(The Associated Press Writer circulated the following story by Bob Lewis on July 21.)
RICHMOND, Va. — Norfolk Southern became the first major corporate sponsor Wednesday of the nation’s 400th anniversary celebration of the founding of America’s first permanent English colony at Jamestown.
The railroad giant, based in Norfolk, will donate $3 million to the 20-month celebration that will last through 2007, said Hank Wolf, Norfolk Southern’s vice chairman and chief financial officer, at a state Capitol news conference.
“Jamestown 2007 is a commemoration of the early foundation of our great nation, where the first stirrings of individual liberty and representative government were seedlings for democracy,” Wolf said. “We at Norfolk Southern hope that others in the business community … will join us as Founding Colony sponsors.”
Norfolk Southern’s commitment is a major private endowment toward the $25 million that Jamestown 2007’s president and executive producer, Willie Cone, estimated the public-private partnership will need to stage the series of national and international events.
“There are eight or 10 others (major corporations) that are in various stages of discussion–some of the biggest names in the country. The deals are not closed yet, but they are listening and listening at very high levels,” Cone said.
Gov. Mark R. Warner, who is helping to broker some of the donations, said the event will be “the defining event of the first half of the 21st century,” comparable to the bicentennial celebration of American independence in 1976.
“It’s going to be one of those events that not only captures the imagination of the nation, but the world,” Warner said.
The event will involve not only Virginia’s Peninsula, where remnants of the original Jamestown settlement have been unearthed abutting a wide swath of the James River, but Norfolk and other Hampton Roads communities and Richmond.
Planners are concerned about routing crowds from around the world to Jamestown in 2007 down a mostly four-lane Interstate 64 that is frequently clogged with vacationers bound for Colonial Williamsburg and theme parks nearby or Virginia Beach and North Carolina’s Outer Banks farther to the east.
“Well, at least there will be a good comfort station along the way,” Warner joked as he pondered how Virginia’s growing backlog of unfunded transportation needs could affect the quadricentennial.
Virginia’s transportation budget is so cash-starved that the state’s long-range roadbuilding plan focuses almost solely on maintenance.
Robert E. Martinez, transportation secretary under Gov. George Allen and now a Norfolk Southern executive, said recent road construction in the area should ease the congestion. Warner said shuttle buses to carry tourists from Richmond more than 50 miles southeast to Jamestown and back would also reduce traffic.
Richmond’s city manager, Calvin Jamison, said the city will be a major staging area for Jamestown-bound travelers. He said discussions are under way for James River shuttles that would depart the Port of Richmond and deposit visitors in Jamestown just as the first English settlers were on May 13, 1607: by boat.