East Coast Greenway Guide to the St. Johns River Ferry & First Coast Florida
Background: tourism and ECGA Alicia Schatteman’s paper of 2001, “Local and Tourism Use of the East Coast Greenway,” intelligently argues for a connection with tourism that at least to that time hadn’t been well exploited. Alicia talks about “word-of-mouth recommendations, road maps, tourist information centers and brochures” all helpful for directing attention to the Greenway. Online promotion and guidebooks also offer great opportunity. Even in these epromotional times, print guidebooks get produced and sold in great quantities. Especially Boomers and older travelers find print guidebooks user friendly. An opportunity in connection with First Coast Florida (for our purposes, Nassau, Duval and St. Johns counties) best gets resolved through print. Background: First Coast Florida The St. Johns River Ferry connects the north and south shores of the St. Johns River mouth. The ferry route of approximately a half-mile constitutes a part of SR A1A. The City of Jacksonville, which subsidizes ferry operations by $750,000 a year wants to end its obligation. An upstream high bridge facilitates cross-river traffic, which adds a few minutes to the crossing made up by avoidance of a $3.XX toll. Discontinuance of operations would harm businesses for a long distance back from either landing. Tourism would suffer as would local economies especially through the Jacksonville Beaches. Business through Atlantic, Neptune and Jacksonville Beach is mostly mom-and-pop. Adverse effects would be felt south through St. Johns County all the way to St. Augustine. Although Highway A1A north of the ferry landing mainly traverses public parks, even business on the south side of Amelia Island from Amelia Island Plantation north to Fernandina Beach would suffer. Opportunity A Guide to the St. Johns Ferry & First Coast Florida could supply important fare-box revenues for the ferry. This would figure importantly even if FDOT assumes the ferry subvention, as proposed by First Coast legislative delegations. Additionally, the guide would help define the First Coast more fully as a region than has been the case since designation of Highway A1A as the Buccaneer Trail fell from favor. Preliminary talk with tourism officials in Duval and St. Johns counties indicates willingness to support such a guidebook (although not from current budgets).
Moreover, the guidebook would become a model for guides that ECGA can publish for the entire route. Sooner or later, major guidebook promoters will include the Greenway in their publications. ECGA should capitalize on the opportunity for books that focus on the Greenway as the heart of their vicinities. There is no question that businesses up and down Highway A1A would sell the book. (Obviously, effective marketing is crucial.) Distinguished by concept, writing and layout, the book would achieve national distribution and, to leverage that, the promise of national publicity. Important as the book would be, its contents in some form and content should also appear online. Details appear below on format and production cost estimates. Rough Production Estimates ● Format: Introduction followed by chapters written by local authorities on history/government, environment, population characteristics, business, food/dining, lodging, architecture, recreation, sights/sites, Work-for-hire fee of $2,000 per chapter (including maps as appropriate), 10 chapters. $24,000. ● Printing color cover, 300 B&W pp: $12,000 for 12,000 copies. (Inside color will double or triple the cost and will require printing in the Singapore or Hong Kong). ● Pictures: $250/day for photographer. Everything on CD. $2,500 for 10 days. ● Cover designer $500, indexer $2,000, layout $2,500. $5,000. Distribution could be heavily local but we want national. So must be of more than regional interest. Someone would have to promote interest. For major distributors, send a copy and see what they say. Warehouse either with distributor or at one of the CVBs. B&N: goes to main office. Can go to Amazon ourselves. Total $43,500. Underwriting can reasonably be expected from First Coast CVBs, potentially from chambers of commerce, from the First Coast MPO, and from businesses that might include Gate Petroleum, the Jacksonville Jaguars and others. Action The Board should appoint a committee to examine this proposal and the larger promotional needs and opportunities of the Greenway, and report back by the next board meeting. Auspice
Submitted February 5, 2007, by Southeast Region Program Consultant Herb Hiller, hiller@funport.net, 386/467-8223. o0o