for building a 168,000-square foot entertainment,
retail and restaurant district focusing on
Virginia's history, music and culture. Although the
project was scheduled to open in 2008, Elkington
never closed on the 25 acres. Press reports cite
legal and financial difficulties. Adding
to its litany of woes, the Silver Cos. put 440 acres of
Rappahannock riverfront under conservation easement.
The land was zoned commercial, explains Honaker,
"but it was land that the river conservation
groups had urged us to protect." The easements
also qualified for roughly $28 million in state tax
credits. The Silver Cos. sold the credits it
couldn't use at a discount to private
investors who could use them. But last year,
the state tax department disputed the credits. An
attorney representing some 340 investors then filed
suit against the state, leaving the situation in
confusion and turmoil. After
a string of expensive setbacks and disappointments,
Silver Cos. finds itself saddled with a large tract
of money-draining real estate. Not only does it pay
a significant property tax bill, it carries the
burden of supporting
debt on millions of dollars of road and utility
improvements. The company is now taking on projects
that represent a major departure from the original vision.
The Fredericksburg Board of Realtors and the Virginia
Credit Union have erected office buildings in the tourism
zone. Honaker describes them as "benign, not
hurting anything." More
controversial is a proposal to build a Wegmans
mega-grocery store on the property. According to
Economic Development Director Kevin Gullette, if
Wegmans generates $300,000 or more per year in sales
taxes, the city will waive the business-license tax,
an incentive worth about $165,000 a year. Although
there are plenty of grocery stores in the
Fredericksburg area, Gullette defends the subsidy on the grounds that Wegmans is a destination that
draws visitors from dozens of miles away. (With
Wegmans scheduled to open a store in Prince William
County in June, however, it's not likely that the
Fredericksburg store's market territory will reach
much beyond neighboring Stafford County.) Honaker
likewise contends that the store will draw from a
wide radius. But even he concedes, "Candidly,
it's not a perfect fit" for the tourism zone. To
all appearances, the tourism zone seems to be
unraveling. But Honaker insists that Silver Cos. is
in it for the long run. "Yes, this is
challenging," he says. "But this is not an easy
business. You have to be willing to tough it out." When
the Silver Cos. brought the Kalahari proposal to
Fredericksburg City Council last year, it
represented a way out of the woods not only for the
developer but for the city. The national economic
slowdown was pinching city revenues. City Council
had already passed a
2008 budget that drew $3.8 million from
the city's cash reserves, and fiscal pressure was
building. In February, City Council went public with
news that the city faced an
additional $3 million revenue shortfall. The
Kalahari development won't solve the short-term cash
crunch, but the prospect of millions of dollars in
new revenue generated a lot of excitement.
Jumping all over the project, Fredericksburg
officials dispatched
departmental managers to Sandusky to interview their
governmental counterparts on the impact of the
Kalahari waterpark there. Nelson,
though not exactly a disinterested party, credits
city officials for their diligence. When
Fredericksburg City Council sent a delegation
to the Ohio city, says the Kalahari CEO, he called the
manager of the Sandusky water department to invite
him to attend the meeting. "He said there
wasn't anything new he could tell them," Nelson
recalls. "He'd talked to the [the
Fredericksburg water manager] 16 times. 'There's
nothing more for me to talk about,' he said." Although
City Council did its homework, Nelson was in a
strong negotiating position. On
the one hand, Fredericksburg made a superior
location to Williamsburg for an indoor waterpark.
Forty-five million people live within a four-hour
drive radius of Fredericksburg. And the location
only an hour from Washington, D.C., which pulls in
25 million visitors a year, was a major plus. As
Silver Cos. official Scott Little had pitched it, a
stay at Kalahari in Fredericksburg would combine the
educational attractions of the Washington area with
the watery fun of an indoor waterpark. Not only that
but the nation's capital was accessible by train
ride on the Virginia Railway Express. "There
are many strengths to Fredericksburg," says Little. "Todd
Nelson could see that." On
the other had, Nelson had flexibility as to where he
could locate. "We
had other sites in other jurisdictions where we
could have put [Nelson's] project," Honaker
says. "In some cases it would have been more
efficient" to do so. The
reality of the marketplace, says Nelson, is that
local governments routinely make huge concessions to
attract tax generators like Kalahari. "Most
cities would pay an up-front fee of $5 to $10
million dollars, give away land, and give tax
incentives on top of that," he claims. "They’ve
got people knocking on the door and bugging them to
death," says Honaker, who speaks from
experience as one who came knocking. "Incentives are the price of
playing poker." 
