House Subcommittees Dissecting National Park Service, Searching For Solutions

How can concessions agreements with the National Park Service be improved? What sort of innovations should the Park Service consider for the next 100 years? Those topics will be dissected by two House of Representatives subcommittees this week. The subjects are not new by any stretch. Concessions operations in the National Park System have been scrutinized, kicked around, and questioned for some time. Back in 1998 Congress thought it had fixed the approach to managing long-term contracts in the parks, but problems that have surfaced in the past year have led some members of Congress to voice concern that the contracting system is ineffective. The poster child, if you will, of the concessions program's ills is the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, where the park's handling of the massive package of lodging, dining, and activities concessions has generated lawsuits and hard feelings. At issue was the decision by the Park Service to split the South Rim's concessions package in two; Delaware North Cos. received one half, while the winner of the larger, second half remains up in the air. The sheer magnitude of that half, which includes the El Tovar Hotel, the Bright Angel Lodge, and Phantom Ranch, has created a nightmare of sorts. Driving the problem was that Xanterra Parks & Resorts, which has held the contract for decades, had amassed nearly $200 million in improvements to the lodgings and restaurants; if Xanterra didn't have the contract renewed, it would be entitled to that sum from its successor. The Park Service borrowed about $100 million from across the park system to, in effect, buy down that number to a somewhat more reasonable $100 million with hopes the contract would generate competition among companies that could manage to both assume that debt and operate such a large operation...more