Fairmont Times-West
Virginian
29 October 2006
By Mary Wade Burnside
FAIRMONT- If all goes well, in about two years Fairmont area residents and visitors will be able to lollygag in a lazy river, hang 10 on a curling wave, cascade down a variety of water slides, and be tossed and turned on an aquatic roller coaster.
Volcano Island Resort, an indoor/outdoor waterpark, along with a hotel and conference center, is only the first, $87-million phase of an indoor waterpark and resort that also eventually could house as many as 20 movie screens and a variety of retail stores and restaurants.
The resort will be built, with groundbreaking slated for April 2007, at the 107-acre Fairmont Coke Works/Sharon Steel industrial site, off Interstate 79 at exit 139 near Pricketts Fort.
"I don't know of anything else like this in the state," Fairmont City Manager Bruce McDaniel said Friday.
Three Morgantown businessmen have created The Water Works LLC and will infuse $87 million into the project, said Richard Coleman, senior vice president of development and operations for Erie, Pa.-based American Resort Management.
"They are fun-loving guys," Coleman said. "This is their first venture into the amusement industry, and this is also the largest project they've tackled. But they have a good, proven track record with the developments they've been involved with."
David Rees owns the Vintage Room and Bent Willey's in Morgantown, while Michael Vecchio and Mark Tampoya are both in the real estate business. The trio referred questions to Coleman.
American Resort Management will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the hotel, conference center and waterpark portion of the project that is projected to create 350 permanent and 125 seasonal jobs.
Eventually, the ambitious project is expected to reach into the hundreds of millions of development dollars as well as make Fairmont a destination for both vacationers and conference attendees who can bring along their families for a few days of fun and relaxation.
"What we have found is that stand-alone indoor water parks in areas where there is not complimentary attractions and amenities don't do as well," said David Sangree, president of Cleveland-based Hotel and Leisure Advisors, a hospitality consulting firm that specializes in waterparks and other leisure activities.
"From what I understand, this is a pretty cool indoor waterpark, and by adding a conference center and a number of other things, that's going to help make it more possible."
Phase one, according to plans provided by the developers, has a projected start date of April 2007 and an opening date of November 2008. In addition to the 50,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, an outdoor waterpark and a 300-room hotel, plans call for a 60-slip marina, a recreational lake and an RV park.
Plans for phase two include an 80,000-square-foot retail space, a multiple-screen movie theater and restaurants.
"Part of David (Sangree's) studies says that this type of project needs to be very ambitious to work," Coleman said. "It needs all those components. You can't just do a waterpark and hotel. You need the conference center. You can't just do the conference center and hotel. You need the waterpark. All those components were needed to make it feasible."
Both McDaniel and City Planner Jay Rogers noted that a retail developer would be brought on board to attract a host of shops and restaurants. The process is not far enough along to release potential store or restaurant names, but Rogers emphasized that developers want higher-end, sit-down restaurants as opposed to fast-food chains.
"We're obviously looking for types of restaurants you see at destination resort areas," Rogers said. "They may be chains; they may be start-ups; they may be franchises."
Rogers referenced Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, which offers restaurants such as P.F. Chang's China Bistro and The Melting Pot, both considered higher-end chains.
"Would you love to have a P.F. Chang's? Sure. Would you take a Smokey Bones? Would you take things like that? Yes," Rogers said. "Will we be able to attract them? That's something that the retail developer that comes on board with this project will have to tell us."
The restaurants and retail portion of the development may or may not dovetail with the waterpark.
"The only thing that is certain is phase one," McDaniel said. "I think what we hope is when we go to the construction phase, some of the retail and restaurants will come on board. But they're not going to be willing to do that until they see something."
"Mixed-use retail" has become more and more popular across the country and has been paired increasingly with waterparks, noted Aleatha Ezra, director of park membership development for the World Waterpark Association in Overland Park, Kansas.
"It's not brand-spanking new, but that's an area people are focusing on," she said.
Other current projects sound similar, she said, including a $4 billion waterpark under construction in the Kansas City area near the World Waterpark Association.
"I think that the more options you give, the better off you are entertaining every type of family," she said. "Waterparks are smart to realize that a family can include a grandmother in her 70s down to a 3-year-old, and what do you do to meet those varying ages and interests?"
Waterparks in the United States receive about 70 million visits in a given year, Ezra said, and waterparks are seeing a 3 percent to 5 percent annual growth in that number. Currently, there are about 1,000 waterparks in the country, and about 100 of them are indoor waterparks, although that's a growing number.
"We know of around 190 (additional) projects in varying stages of development on the horizon for this year and the next year or two," Ezra said. "It's a fluctuating number."
The average stay at a waterpark resort is 1.7 days, Coleman said. "That means you've got some people staying one night, and others staying three nights," he said.
An indoor waterpark allows the resort to capture vacationers not only during the summer, Coleman noted, but also at other times, such as Christmas and spring break.
A couple of manufacturers will provide attractions for the waterpark, Coleman said. Plans include a water roller coaster, in which a customer in a raft would leave a platform, be shot up 20, 30 or 40 feet, crest up over a hill and cascade through the rest of the ride.
Also, a surfing machine will shoot a large volume of water over a rubber membrane, creating a wave that will allow a patron to ride on a boogie board.
"It is absolutely heart-stopping," Coleman said. "It's one of those attractions that's as much fun to watch as try."
Customers in a three-hour or less driving range will be targeted with marketing, Coleman said. Those cities include Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio and Harrisburg, Pa.
Additionally, as long as the hotel has not reached capacity on a given day, area residents will be able to buy a pass to use the waterpark, he noted.
Prices have not been set, and flat-surface parking will be available.
The waterpark will require 18,000 to 26,000 gallons of water a day, Coleman said.
That will not be a problem, noted McDaniel, as a 16-inch diameter transmission line runs near the site. The city currently pumps 5 1/2 million gallons of water a day and can go up to 10 million gallons without any adjustments, he said.
Road upgrades will be needed in the area, and Rogers and McDaniels have been communicating with the state Division of Highways.
Gov. Joe Manchin's office and the West Virginia Development Office have been involved with the process, said spokeswoman Lara Ramsburg.
"We've already been in discussion about road needs with regard to making this project a reality," Ramsburg said. "We'll continue to work with them as this project progresses.
"The $87 million investment in our economy is something we should all be excited about, and we're anxious for it to become a reality."
E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.
http://www.volcanoislandresort.com/