Burbank Firm Has Dream for King Center

A controversial plan to memorialize Martin Luther King Jr. is raising questions about the role entertainment interests play in interpreting history. While the debate is as old as Hollywood itself, it is taking on added dimensions as technological advances provide new tools for retelling the past.

Imagine this: an animatronic version of the slain civil rights leader delivering his famous “I Have a Dream” speech several times a day to tourists from around the world; visitors walking through an animated re-creation of the legendary March on Washington; schoolchildren seeing their digitized images “morph,” or transform, into another race.

All this could be part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Dream Center, a daring concept envisioned by King’s heirs and the Burbank design firm they’ve hired, BRC Imagination Arts.

The center would be part virtual-reality theme park, part museum, part interactive educational facility. It would be based in Atlanta, probably in the historic district that is home to King’s birthplace, crypt and a more traditional visitors’ center.

The King family and BRC believe this new center should make a bold statement about the life of King. At the same time, they say, it should be accessible to a new generation more accustomed to technological wizardry than static museum displays.

But whether the center will ever get off the ground remains to be seen. Financing has yet to be arranged for the estimated $20 million to $40 million to build the center. Land costs would be in addition to that, and the King family is still looking for a parcel. The federal Park Service, which operates the King sites in the historic district, has battled with the family over the glitzy proposed center. And BRC, which has produced everything from theme park attractions to Oscar-nominated short films, acknowledges that controversy over their plan is inevitable.

“It’s a frightening project to work on, because the legacy is so strong and so powerful and so important,” said Pat Scanlon, a BRC executive vice president in charge of the King project. Partly for that reason, “We may never see another day of this project.”

Indeed, some editorials in the Atlanta media have derided the proposed center as a “Civil Rights Disneyland.” Others have accused the King family of commercializing the memory of a revered public figure.

“I’m skeptical” of the project, said Glenn T. Eskew, an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University who is writing a book chronicling the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Ala.

Eskew finds it problematic whenever entertainment mingles with historical interpretation. He noted that similar concerns helped derail Disney’s proposed historical theme park in Virginia last year.

“It’s not that I want everything to be dry,” he said. “But if you turn it into another kind of entertainment, how far is this removed from a Hollywood film?”

Supporters of the project are equally ardent.

Atlanta City Councilman Michael Julian Bond calls the idea to employ Hollywood-style storytelling techniques in the center a stroke of genius.

The King memorial site in the historic district is “pitifully small and really inadequate,” said Bond. “You don’t want just another museum where people come and look and leave, and don’t take any of the experience away with them.”

The King Dream Center is the brainchild of Dexter Scott King, 34. The third of Martin Luther King’s four children and a former music producer, he heads the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

The latter nonprofit institution was opened in 1982 by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and is dedicated to perpetuating King’s philosophies and teachings. It is in the historic district--part of the Sweet Auburn neighborhood on the eastern edge of downtown Atlanta--next to the two-story frame house where King was born and the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he was pastor.

Dexter King and his old college friend Phillip Jones, who manages the King estate, first met with BRC officials about a year ago. Founded in 1981 by Disney Imagineering veteran Bob Rogers, BRC has remained a small firm with about $10 million in annual revenue. But it has won acclaim for its work on the visitors center at the Space Center in Houston, award-winning short films and world’s fair exhibits.

Last summer, BRC completed a preliminary feasibility study for the King Dream Center.

As envisioned, the 200,000-square-foot center would feature walk-through exhibits displaying the major events that shaped King’s life.

In one exhibit, for instance, visitors might see a re-enactment of King writing his famous “Letter From Birmingham City Jail,” which appealed to the collective conscience of the nation to end racial enmity. Like a theme park “dark ride”--but without a motorized conveyance system--the exhibit would use dramatic lighting and possibly an animatronic re-creation of King as he sat in the dingy cell writing the letter.

Another segment might use film, animatronics, special effects and sound effects to simulate the infamous 1963 incident in Birmingham when police turned their dogs and fire hoses on marching schoolchildren. The ensuing public outrage helped draw 200,000 people to march on Washington, where King delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

Scanlon has a few ideas for re-creating the legendary speech. Visitors might walk behind “King” as he delivers his impassioned oration, and “see” what King saw as he looked out over the crowd. Or, a theater setting could be used--not unlike Disneyland’s “Great Moments With Lincoln.”

A large interactive area is also envisioned. One exhibit might use digital imagery to show people what they would look like as another race. Another idea is to allow visitors to ask questions on weighty topics, which would be answered by recorded snippets from speeches by such leaders as President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The center would be decidedly short on such standard museum fare as photographic displays accompanied by artifacts and placards explaining their historical significance. Some artifacts would be used, but only as props in the animated scenes.

While acknowledging that their approach is considered heresy in certain circles, Rogers and Scanlon argue that this is the direction that museums are headed. If they do their homework, they say, they can preserve the integrity of King’s legacy while creating a more lasting and vivid experience than a conventional museum.

The center should have “the respectfulness of what museums are about, in terms of educational value,” Scanlon said. But it also should have “the energy of the kind of theatrical presentations that you’d find either in world’s fairs or in some theme parks.”

But for now, the King Dream Center is still just a dream.

Earlier this year, the New York investment firm Oppenheimer & Co. issued a “letter of inducement” to encourage investment in the project, but an Oppenheimer spokesman said the company has had no further involvement. Dexter King continues to seek financial backing, and has yet to identify publicly a prospective location for the center.

Meanwhile, the federal government is well along with its redevelopment of the historic district--a project that earlier led to friction with the King family.

The district is currently the park service’s third most popular attraction--after the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell--with more than 3 million visitors annually. But the neighborhood has been ill-equipped to handle the crowds, as such basic facilities as public restrooms are lacking. And with the Olympics coming to the city next summer, the district is expected to be inundated with more than 100,000 visitors a day.

So two years ago, Congress approved $11.8 million to help upgrade the area and convert a community center into a visitors center that would display photographs and artifacts and serve as a focal point for the tourist throngs.

By last year, however, a bitter dispute had arisen between the King family--which had wanted the community center property for its own development--and the park service, which the family accused of trying to usurp its role as keeper of the King legacy.

The Kings made up with the park service last spring, and so far the detente has held. Nonetheless, some in the community remain bitter about the rift, and are a long way from embracing the King family’s proposed development.

“We coexist” with the family-run King Center, said Mtamanika Youngblood, executive director of the nonprofit Historic District Development Corp. But she is skeptical that the King family will seek community input for its plans. “They have not done that in the past. That’s not their modus operandi.”

BRC’s Scanlon admits that winning the public relations battle won’t be easy. But he also contends that BRC has become adept at achieving consensus among groups with vested interests in its projects.

For its Mystery Lodge attraction at Knott’s Berry Farm, for example, BRC solicited advice from various tribes for its portrayal of Native American culture. And NASA was so pleased with BRC’s work at the Space Center Houston visitors center that it hired the company to produce the Apollo-Saturn V exhibit at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Despite the obstacles facing the King Dream Center, Scanlon and Rogers remain convinced of the project’s viability.

Rogers recalled sitting outside the King crypt and watching as a man with two small children drove up, got out and looked around. “It was a pilgrimage to go to this man’s crypt. But I think they wanted more,” he said.

“We’re giving them, I hope, the tools by which to pass the legacy on and keep it alive.”