Related facilities will include a large format cinema showing a film about the Gettysburg Campaign as well as a licensed battlefield guide and tour center, food service, and a Civil War arts and crafts gallery.

The park’s current visitor and cyclorama centers will be demolished, enabling restoration of Ziegler’s Grove and the High Water Mark of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Who Will Construct and Manage the Visitor Center?

A new, non-profit corporation will be created to construct and manage the Visitor Center. The project team to accomplish this task will include the following members:

• Kinsley Equities and Kinsley Construction, Inc. –finance, development, construction
• Gettysburg Tours, Inc. – tour and transportation services
• Zeidler, Roberts Partnership, Inc. – architectural and project design
• John L. Adams and Company – fund-raising

Key issues associated with the site and building proposals which have been identified in initial meetings include the following:

• Understanding and protecting any significant cultural and natural resources on the site.
• Local and regional traffic impacts on Hunt Avenue and adjacent streets.
• Economic impacts on the borough and region of moving the visitor center to this site.
• Development pressures on undeveloped tracts along Baltimore Pike.
• Visual impacts of the new facility on key interpreted sites along Cemetery Ridge and Culp’s Hill.

Ownership
The Kinsley team will form a non-profit corporation in cooperation with NPS. The facility will be owned and operated by the non-profit until the commercial loan is retired - once loans are paid back, the entire facility and the land will be donated to NPS. While it is operated by the non-profit, any excess in rents over the annual operating and maintenance costs of the facility will be donated by the non-profit to NPS.

Funding
The $40.4 million needed to acquire the land and build the building will come from a combination of commercial loans, grants and non-profit fundraising. The proposal suggested that approximately $22 million be raised through grants and non-profit fundraising to cover the costs of most of the NPS facilities. The balance was proposed to be raised. The balance was proposed to be raised through non-recourse commercial loans. No funding from NPS will be needed to acquire the land or construct the facility.

The operation and maintenance of the facility will be funded through the leasing of space to long term tenants. The proposal suggests that the non-profit might raise additional endowment funds to help NPS lower its costs of operation and maintenance, once the funds to build it have been raised.

Consideration is being given to questions about the scale of private fund-raising, including whether the project could be feasible without related uses.

Operation and Maintenance
The proposal does not require that a fee be charged to visitors for entrance to the visitor center and museum. Revenue to pay for NPS’ interpretive and curatorial personnel and NPS’ share of the costs of operation and maintenance would be generated through a continuation of the park’s current interpretive fees (for the electric map and cyclorama program). Other revenue would be generated from the operation of the National Geographic film, the tour center and other facilities, and parking fees.

NPS will pay rent to the non-profit foundation to cover the cost of operation and maintenance of the museum and cyclorama center. Other tenants will pay rent designed to cover the amortization of the commercial loans and the costs of operation and maintenance.

Related Facilities
Related (non-NPS) facilities which were incorporated into the Kinsley proposal included the large-format theater, the Licensed Battlefield Guides and tour center, food service, and the Civil War Arts and Crafts Gallery. The proposal describes the food service as a family-oriented cafeteria and a casual restaurant with seating. The tour center is a bus and trolley terminal, accessed from the retail portion of the facility, for departure and arrival or battlefield tour passengers, including those from Gettysburg Tours and other local and out-of-town arriving buses.