By: cmac on 4/15/07
"Mrs. Ape, as was her invariable rule, took round the hat and collected nearly two pounds. 'Salvation doesn't do them the same good if they think its free' was her favourite axiom." (Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies)

By: bota on 4/15/07
Line this puppy up behind the baseball stadium and the NASCAR racetrack. All you have to do is imagine turning 840 into another Briley Parkway and this idea sounds dumb. But--- for a city that is struggling for an identity this would shift it a little more toward a blend of Clarksville and Pigeon Forge.

By: MyVoice on 4/15/07
What about them being exempt from taxes? Will that happen here?

TALLAHASSEE - A biblical theme park in Orlando where guests pay $30 admission to munch on "Goliath" burgers and explore reproductions of 2000-year-old tombs and temples could get a property tax exemption written into state law.

A Senate committee easily passed a bill that would grant theme parks "used to exhibit, illustrate, and interpret biblical manuscripts ... " an exemption from local property taxes, like churches, even though the parks charge money.

The legislation is designed to resolve a tax dispute between Holy Land Experience and the Orange County property appraiser, but legislative staffers say the exemption could encourage the development of other parks to take advantage of the tax break.

The 15-acre Orlando park recently won its challenge against Orange County, which has appealed the case. The nonprofit, which would owe about $300,000 in property taxes each year, argued that the park helps finance its Christian ministry.

But the property appraiser argues the nonprofit should pay taxes on the money-producing park, just like Disney World or Universal Orlando, with its pricey tickets and $5 parking fees.

Calls to Holy Land Experience were not returned.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, says the bill really only applies to Holy Land Experience and said it would be difficult for another park to meet the "stiffly worded" criteria.

Yet, when a Pensacola park dedicated to creationism learned of the Webster bill Tuesday it promptly sent an emissary to Webster's office to find out how it could qualify for the same tax break.

Dinosaur Adventure Land, devoted to demonstrating that the Bible proves dinosaurs and humans coexisted, displays pages from ancient Bibles and "biblical accounts of dinosaurs," said Creation Science Evangelism founder Kent Hovind, who also goes by "Dr. Dino."

Dinosaur Adventure Land is a nonprofit but is organized under a different section of the IRS code than Holy Land Experience. A director with Creation Science Evangelism said the group won't change its IRS designation, but will see about getting the Webster bill tweaked to include it too.

So far, there doesn't appear to be any organized opposition to the bill, which sailed through a Senate committee Tuesday with no debate. The bill has a House companion, which has yet to be heard in a committee.

Calls to theme park competitors Disney World and Busch Gardens befuddled spokesmen who said they hadn't heard of the bill.

However, Orange County Property Appraiser Bill Donegan said the bill smacks of tax abuse and wondered if it was discriminatory.

"There are churches out there that have bookstores and sell some Bibles and that's not what this is about, this is a theme park that charges $30 admission," said Donegan, who had been to the park. "This bill is taking a special interest and granting it an exemption in the state of Florida."

Two legal scholars said the bill probably could pass constitutional muster, despite its appearance of giving Legislative preference to the Bible and Christianity, as opposed to other religions.

"I'd give it a better than 50 percent chance (of surviving a challenge), but in the legal climate we're in, I wouldn't give it much more than that," said constitutional law professor Thomas C. Marks Jr. of Stetson University College of Law, who noted a plethora of recent lawsuits challenging the intermingling of church and state issues.

Florida's Constitution gives the Legislature broad authority to make all sorts of tax exemptions for "educational, literary, scientific, religious or charitable purposes."

So lawmakers could also carve out specific property tax exemptions for theme parks that display the Torah, the Vedas or the Koran.

And the director of Dinosaur World Adventure thinks they should.

"I think it should be a little more broad in scope and not even limit it to Christians," said Glen Stoll, director of ministries and property for Creation Science Evangelism. "That seems a little discriminatory."

Last week, when members of a tax revenue estimating conference took up Webster's bill, they discussed whether the legislation might encourage more biblical theme parks and drew up an analysis that estimated the law's "middle" impact could cost as much as $4.8-million a year.

After 10 minutes of discussion, they settled on saying the impact could not be determined, since they didn't know how many biblical theme parks exist now or how many might follow such a tax incentive.

By: jmrgn46 on 4/15/07
Save up!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Bluesman on 4/15/07
What was Pigeon Forge, before Dollywood? Look at the tax dollars that tourist bring in that does not have to come from property taxes. Lets hope that our leaders do not screw this up like they did the race track that is now in Wilson County instead of Rutherford!

By: TimeforJustice on 4/15/07
The difference here folks...Disney is in Orlando, Kings Island in Cincinnati, Six Flags over Georgia in Atlanta, and Kentucky Kingdom is in Louisville. All of these major parks are in major cities with large populations which feeds revenue. Pigeon Forge was a tourist attraction and brought in hundreds of thousands of people long before Dollywood ever thought of being. Murfreesboro has none of the above and to build an attraction that appeals to a few will not bring the masses the Chamber envisions. We will extend tax breaks to this operation all the way to bankruptcy court.

By: wanita on 4/15/07
I hope that city planners would take a long look at Visionland in Birmingham, AL. When Visionland was conceived it would seem this was something the city could use and would support. I do not know if they are currently or ever were running in the black. There may be good reason we no longer have an Opryland and this proposal needs very careful consideration.

By: The_Lorax on 4/15/07
Oh for Christ's sake. (Ha ha) What a stupid idea. We don't need to perpetuate the stereotype of Rutherford County being bible bangers any further, which is just what this park would do. But on the flip side, if we build a Jesus park, maybe we can built Satan camp, too.

