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Fredericksburg has the 'product'; what it needs is salesmanship

October 29, 2002 1:01 am

FREDERICKSBURG needs a new approach to tourism and economic development. Our local economic prosperity can be attributed almost entirely to a single retail development, and the otherwise healthy capacity to which our area hotels are filled can be credited to interstate traffic, not tourists. We are "prospering" far beneath our potential.

Tourism and economic development go hand in hand. By employing an effective salesperson who devoted most of his (or her) time to tourism--perhaps in a ratio of 70 percent tourism to 30 percent economic development--we wouldn't have to search for a world-class tourism guru or a regional solution. Fredericksburg simply needs to start advertising in an aggressive and more focused manner.

Fredericksburg remains in a perpetual state of partial revitalization, standing on a whale and fishing for minnows. Our city is home to nothing short of world-class, destination-worthy attractions that should be teeming with tourists and filling our municipal coffers. The idea that Fredericksburg needs anything else to become a destination is ludicrous.

Aggressively promoted, our Civil War attractions alone should draw visitors enough to generate massive income. Our George Washington family attractions and remarkable Colonial history (currently all but ignored) should be generating enough revenue to support any city our size.

By osmosis, tourism is economic development. The biggest and most immediate beneficiaries of an aggressively promoted Fredericksburg would be the counties of Stafford and Spotsylvania. Some of the main "Fredericksburg" attractions are located in these two counties, and if local hotels begin to add real tourism business, they will soon be overrun and sending our visitors all the way to Dale City.

With little undeveloped property within our city limits, and with the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance and the Industrial Development Authority established to fill a major role in economic development, a city director could very well focus on one target. The thousands of associations and smaller government-related offices with higher-paying jobs could be, and ought to be, targeted assiduously for relocation to Fredericksburg.

Such businesses are smaller and could fit within our existing infrastructure. Nearly all would maintain the needed proximity to Washington via Interstate 95 or a Virginia Railway Express train ride to Union Station. Here, they would pay fewer and lower taxes. Efforts to restore neglected properties would follow to meet new office-space demands. By sheer statistical probabilities, if all those association-type businesses were courted, some would come.

These same such businesses also carry great tourism potential. They should be aggressively lobbied to bring their retreats and motivational getaways to Fredericksburg; we could accommodate groups immediately while creating more facilities. Where else to have a "George Washington Leadership Retreat" for representatives of the National Association of Anything?

The city's director should also serve as an established liaison to congressional and state officials in a concerted effort to secure government grants and contracts on behalf of area (city and county) businesses. At present, this door of opportunity is hardly cracked.

For all practical purposes, Fredericksburg has yet to mount an effective advertising campaign. Promoting Fredericksburg should be like shooting fish in a barrel. Aggressive advertising is all that is needed.

Take Wall, S.D. As Fredericksburg is to D.C., Wall is about an hour from one of our nation's biggest tourist attractions, Mount Rushmore. Unlike Fredericksburg, Wall was never home to a Founding Father, no Civil War battles were ever fought near Wall, and Wall did not even exist during the Colonial period. Yet with a population of fewer than 900 people, Wall attracts about 20,000 tourists per day during the summer months.

Surely, you say, they must have something extraordinary to attract that many tourists. Wall's extraordinary "attraction" is a kitsch drug store that offers free water. As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up.

Fredericksburg's attractions command a higher caliber visitor than Wall, but Wall's success proves that aggressive advertising works. And it just so happens, Fredericksburg is filled with the sort of attractions that attract most visitors to Virginia.

According to the Preservation Alliance of Virginia, over 70 percent of all first-time visitors come to see historic sights. Historic visitors outnumber all others on repeat visits and outspend other visitors by more than 2 times. Historic visitors visit twice as many sites and stay, on average, nearly 1 nights longer than other types. A quarter of all Virginia visitors stop at Civil War sites and are among the highest daily spenders of all visitors. America's "most historic city" watches from the sidelines.

Advertising should be multifaceted and concentrated heavily upon radio and television, especially within the Washington Metro and Mid-Atlantic regions. Spending a half-million dollars to make three commercials that will see only a few weeks of airtime gains us little. Just as many commercials can be made, and five times as much airtime can be bought, for a mere fraction of what was recently spent.

WTOP radio, for example, is one of the most listened-to stations in the entire Mid-Atlantic. That is why you hear tourism commercials for Virginia and other states when listening to the station. Its million listeners per week ought to be hearing about George Washington's hometown.

While smart and aggressive advertising will draw an immediate response, much more can be done. A representative of our city should be pounding down state-government doors in Richmond until we get some brown signs on Interstate 95 directing traffic toward "Historic Fredericksburg." William Street should be changed to two-way to make downtown more accessible.

Also, bids for construction of a historically appropriate and strategically placed downtown parking deck should be sought now. This facility would get the attention of parties interested in building a downtown hotel and/or attracting major draws that thrive in other historical downtowns, such as the Banana Republics in both Alexandria and Annapolis.

Fredericksburg should be hosting and promoting events every other weekend. Our residents need to feel the tangible rush of progress.

A week in the life of a person in such a role might include the following activities: calls to major newspapers and the history-theme channels to pitch feature stories; a visit to U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis' office with a local businessperson; a trip to Washington or Richmond to lobby senators; face-to-face meetings with presidents of associations to sell Fredericksburg as a place to relocate and to hold conferences; calls to kayak and rowing clubs to pitch the Rappahannock as a site for races and regattas; correspondence with learning institutions across America to establish interest in Fredericksburg; conference calls with Civil War and Revolutionary clubs to help organize more events (especially re-enactments); meetings with contractors to ensure that a parking deck, a major renovation, or a historic redevelopment is proceeding as planned; and countless phone calls to advertisers to manage promotional efforts on television, radio, and the Internet.

Fredericksburg is the epitome of all that is American. Fredericksburg is a gold mine of opportunity. But if you stop someone on the street in Washington, to inquire about Fredericksburg after the sniper attacks become old news, you'll likely be treated to a conversation about Frederick, Md. This is a travesty, and the time to end it is now.

TOM BYRNES of Fredericksburg works for Congress and assisted in the campaigns of the new Fredericksburg City Council majority. Opinions expressed are his own.