Marriott clings to the dream
By now it had been five years since Marriott had excitedly announced their big plans for the DC area. Howard County, MD, had slapped them in the face, sending the company down to Prince William County in Northern Virginia. Here they got derailed not by a hostile board of supervisors, but by an obscure legal error. Faced with the prospect of having to begin all over again with planning board applications, public hearings, planning board recommendations to the supervisors, followed by more public hearings, Marriott officials packed it in and instead refocused their attention back where they started…in Howard County.
Really? The company maintained they were always more interested in this area, more so than Northern Virginia in Prince William. Besides the fights over zoning and Interstate access, two major theme parks had opened while all the ruckus was going on—Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion. So they screwed up their courage and tried again in Howard, which was north of DC and away from the new competition.
The property they had optioned was owned by Chase Manhattan Mortgage and Realty Trust and was located east of I-95 and west of U.S. 1. That highway was zoned industrial, and some of the concern was the park interfering with trucks and related traffic. And of course the same water and sewer questions.
Remember the CCC? Concerned County Citizens, the group that helped derail the first go-round in Howard? They were back and aghast that this was still a thing. Their president, Richard Cook, felt “sick about it. They (Marriott Corporation) have the gall to come back here. Who the heck needs it? We have the lowest unemployment rate in the region. We are one of the ten most affluent counties in this nation. This theme park would be an environmental nightmare that would adversely affect the nice style of life in this county.”
On the other hand…”I pray to goodness we take advantage of this second chance.” Alma Lauriente was the rare local who had actually been to Great America in CA and came away impressed. Remember, at that time many people had never seen a theme park and therefore had no idea what the concept was all about. In a knowledge vacuum, you tend to dream up whatever scenarios come to mind, especially when much of what you hear around you is negative. One local business owner recalled the ’72 fight, which was “almost like a civil war—family against family and neighbor against neighbor.” He had a stack of 8000 survey cards in his office where locals had been polled about the project at the time. The results? 4000 for, 4000 against.
The current proposal was scaled down from before. There was no safari attraction, no marine life park. The theme park’s five themed lands—the Yukon, New Orleans, Midwest County Fair, Cape Cod, and Hometown—featured 29 rides, 14 live shows, 33 shops, and 27 restaurants on 65 acres. 25 acres were for administration and greenhouses, 15 acres for expansion, and 100 for parking. Attendance expectations were 2.6 million annually, with 300 full-time and 2500 part-time jobs. The entrance to the park would be off U.S. 1.
And how did this second attempt in Maryland go? Well…
