Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • Page 59

Sunday, November 8, 1987 miess section Tourism, education debate school law Prospectus Joseph Pryweller Business Writer By JOSF.ril PRYW F.U Fit Staff Writer Patrick MoMahon wonders why Virginia educators want to open schools before Labor Day. "I was raised in Kansas," said the director of the Virginia Division of Tourism, "it was too hot outside in August to think about going back into that school building." McMahon is a long way from Kansas, but not from the heat. Surrounding Virginia's schools the air-conditioned variety a blistering battle rages that embroils two of the state's most powerful tendrils, tourism operators and the equally potent education groups. The debate centers on the sagacity of continuing Virginia's post-Labor Day school law, which requires public schools to open after the holiday. The three-year experiment expires in July 1988, but a new version is being planned for introduction into the 1988 General Assembly.

Education and tourism groups, at odds in this issue, generally make friendly bedfellows. In fact, the state's educational system receives part of its funds from tax revenues generated by the tourism industry. But the symbiosis is snapped when it comes to Labor Day. Labor Day means separate concepts to tourism and education. To the schools, it's a beginning, the emotional if not scheduled start of the year.

To See Tourism, Page K2 4 Minium I -JJ I Staff photo by OE FUDGE Workers put gondolas from the Busch Gardens sky ride in storage areas for the winter. Attendance slides at state parks Businesses rethink school sales Area attractions Attendance figures LJ1 2.5- IL881 11.5- i Busch Gardens Kings Dominion csaWafer Country USA Si tz tent but flat summer in 1987. It netted 1.941 million tourists, a loss of only about 25,000 customers from the year before. "You've got to look at the other (Williamsburg area) attractions," Fairbanks said. "What the area offers is not a new product.

The picture is pretty stable." For other tourist sites, stability might be just around the corner. Water Country, which passed the millionth customer through its gates in August, increased its attendance by 8 percent from last year. But the park's growth was shadowed by the spectacular 29 percent increase in visitors the year before. "We've been around awhile now, like everybody else," said Water Country Marketing Manager David Potter. "The newness has worn off, so we can't expect huge attendance increases every summer." Kings Dominion theme park near Richmond finally reached an attendance slowdown this summer.

The number of park visitors had grown every year since its 1981 opening. Then suddenly this summer, Kings Dominion recorded a slight but significant drop of about 30,000 customers from 1986. Both Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens plan new rides next summer to lure the tourists. Busch Gardens has announced a "Roman Rapids" water raft ride. Kings Dominion will counter with "Avalanche," a simulated bobsled ride that will cost close to $3 million to operate.

Even the prerevolutionary grand-daddy of Virginia tourist sites, Colonial Williamsburg, has found more thrills in past summer seasons. "It's been a fairly good year, but not our best," said Albert Loner, spokesperson for Colonial Williamsburg, which has not yet released attendance figures. "Attendance is close to last year, not significantly different. But we did not have quite as good a summer as expected Flat future summers might take the fizz from the state's (oilers. Travel-related tax dollars, which rose by about 15 percent last year, contribute more than any other category lo the state's tax revenues By JOSEPH PRYWELLER Staff Writer Francie Fairbanks laughs when she recites a theme-park cliche, but its meaning hasn't gone out of fashion.

"We're for children of all ages," said Fairbanks of Busch Gardens, the James City County attraction that gathers about 2 million young and old kinder each year. The come-one-come-all approach lets adults take guilty pleasures. They cruise the park's Rhine River, they seek terror aboard the Big Bad Wolf roller coaster and they get wet on a log flume ride. "There's something for everybody," said Busch Gardens spokesperson Fairbanks. But while adults resort to adolescent delights at many area attractions, the Virginia tourism industry has quietly moved in the opposite direction toward adulthood.

The once-young industry finally might have grown up. This summer's attendance figures portray that rite of passage. Attendance has flattened at many Virginia attractions, after pronounced statewide growth each year since the middle 1970s. The less-than-expected results leave many tour operators wondering if headier days are over. "It's not like the late 1960s and 70s," said Martha Steger, communications director of the Virginia Division of Tourism.

"We can't expect any more boom years. The travel industry is now a mature industry." If tourism has matured in Virginia, attendance figures should continue to level off from year to year. Steady but unspectacular summers might await. After all, Busch Gardens has been sending visitors to the Old Country since 1975; Water Country USA strokes toward its fifth season next year; and Kings Dominion, its seventh. Some attractions might have reached adulthood earlier than others.

Busch Gardens has hovered around the 2 million mark in attendance since 1978, when the park unleashed the Loch Ness Monster thrill ride. The European theme park has not dropped below 1.9 million or above 2.2 million visitors since. Busch (iardens had another consis Nursery extends its green thumb Frank's Nursery hopes to dig up some deep roots when it moves to Newport News this month. "The nursery'business is one of the few mom-and-pop operations left in America," said Walter B. Rogers, corporate communications director for Stamford, based General Host owner of Frank's.

"In each city we come to, small local merchants dominate," Rogers continued. "But that might change soon." Frank's will open its first Hampton Roads store, a three-acre nurserydepartment store on Warwick Boulevard in Denbigh. Next year, the company plans to branch out even more by launching seven nurseries in Richmond and single-store locations in Hampton and Virginia Beach. The company believes its stores are more than another competitor among Virginia's budding plant retailers. Frank's is ready to take a spade to the idea of the small-town plant shop.

With the requisite economies of scale clinging to a big company, Frank's believes it can effectively compete on price; with its 30-year history and 235 stores east of the Mississippi, Frank's thinks its selection will make the mom-and-pops green with envy. Some of the local merchants take offense to the company's sketch of the industry. Don Kane, owner of Tidewater Nurseries Inc. in Newport News, believes Hampton Roads nurseries deserve more credit. Kane, who owns four nurseries and a plant-supply wholesale outlet, said Tidewater nurseries are a shade closer to specialty stores than to sophomoric operations.