By: nobody on 4/16/07
If they build this I'll definitely be moving out of the county. Build this monstrosity somewhere else please. If not my wife and I are gone.

By: constant on 4/16/07
"If you build it...they will come" whispered the voice in one of my favorite movies Field of Dreams. Of course most everyone thought the guy was crazy to plow up his corn field and build a base ball stadium. But this was a movie and with some movie magic people came from hundreds of miles around...

The thing is...THAT WAS THE MOVIES. The last thing we need is a Big Ugly Theme park in our back yards. I live in Blackman and what I was hoping for was to be REAL close to a big ass theme park. And to make it even better let us call it Bible Town USA. Are you kidding me??? I bet the developers have a chapter in their business plan titled "How to Make Money of Jesus Dolls"...Someone PLEASE shot me if we are dumb enough to allow this Rip-off USA theme park to be built.

By: GrumpaEd on 4/16/07
The county mayor is naive if he thinks the city will not annex the park. The economic boon will then go to the city rather than the county, assuming there is an economic boon.

As for the ethical question as to how this was presented, ethics were pushed aside. The press was not invited, the general public was not invited, and the meeting was held among elected officials of the city and county behind closed doors.

By: nobody on 4/16/07
GrumpaEd, speaking of ethics, perhaps its already time to fire up the Ethics Committee which the County just passed on Thursday (4/12).

By: peri_winkle on 4/16/07
The boon, if there is one, will be in the initial land deal and construction. And then in a few years, it will close down and sit there like the outlet mall did for years until one day we get the future equivalent of a call center, which despite its promises, brought jobs that on average pay less than the ones we already had. [And members of the IDB, which wrote the contract, can't get enough information out of Verizon to figure out whether it's complied with its end of the bargain. What do you suppose it means when a party to a contract withholds the information you need to figure out whether it has complied with the contract? Hmmm?]

BTW, I've got a bridge if you're interested.

By: gwiserka on 4/16/07
Wanita,
Excellent point about Visionland. The park has finally started to make money now that they rebranded it Alabama Adventure.

By: JC on 4/17/07
I for one think it is a good idea and would go. I just think that the developers and investors pay 100% of all costs and not the taxpayers. By the way, Opryland was profitable when they closed it. They misled everyone into thinking they were losing money so they could justify building a mall that they eventually sold their share of.

By: jacobifan on 4/17/07
Does anyone remember that Ned Flanders tried to do this on The Simpsons? I believe the place caught on fire and was totally demolished. Either way, it was a bad idea. Are we going to have an Allah park for the Muslims? And how about a Buddah park? Seems a little politically incorrect to me.

And, after all, who would want Rutherford County to do ANYTHING a person could view on a cartoon?

By: Hello-out-there on 4/17/07
What a potential embarrasement to Rutherford County and Murfreesboro. I for one do not want any of my tax dollars going to fund this train wreck of an idea.

By: Trvlace on 4/17/07
Totaly opposed to this idea for a theme for a park here in Rutherford County. I can see the Jesus Juice flowing now down in city hall, making the tax break parting of the green bank roll the frothing at the mouth developers see comming. Give us Music Country, something that is part of the area, not part of the bible. Oh brudda, tell them the people in MS might be interested, just south of Tunica...

By: spanky on 4/17/07
Tax them up one side and down the other. We need to make up for the other times, we got screwed...

By: les6216 on 4/17/07
What we don't need is an employer that offers hundreds of lower wage/ no health insurance jobs or lots of "part-time" positions where there are no benefits offered. While we have not been informed of the proposition, I would imagine that the set-up would be similar to Opryland. Seasonal employers often fall into this category and this is a major problem to me. I knew an individual who worked for Opryland as a seasonal entertainer (singer, dancer) and did not receive any health care benefits. This person had an auto accident, was hospitalized with multiple fractures--lost his job by the way--and then lost his apartment (no job, casts, crutches--no health insurance!) It seems that if a company is really intent on locating here, our city should require that at least 80% of the total number of employees have health care benefits, as well as a decent hourly wage. Our leaders' job is to encourage employers who will be good corporate citizens and provide fair compensation & benefits to our residents. We have something very valuable---great location, land, growing community---and we have the right to expect that anyone who wants to do business with our citizens should provide a good employment opportunity. Otherwise, we should just save our valuable land & location for a diffierent industry that provides for their workers.

By: steve5118 on 4/29/07
As a Christian, I am against it as I think it will trivialize the faith.

By: weeeezzll on 6/27/07
I've been out of town for a couple of months now working, but a friend of mine told me about this place. As an avid atheist, the idea of having a thumper park in my backyard makes me squirm. Of course if we are sure that it is able to sustain itself and thus provide tax revenue that benefits the city and county then I am all for it.

Of course if this place attempts to push pseudo-scientific creation science and becomes a spring board for bashing real scientific endeavors then you can expect to find me protesting in front of it.

By: johnsonje573 on 10/13/07
i am seriously disgusted with the people of rutherford county. it is not a shame to bring God into a community. a bible theme park would be great for children and people of all kinds. it would be an awesome way for people to learn more about the bible and our Creator. no stupid buddha made us, nor any other idols. God is the only maker and creator and we should be proud to have a park that represents where we truly came from...

By: blahguy on 6/10/08
Woah! Think of all of the traffic! We could never be able to go to work! I like the idea of having the park, but not in a small county like Rutherford or Wilson County. And think of all of the trees and property torn down!

By: sid on 9/25/08
Hi, perhaps soon we shall be able to project our beloved Jesus' survival from the cross and travel to India!
for your kind perusal:
http://www.alislam.org/topics/jesus/

love for all :)