After stunning state and local politicians on Wednesday with its decision to abandon plans for a $650-million theme park on historic land in rural Virginia, the Walt Disney Co. on Thursday pledged to search for another site in the state and to work closely with the opposition.
"We are now in the site location business," said John F. Cooke, president of the Disney Channel, who was named on Wednesday to the additional role of chairman of Disney's America, the name of the theme park. "We are starting afresh and are reaching out to historians who have opposed us to make sure our portrayal of the American experience is responsible."Some opponents to the project expressed doubt about whether Disney would be able to find another site in Virginia as attractive as the 3,000 acres it had optioned in Haymarket, 35 miles southwest of Washington. There, in addition to the theme park, the company had planned to build as many as 2,281 homes, 1,340 hotel rooms and 1.96 million square feet of retail and commercial space.
"Four-fifths of this development was real estate," said Robert Elliott, a lawyer representing Protect Prince William County, a group of residents that had opposed the Disney park in their county. "We were never convinced that Disney was interested in building just a theme park. The real estate was where the money was. But most sites near enough to Washington to be attractive to Disney are not likely to be this big. This may be just a graceful way for Disney to back out entirely."
Disney said it would not have put a new team in place to oversee the project unless it was fully committed to going forward.
Disney's announcement last November of its plans to build a theme park in Prince William County unleashed a firestorm of opposition from local residents, historians and Washington politicians.
The Piedmont Environmental Council, a coalition of 70 organizations and 5,000 families from the northern Virginia area, was among the first to sue Disney, alleging that the project would bring crowding, road congestion and smog to the area.
Historians, including David McCullough and James McPherson, a history professor at Princeton, waged a campaign against the project through Protect Historic America. They argued that the project, which was to include virtual-reality battles and a Lewis and Clark raft ride, would not only destroy important Civil War sites but would trivialize and sanitize American history.
Disney had won the backing of county and state officials, making Thursday's decision a particularly harsh blow to Gov. George Allen, who had pushed a $163 million package of incentives to improve roads through the legislature. The project was expected to create 19,000 jobs and generate $47 million in revenues for the state.