He scoffs at Frank's claims to own the good earth because of its girth. "They don't worry us," said Kane, who has owned the nursery on Oyster Point Road for 18 years. "We see Frank's as a discount nursery, more in competition with Mart and Roses than with a quality plant shop." Kane worries that another cut-rate plant retailer could damage the reputation of quality-conscious nurseries. "It happens all the time," Kane said. "The customer gets no advice from a discounter.

He puts his new plant in the wrong light at home, in the wrong room. He doesn't know how to take care of it. "Next thing you know, he gets disgusted when the plant dies. He doesn't buy any more." Hence, the plant's demise is blamed on the lack of a green thumb instead of on the true cause, a lack of adequate information from a high-volume discount store. Frank's Nursery, however, envisions itself more as a conduit to pollinate a dormant industry than as a carpetbagger cutting out respect for plant parenthood.

Rogers points out the industry's insularity by talking of Frank's growth. In four years, General Host has made Frank's the largest nursery retailer in the country, with sales of $220 million last year. But the market share for the nation's largest nursery chain speaks volume about an industry of small companies. Frank's might be the biggest, but its market share is a mousy 2 percent. There's lots of thin timber in the nursery woods.

Retail analyst Franklin Morton, with Alex Brown Co. near Washington, said the plant world has room for heavy lumber. The average nursery takes in about $200,000 in annual sales; Frank's store average is closer to $2 million, he said. "This industry is one of the last yet to undergo a transformation to one dominated by bigger chains," Morton said. "Frank's could be like McDonald's was thirty years ago, when no one said an outsider could compete with the local guys." General Host is betting the greenhouse that Morton is correct.

The company sold a subsidiary, Hickory Farms of Ohio, last July to raise capital for further Frank's expansion. The retailer has $150 million in cash on hold to finance growth, Morton said. Frank's was once a local mom-and-pop itself, based in Detroit for 30 years until General Host purchased it in 1983. Now the company hopes to capture a large slice of the $13 billion lawn-and-garden business, while selling a variety of crafts and household items in its stores of close to 20,000 square feet. But defenders of plant quality, such as Kane, remain querulous.

Kane's complaint also can be heard by those who castigate McDonald's. "You get what you pay for," Kane said. LOS ANGELES (UPI) Good-bye, summer jobs. Bye-bye, back-to-school sales. Hello, year-round education.

The early October approval of year-round school in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district, may be the precursor of a national trend to keep children in school to ease overcrowding. Long based on an agrarian calendar, one that calls for children to be home during spring planting and summer harvest seasons, modern school schedules are increasingly venturing into once-forbidden territory: summer. "Everybody has learned to cope with kids having this three-month time off in the summer. Now, all of this is going to go away," said Alexa Smith, president of The Research Department, a New York market research firm. Sending children to school year-round may force a number of businesses to rethink their marketing and distribution practices, Smith said.

The change could be a boon for some businesses and a bust for others, said Smith, who spent the better part of a year conducting focus groups to gauge the possible effects of year-round education. The groups included parents of children who attended classes through the summer and of those who did not. "I thought this would make a lot of major changes in our society because so much revolves around the school year," Smith said. Already, about 350,000 students in 425 schools in 15 states See All-year, Page E4 340,000 159,000 1 i 1987 1984 1985 1986 Year SUII by M. 1 1 SKY In 1986, travel dollars brought $160 million to Virginia in sales and excise taxes, according to the slate tourism division.

Williamsburg garnered about 5.6 million in local tax receipts, James City County $1.5 million. But a mature, more sluggish indus try, coupled with the threats of an en-croachmg recession, concern the tourism officials in Richmond. "We might have to find some money to increase our nationwide ad vertismg budget, said Steger. "We used to spend more than any other state, hut the competition has caught up to us." ('ompetilion is one in a grocery list See Mediocre, Page E3 Farmer patents disease-resistant peanut 1 JT MM1 .1 Jk. ill Ui.

HI A 3 By STEVEN WINGFIELD Staff Writer SOUTHAMPTON In today's world of microbiology, agronomists with doctorates and high-tech genetic engineering of seeds, it's practically unheard of for a simple dirt farmer to jump through the bureaucratic hoops necessary for a plant patent. But that's what Ashley Darden did. Drive down any road in this county in the summertime and you'll see peanuts row upon row of peanuts. To most folks, they all look alike. But Darden's sharp eyes spotted a plant that looked different in 1981, and after years of testing he now has a patented variety that bears his name.

"People don't believe that a farmer can do something like this by himself. They think you've got to be a doctor or some kind of plant breeder," the 61-year-old said with a touch of pride in his voice. The story of the AD-1 variety began when Darden and his son Jay were walking through one of their peanut fields straddling the North Carolina line south of Newsornes. The field had a history of outbreaks of Sclerotinia Blight, a fungus disease that can sharply cut yields. In the middle of a row was a spindly plant with sparse foilage that appeared to be handling an outbreak of the disease better than the other Florigiant peanuts planted in the field.

Darden said he pulled up nearby plants to eliminate cross-pollination, and at harvest time he hand-picked the goobers. He kept those seeds separate and planted a couple short rows in 1982 in the family garden. Darden will be the first to admit his breed is nothing more than a fluke of nature, but said it took a keen eye to spot it. "If we don't look for anything better, we won't get jt." In 1982 he showed the plants to peanut specialists at the Tidewater Research Station in Holland, who told him it was worth doing some testing on the plants. Darden planted the See Peanut, Page E2 SUM htfi l.v SlfVIN WINC.H1U) Harden, who patented his AD-1 plant, is selling seed to other farmers..