Source: CNN News

A tourist photographs an alien outside a t-shirt and souvenir shop in Roswell, New Mexico.

Kim Elliot, the Parks and Recreation director for the city, foresees new business building up around the proposed theme park, providing increased tourist attractions and an inevitable boost to the local economy.

“The out-of-town visitors would also stay, eat and play in Roswell, all of which would help the economy,” she said.

The proposal of the UFO theme park is seen as a positive incentive for tourism, an economic stimulus for local business overall.

“The theme park would act as a routine draw to Roswell from communities as far as 500 miles away,” Montgomery said. “This would provide existing businesses a much larger consumer base to sell their goods and services to.”

Montgomery added, “Roswell now has a tourism sector of the economy that is the fourth-largest sector of the overall economy that currently employs around 3,000 people city-wide.”

The city of Roswell is a very unique section of the earth that has become a “household name,” according to Montgomery.

He does not view the theme park as necessary to the return of tourists to Roswell, but this “one-of-a-kind attraction will be changing with the addition of new rides and attractions all the time to keep people coming back year after year for decades to come.”

Published on: 2007-06-07