Zion Park, Town Clash Over Development

Springdale Mayor Robert Ralston maneuvered his Ford LTD through the winding back roads of this labyrinth of sculpted, multicolored canyons and smugly shook his finger at a cluster of modest, boxy-looking houses for park employees.

“Did the park ask the town if they could build that?” demanded the 69-year-old mayor, peering out from beneath his royal-blue baseball cap at one of the prefabricated park dwellings. “They didn’t ask the town nothing. But they try and tell us what we can do.”

Ralston bitterly blames Zion National Park officials for stirring up a national dispute over a piece of private property that borders the park’s gates in tiny Springdale. Developers want to build a four-story, big-screen theater on the site--located across a river from the park’s largest campground--to feature a film about Zion.

If the theater is built, tourists could experience Zion’s soaring sandstone walls in air-conditioned comfort--without entering the park. “Vacations for Couch Potatoes” was how an article in a grocery store tabloid described the project.

To Ralston and other town leaders, the theater represents badly needed tax revenue for Springdale. To members of Congress, a national environmental group and actor-activist Robert Redford, the development project threatens to desecrate a national treasure.

But the feud here is over more than just the theater. It is a tug of war over the future of Springdale and other small “gateway” towns under pressure to cash in on soaring park visitation with increased commercial development.

“As visitation to parks continues to increase, we are seeing more and more commercial ventures to make a buck off the parks,” said Terri Martin, regional director of the Washington-based National Parks and Conservation Assn., a park watchdog group.

“These small rural towns are easy victims for big, million-dollar investors who often threaten to pack up their bags and go home if they don’t get exactly what they want.”

Northern California-based World Odyssey Inc. came to Springdale four years ago to look for a theater site. Kieth Merrill, an Oscar-winning filmmaker and a principal in the firm, had helped develop big-screen films for theaters outside the Grand Canyon, at Niagara Falls and at the Alamo.

He and his partners hoped that Zion would be the next of many more national parks to have one of these huge theaters. The developers already had an eye on West Yellowstone and had considered Yosemite as a possible location, rejecting it for the foreseeable future because of logistic problems.

The concept behind the theaters, according to World Odyssey Vice President Tim Kelly, is to provide visitors with an “extension of the (park) experience.” The 55-foot-high by 70-foot-wide screens “make you feel you are more than there.”

“There are certain areas of the park that are difficult to reach unless you are very athletic, and we’re going to bring them into the film,” said Kelly, vice president for development.

But the multimillion-dollar theater complex, as first envisioned by Odyssey, ran into immediate trouble. In addition to a 350-seat theater, the developer wanted to build a lodge with at least 120 rooms, substantially larger than any motel in town. The National Park Service said it was not opposed to such a project in Springdale; it just did not want it located next door.

Zion officials complained that the development would increase congestion at the park’s entrance, where long lines of cars back up for miles in the summer. A proposal to build the complex in a style that was supposed to resemble the surrounding canyons, complete with crags and curves, also triggered considerable dismay.

“It was different . . . abrasive,” said Larry Wiese, assistant Zion superintendent. “It looked very false.”

When Mark Austin, 39, who heads a local anti-development group, saw the plans, he “could not help thinking of Disneyland.”

The developers also wanted to remove a hill from the site. Steve Heaton, who owns the land and is a partner in the development, still cannot understand why there was so much fuss over the idea of leveling the sage-and-juniper-dotted hill.

“To me, it looks like a dumb hill,” said the jean-clad Utah businessman, a green cap shading his face from the bright morning sun. “I think it’s completely out of place.”

The developers made repeated concessions.

The building style that offended the Park Service and local activists was abandoned, and World Odyssey agreed to adopt the architectural motif of the National Park Service. The theater would be built with rock and dark wood. The proposed lodge would have 80 rooms, not 120, and the theater would be nestled into the base of the hill to mask its height.

But as word of the plans filtered out, thousands of letters from Zion lovers poured into the two-room Springdale town hall, the park’s headquarters and World Odyssey.

