Look Away, Dixieland

[December 10th, 2008]

There’s bad news from a distant front for Portland’s Pamplin Foundation.

The foundation is making sharp cutbacks at its signature property—Pamplin Historical Park & the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Va.

Over the past 17 years, tax records show the Pamplins—Robert Sr., the former CEO of Georgia Pacific, and his son Bob Jr., owner of Ross Island Sand & Gravel Co., Columbia Empire Farms, the Portland Tribune, KPAM radio (860 AM), and the suburban Community Newspapers Inc.—have spent $35.5 million on land, buildings and exhibits at the 422-acre theme park in southeastern Virginia. The facility celebrates the family’s Southern ancestry and the losing side in the Civil War.

Like many historical museums, the park, which is open daily and charges $15 for public admission ($9 for kids), has struggled to sell enough tickets to cover its overhead. Pamplin Park CEO A. Wilson Greene told WW via email that the park has covered 34 percent to 41 percent of operating costs since 1999, which Greene says is above the industry average of 23 percent. The Pamplin Foundation fills the gap; the park gets no government support.

On Dec. 1, Greene announced the park would no longer be open to the public except by appointment.

“The severe economic downturn has undercut the ability of the Pamplin Foundation to support the park at current levels,” Greene said. “We deeply regret the necessity to curtail normal daily operations to meet this new fiscal reality.”

None of the park’s four museums will be altered, and the park will continue to maintain its four historic structures, 10 reconstructed buildings and three miles of interpretive trails. “There will be no changes to the park’s extensive artifact collection,” added Greene.

But the closure to the public will result in the layoff of “the majority of our full-time staff,” Greene says. He declined to say exactly how many employees will be gone, but his memo went to 36 employee email addresses.

A decade ago, Forbes magazine pegged the Pamplin fortune at $560 million.

But given the Pamplin Foundation’s financial decline as told by tax returns and the collapse of the U.S. textile industry—in which the family invested heavily—it’s unsurprising Pamplin is cutting back at the park.

The decline in the value of the family firm, R.B. Pamplin Corporation, can be traced from April 1998, when Pamplin Jr. donated 3,400 shares of stock to the Pamplin Foundation (the entity that pays for the historical park).

The vast majority of Pamplin Corp.’s business was textile manufacturing, done by its South Carolina-based Mount Vernon Mills subsidiary. Mount Vernon is one of the country’s largest denim manufacturers and also makes fabric for the Carhartt work-clothing company.

In 1998, the value of the donated Pamplin Corp. shares was just over $45 million, or $13,307 per share, according to the foundation’s tax return. But like other domestic textile producers, Mount Vernon Mills struggled with foreign competition the past decade, closing three of its 17 plants.

In the Pamplin Foundation’s most recent tax return, filed May 19, 2008, the remaining Pamplin Corp. stock held by the foundation is valued at only $1 per share. While that implies Pamplin Corp. has lost virtually all of its value in the past decade, it doesn’t mean Trib owner Bob Pamplin Jr. is broke. In fact, he was flush enough to have contributed $2.5 million in cash to the family foundation last year. Pamplin and his staff did not return calls.

Difficult conditions at Pamplin Corp. that are trickling down to Pamplin Park cannot be good news for his Portland media operations, which have struggled with a difficult advertising market.

However, Steve Clark, president of the Tribune and Community Newspapers, insists difficulties at the historical park have no effect on Pamplin’s local operations.

“That situation has absolutely no impact on us,” Clark says.