Layout
of the Kalahari project. Mayor
Tomzak and Vice
Mayor Karry Devine were the only two council
members permitted to negotiate directly with
Nelson. Permitting any more in the room would have
constituted a quorum, triggering the need to treat
the discussions as a public meeting. Although she
did not participate
directly in the talks, Girvan did make the trip to
Sandusky and was privy to much of went on. The
talks, she says, got intense. Girvan
believes that Tomzak, whom she is running against
for mayor, was bullied by Nelson's aggressive
negotiating tactics. "I've
been told stories of the Kalahari owner
losing his temper, breaking pens, in the negotiating
room," she says. If Nelson had a business plan
for the project, he did not reveal it. He would not reveal his company's financials to the
city. "He
refused. He was angry and defensive and
explosive. He slammed his fists on the table and
said, 'This insanity needs to stop!'"
(Nelson did subsequently share financial data on a
confidential basis with a consultant hired by the
city. He also says, "I do not break pens and
slam fists.")
Tomzak
did not respond to requests by Bacon's Rebellion for an
interview; neither did did Council ally Matthew Kelly, an
ardent defender of the Kalahari deal. (However,
Kelly did post an extended defense of the project in
the Bacon's Rebellion blog here,
seventh comment from the top.)
But
Gullette, the city's economic development director,
believes the deal works for both sides. The city
does waive significant fees that developers normally
pay to process rezoning requests, but that's not
cash out of the city treasury. Fredericksburg is on
the hook for $1.6 million in water-sewer
connections, which it is obligated to pay back over
10 years. Otherwise, says Gullette, the city doesn't
pay a dime unless the project generates tax
revenues.
Out
of the roughly $6 million a year in anticipated
local tax revenues, the city will receive more than
$3 million. The balance, less than $3 million, will
be reimbursed to Kalahari. That concession will
significantly improve Kalahari's cash flow and the
bankability of the project. At the same time, from
the city's perspective, the $3 million in revenue to the
city is almost all profit. Outside the water-sewer
service, city obligations to the development are
minimal. Kalahari will provide its own security, so
there will be little added burden to law
enforcement. The
project will accelerate the planned construction of
a $7 million firehouse, Gullette concedes, but
Silver Cos. has proffered half the cost, and the
facility would have had to be built eventually
anyway.
Even
the traffic impact will be modest. Most visitors
will enter Kalahari by exiting the Rt. 3 interchange
and driving through the Central Park retail area.
Although Rt. 3 has an "F" level of service
during rush hour, Kalahari won't add much to the
strain, contends Chris Hornung, vice president of
planning and engineering for Silver Cos. "It's
not a peak demand situation. People will be coming
and going throughout the day." Adds Honaker:
"Kalahari
won’t generate as many trips a day as a Wal*Mart
or Lowes, or even as much as a WaWa."
Kalahari
would have a positive fiscal impact over and above
that $3 million benefit, Gullette contends. Tourists spend
a lot of money shopping, he says. Visitors to
the waterpark would generate retail sales and tax
revenues patronizing businesses in Central Park or downtown
Fredericksburg. Additionally, Kalahari plans to take
over operation, either by outright sale or lease, of
the ailing Expo. Increased convention and hotel
traffic will translate into even more tax revenue.
Gullette
concedes that the project is controversial. But, he
says, "I
try to focus on the project, not the person. Stay
objective, look at the numbers, look at the impact.
Look at what the project means for the city, weigh
the positives and the impacts."
Opponents
of the project don't dispute that Kalahari could be
a big money maker for the city -- if it gets
built. But the Silver Cos. has built up hopes for
several other projects only to see them dashed. Girvan makes
three further points. First, the city
could have driven a harder bargain with Kalahari and
Silver Cos. Second, it's not clear if the subsidies
will be extended to the Expo center if Kalahari
takes it over, as has been discussed. Third, the city
is on the hook for $3.5 million in up-front expenses
-- including $1.6 million in cash for
water-sewer connections -- if Nelson fails to line up financing
for his project.