Nineteen members of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee wrote to Odyssey and complained that the development would “intrude on the majestic scenery of one of our nation’s most treasured national parks.”

Redford sent a note to Odyssey’s Merrill. “The light and noise generated by such a development is not conducive to such a serene location,” the actor wrote.

The pressure on Springdale to decide its future was intense. A community of 300, the 1-mile-wide by 5-mile-long town has been at a crossroads over development ever since Zion’s popularity began to rise a decade ago.

Dubbed “Yosemite in Technicolor” by its admirers, the park attracted 2.34 million visitors this year and is expected to lure more than 3 million a year during the next decade.

Even with the soaring park crowds, Springdale has retained its sleepy feeling. There are few sidewalks or paved roads. Only the small motels and gift shops advertising Indian goods betray its new status as a tourist destination. At night, the neon signs along the main street glow.

But if the theater is approved at the park’s entrance, it will “send a message to future developers that large-scale development is welcome in Springdale,” complained Louise Excell, 44, a former member of the town’s planning and zoning commission and a native of the town.

Fighting Excell over the theater are the mayor, town officials and development advocates. They want to develop more attractions for tourists and thus build a tax base that would pay for sidewalks and paved roads.

“A man has a right to do what he wants with his property” is their refrain, and it echoes powerfully through these canyons.

Town meetings are strained by the divisions over development. Shouting matches are prone to break out over zoning decisions, and a sheriff’s deputy has been installed to keep peace at Town Council sessions.

Excell accuses the mayor of trying to punish her for opposing development by challenging the liquor license for her parent’s motel and restaurant.

Ralston does not deny that he challenged the license but insists he has “no vendetta against anyone.” He complains that his critics reported him to authorities for digging behind his hillside trailer house on land that is endangered desert tortoise habitat.

On greeting a visitor for the first time, the white-haired mayor inquired: “Did you hear about me being in trouble with the town and the tortoise?”’

Some Odyssey representatives, frustrated by all the fuss, have threatened to abandon the theater project in Springdale if approval does not come soon. They blame environmentalists for stirring up all the trouble.

“Somebody has chosen this site, this project, to make a stand,” complains World Odyssey’s Kelly. “Why? I don’t know. Ask that environmental group.”

The answer, according to the National Parks and Conservation Assn., may be found by looking at other gateway communities.

The approach to Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a gaudy, neon-lit 15-mile commercial strip that includes a recreational theme park. Outside Rocky Mountain National Park is a huge water slide.

At West Yellowstone, a developer has proposed creating a grizzly bear theme park, complete with live bear exhibits, the big-screen theater and a luxury hotel.

“The American public is becoming increasingly turned off by gateway communities that have allowed development that either intrudes on park scenery or is simply tacky or over commercialized,” said the park association’s Martin.

So far, nobody has managed to stop the theater project here. Town officials say they expect to grant the developer a conditional-use permit within the next few weeks for a 12,000-square-foot theater and adjoining 12,000-square-foot retail complex.

Odyssey officials in turn have dropped their request for the lodge, at least for now. They have promised the Park Service to scour the town for an alternative site, even if they get the permit to develop by the park’s entrance.

The Park Service seems mollified by the developer’s pledges. “World Odyssey has been very upfront, and when they tell me they are going to continue to look for alternative sites, I have no reason not to believe them,” said Wiese.

But Heaton, one of the development partners, said recently that there was “zero chance” the company would chose another site. The Park Service, said town activist Excell, overestimates its influence.

If the developers persist in trying to build by the park, Congress probably will introduce legislation to buy the site, according to a staff member of the House Interior Committee.

Ralston is ready to wage battle with these “outsiders” from Congress.

“We just got through war in the Middle East and what was the reason for it?” he asked. “Outsiders. Outsiders jumped into Kuwait. And that’s what we’re looking at here. Outsiders telling the people of Springdale what to do.”

Researcher Ann Rovin in Denver contributed to this report.