Bible Park USA update (and FBAA quote)

by GETAHN WARDand BOB SMIETANA

Rutherford County residents will get a closer look at plans for a proposed biblical park starting Monday, as developers try to ease neighbors' concerns about traffic jams and tout their spiritual attraction near Murfreesboro as a quiet place that would create jobs and show how Jesus lived.
Plans for the $175 million Bible Park USA, proposed for the Blackman community on the northwest side of Murfreesboro, are to be submitted to the Rutherford County Planning Department this week.

Residents will get more details at three information sessions planned Monday and Tuesday in La Vergne, Smyrna and Murfreesboro.

Armon Bar-Tur, managing director of sponsor SafeHarbor Holding LLC, said the park wouldn't have any "holy roller coasters" or "log flumes to hell."
"It's not a crazy amusement park," he said. "It's not Six Flags over Jesus."
But the park, which developers say could draw 1.3 million visitors a year to a site northwest of Murfreesboro, would feature Colonial Williamsburg-like re-enactments of ancient life, theaters for Broadway-sized biblical musicals and a Disney-like "Bible Fly-Through Ride," using an IMAX screen and seats suspended in mid-air to give visitors an overview of the Holy Lands.
Some residents in the fast-growing Murfreesboro suburbs are worried a big theme park would snarl highways with traffic and disturb neighbors.
"It's a tight fit trying to squeeze this into a residential area with not enough elbow room for them," said John L. Batey, whose 400-acre farm is roughly half a mile from the proposed site. "I don't think it's going to be successful."

Christian attractions grow Amy-Jill Levine, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, said a Bible park could increase interest "not only in the Bible, but also in history and archaeology."
"The park has the opportunity of presenting what life was like in biblical times and thus of providing a context for the familiar stories," said Levine, a member of the park's academic advisory council.

Reagan Hillier of the Faith Based Amusement Association said biblical projects are the wave of the future. He pointed to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which opened last May, as an example along with a rural Pennsylvania Sight and Sound Theater that packs in 800,000 visitors a year to see epic musicals with religious themes. Such attractions typically don't "entice people by how fast they can go on a ride," Hillier said. Instead, they engage visitors who want a spiritual experience with "sight, sound and emotion."

Area residents who got sneak peeks at the latest ideas from developers, including the use of a new interchange to keep traffic off local roads, say they're not as worried about possible congestion.

Joi Sherrill, who lives about five miles from the proposed site, said she feels more positive after seeing designs to prevent bright lights and noise as well as plans for a buffer between the park and the surrounding neighborhood.
"If what the developers are telling us is correct, the park itself will be very non-invasive to the community," she said. Linda Moore, another Blackman resident, said after seeing some of the specifics she expects less of an impact than she initially thought. She remains concerned about prospects for the park's success but doesn't want to see a bunch of new homes built on the site either.

Rev. Michael O'Bannon, pastor of the 2,500-member First United Methodist Church in Murfreesboro, said he met with Bar-Tur "a couple of times" and passed along suggestions to developers. He believes church members and Sunday school classes would visit the park.
"It's a place where you could take kids from vacation bible school," O'Bannon said.
Economic development officials in the area seem to back the park as a way to boost tax revenues and create jobs.

"Anytime you have a growing community such as Rutherford, we're going to have to change in some ways," said Holly Sears, vice president of economic development with the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce. "Whatever does happen, land adjacent to the interstate is not going to stay farmland," she said. "That's the reality of the situation." O'Bannon said that he won't take a stance on whether it should be built because he has "church members on both sides" of the debate over the park's value. Besides, he added, First Methodist has more important things to do. "We have a ministry to poor and homeless people in the community," he said. "That's more of what we are about than taking a stand on a Bible park."