On
the first point, the deal calls for the Silver Cos.
to sell 49 acres of land to Kalahari. Neither
Kalahari nor Silver Cos. will disclose the sales
price, but Honaker does say that Kalahari is paying
less than Silver Cos. could get from a conventional retailer. "We're selling it for 70
percent less
per acre compared to what we sold land for in
Central Park," says Honaker. "We're
committed to making this a tourism destination. We
think Kalahari is such an opportunity, we're willing
to start the ball rolling in the right
direction."
"They
definitely discounted the land to me," Nelson
confirms. Even so, he adds, "We're not
accustomed to paying that price for land. But I
understand that land is more expensive on the East
Coast."
Even
though the Silver Cos. discounted the land, it still
had room to cut the price even more. As any
developer knows, the challenge to closing a real
estate transaction is finding ways to reduce the
up-front expense of the deal. By not discounting the
land price even steeper, it can be argued, the Silver
Cos. is keeping cash that the city has to make up
for. To make the deal work, Silver Cos. is instead asking the city
to relinquish many millions of dollars in tax revenues,
via incentives, over the next 20 years.
On
the second point, Girvan says she can't get answers
to her questions on what will happen if Kalahari
takes over the Expo Center. The facility generates a
couple of hundred thousand dollars a year in direct
taxes to the city (plus indirect taxes paid when
convention goers patronize nearby stores and
restaurants). Because the Expo is located in the
special tax district set up to administer the tax
incentives, a mechanism exists to rebate 47.5
percent of its tax revenues back to Kalahari. She
fears that city officials "rolled
the Expo Center into the Kalahari deal at the 11th
hour." And that could lead to a loss of city
revenue not counted in the normal accounting of the
project.
On
the third point, Girvan questions if Kalahari has the financial
wherewithal to pull the project off in an economic
climate in which banks are clamping down on real
estate lending. The credit squeeze is affecting the
waterpark industry, as Great Wolf CEO John Emergy
alluded to in a recent financial report: “We
have seen less well-capitalized competitors forced
to the sidelines because they do not have the proven
operating history and balance sheet strength to
provide the necessary equity contribution for
large-scale indoor waterpark resorts."
Nelson
professes no concern. He started out in the bar
business in Wisconsin Dells. He acquired the bar
next door, and then the hotel next door after that.
In 1997, he built an indoor waterpark on the
property, sold it, and then, looking for something
bigger and different, built what was then the
biggest indoor waterpark in the world in 2000. He's
accustomed to taking measured risks. "I'll bet
we were turned down by 200 banks" for the first
project, he says, but he eventually found someone to
bankroll him. Today, he
says, the company is financially stronger than it
was then.
Nelson
refused to provide any financial information to Bacon's
Rebellion, however. I asked him if numbers
published by Dun & Bradstreet -- that Kalahari
Development generated $44.6 million in the fiscal
year ending June 2007 -- were accurate. He said they
were not. I asked if the D&B number for
Kalahari's net worth, negative $17.3 million, was
accurate. He said that it was not. "We don't
reply to D&B," he said. "They just try
to pick up whatever they think they can. It's very
substantially inaccurate."
Nelson
says he plans to put $20 million into the project
and to raise the rest of the equity
by pre-selling 75 percent of the condominium units
planned for the resort. According to sales material
provided by the company, the asking price for
new "Kalahari Kondos" in
Sandusky runs around $519,000 per unit. Kalahari
rents out the condos to resort guests, pocketing 45
percent and giving the owner 55 percent. Last year,
according to company pro formas, the average unit
generated $92,000 in revenue, generating roughly
$50,000 in income for the owners to meet their debt
service.
That
sounds good, I said to Nelson when I interviewed
him, but the
condominium market has tanked since then. Tens of thousands of
units are going unsold in Florida. What makes him
think that Fredericksburg condos would fare any
better? Nelson's response: "Anybody
who went to Florida and bought a condo that was already overpriced by
200 percent, and banked on appreciation ... deserves
everything they got. That’s stupid. If your condo
doesn’t cash flow, don’t plan on it
appreciating. ... Our condos financially work
for people. We don't have a big issue with selling
these."
