Raft Firm Stops Trips on James: Company Says It Can’t Get the Kind of Contract It Needs From the City
By Michael Martz, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Jan. 3–Richmond Raft Company won’t be riding people through the James River rapids in Richmond anymore.
The company is giving up its rafting business in Richmond after 18 years because it can’t get the kind of contract it says it needs from the city.
A notice on Richmond Raft’s Web site said, “We have been forced to cease our rafting operations in Richmond due to a new contract offered by the city . . . that is inadequate to support a professional operation.”
The company’s owner, Michael “Buzz” Kraft, tried unsuccessfully to open negotiations with Richmond’s parks and recreation officials over a new contract, the notice said. “To date, no one from the city has been willing to discuss or negotiate the terms and conditions the city is currently seeking.”
The city’s relationship with Richmond Raft soured last year after the company won a court battle to enforce a contract that gave it rafting rights to the James River in Richmond. The contract, signed in 2001 during the term of Mayor Timothy M. Kaine, now governor, required the city to make major changes to James River Park if other parties were allowed to put in and take out rafts there.
After a Richmond judge ruled for the company in the contract dispute, nonprofit operations had to stop using inflatable devices on the river. The park was forced to stop conducting weekend tubing trips on the James in exchange for donations.
Mayor L. Douglas Wilder distanced himself from the contract, which expired in November. The city has proposed replacing the old contract with a permitting process that would open the river to multiple users for rafting.
“There wouldn’t be a contract as such, as there has been,” Linwood Norman, the mayor’s press secretary, said yesterday. “This would be a more equitable way to allow people to provide recreational opportunities on the James River.”
Richmond Raft said the contract impasse cost 60 employees their jobs. The company had offered guided whitewater and river rafting tours over a 7-mile stretch of the James that drops 105 feet at the state’s geographic fall line. The rapids, ranging up to Class 4, has been called the best urban whitewater in the United States.
“Unfortunately we are no longer able to offer you rafting activities in Richmond,” the company’s Web site says.
Contact staff writer Michael Martz at mmartz@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6964.
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.