His
big concern with the project is not selling the
condos, Nelson says, but
escalating construction costs. The final project
price tag will
be much bigger than the $200 million originally
announced. One reason is
inflation in the construction sector, which drives
up the cost of steel and other raw materials. The
other is that he has increased the scope of the
project: "Our waterpark is going to be twice
the size we announced," he says. "We need
to make a statement. We need to come out of the gate
with a gorgeous, 200,000-square-foot waterpark."
While
financial aspects of the deal may be troubling to
some, that's not what really gets people riled up. The very idea
of building Kalahari on hallowed ground seems, well, un-Virginian. It's
one thing to build an African- themed waterpark in an
empty field in Wisconsin or a down-and-out
industrial city in Ohio, but it's quite another to
build one in a city like Fredericksburg with so much
history.
Gullette,
the economic development director, says that
Williamsburg coexists with nearby Water Country
USA and the Great Wolf Lodge very comfortably. No one
thinks any the less of Colonial Williamsburg for all
the water rides nearby. In
fact, the cluster of attractions makes the region a
stronger tourist destination than it would be if
Colonial Williamsburg had to market the region all
alone. If Kalahari succeeds in bringing more
visitors to Fredericksburg, he argues, more people
will visit the city's historical sites than the city
could attract on its own.
Some people don't buy that logic. Foes raise two
broad objections. First, does a region where
unemployment is running at less than four percent
really need 800 to 1,000 low-wage tourism jobs? More
broadly, does a waterpark point the way to
prosperity in a knowledge-intensive economy? Second,
they charge, marketing for the waterpark resort will overwhelm
the meager budget for promoting the city's history. Inevitably,
outsiders will come to associate Fredericksburg with
waterslides, not its colonial and Civil War
heritage.
Nelson
bristles at the idea that the waterpark jobs are low
paying. Jobs at his Midwest resorts range from $8 an
hour to $250,000 a year. His facilities are
organized around some 30 to 40 departments, each of
which employs a highly compensated manager. His
resorts employ several professional, salaried chefs
and 10-person sales teams. "In Wisconsin
Dells," he says, "we have 62 salaried
positions."
Besides,
Nelson adds, what's so bad about the hourly jobs?
"There's nothing wrong with a waitress job, a
lifeguard job. We train them with skills. These kids
are trained in first aid. They take EMT classes.
There's lots of real good jobs here."
Girvan
wonders where the employees will come from. Pools in
the Fredericksburg area can't keep fully staffed
with lifeguards as it is. She's worried that
Kalahari will have to recruit labor from outside the
region, bringing in low-wage workers who require
"workforce" housing that doesn't exist
along with uninsured patients who will strain the already over-burdened health
care system. "How many
of his employees are full time, part time and
seasonal?" she asks. "How many would get
health care benefits?" Nelson won't say, she
contends.
There's
an even bigger question, says Girvan: What does
Fredericksburg want to be when it grows up? What
vision does the region have for its economic future?
Girvan
says that City Council is being seduced by the lure
of the easy answer, the quick buck. Expanding the
tax base with a project like Kalahari requires far
less effort than implementing good spending controls,
or planning and investing for the long-term health
of the community. Fredericksburg is located on the
edge of the Washington region, with its dynamic
technology sector. "We've got good, educated
talent" that commutes 50 miles up the
Interstate every day to work for those companies.
Does a waterpark contribute to the kind of community
that will induce those companies to relocate in
Fredericksburg? The city needs to encourage infill
and redevelopment around the historic downtown and
Mary Washington University, she says, not push
growth beyond the Interstate.
A
Kalahari can be built anywhere in the country. But
nobody's building any more historic Fredericksburgs,
she says. "This is the genuine article –
other communities are trying to recreate what we
have."
What will people
see if the waterpark gets built? Kalahari's 10-story structures
will be the tallest in Fredericksburg. The city's
performance agreement will allow Kalahari to build
an 18-foot-high electronic billboard right on the
Interstate. "I'm worried about this project
eclipsing what Fredericksburg truly is, a national
historic center," she says. "We were
joking the other day, what would George Washington
say? [Mayor] Tomzak said that Kalahari would put
Fredericksburg on the map.... That's exactly what
worries me."
--
May 5, 2008
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