A few weeks back, TV personality Geraldo Rivera and
his brother Craig made a voyage across New York on the Erie Canal. It was met
with fanfare from folks who live or do business along the Canal. They were
excited that a celebrity would be passing through and might stop at their
favorite watering hole or café.
I too was excited and had sent some encouraging Twitter
messages about the canal to Geraldo and those who might see him sail (those
tweets were then featured in the Buffalo News’ and Syracuse Post-Standard’s
reports about his trip).
My interest was a little different. I looked at his
tour as a springboard to bigger things. Sure, it was cool to see Geraldo enjoy
the hospitality of Medina, for example, but more so I was keen on the national
spotlight that was cast on the canal. Clinton’s Ditch is an engineering marvel
and a beautiful waterway – anytime that someone can get the world to see that,
that’s good for the upstate economy.
Realize this could be – and is – happening all the
time, just not with the likes of someone with a household name like Geraldo.
Nowadays, though, everyone is connected to the internet. Social media, blogs,
and websites have made similar travels by “regular” people (families, retirees,
adventurers, college kids between semesters) accessible to the masses.
I see it all the time. Every day I do a 24-hour
Google search of all things Gasport and quite often throughout the summer it
discovers the blogs and travel logs of vacationers tackling the canal. They’ll
praise, critique, savor, or bemoan their various stops along the system.
It’s great to see outsiders, for the most part,
championing the cute little burgs and hamlets.
Occasionally, though, you’ll see a bad report of an
unwelcoming town.
We can’t let that happen. We need to roll out the
red carpet for every sailor -- doesn’t matter if it’s Geraldo Rivera or Joe
Blow. The whole world can now follow peoples’ travels, and it’s that online
word-of-mouth that can bring more vessels to our waters or keep them away.
Here are some simple suggestions to the dozens of
towns along the 363-mile stretch of the canal.
Provide
amenities. Not every village has the space, budget, and infrastructure to
provide a picnic area, restroom, and showers to boaters like Middleport does.
But, we all can try. Any town with a lift bridge should maintain a port-a-potty
(that should fit in the municipal budget) and work with the New York Power
Authority (which oversees canal operations) to provide 110-volt hook-ups that
could start from the bridgemaster’s shacks. Those two simple niceties could
warrant a stop by a boater who might wander your streets and grab a bite to eat
or buy something.
Dress up
your canal district. Some of the downtown canal villages are a little run
down – it looks like their heydays were back in the canal’s freight era of the
mid-1800s. It shouldn’t be that way. The canal is the gateway to your
community. Make it look that way. This isn’t an endeavor that will require
taxpayer funds. Just look at the sweat equity invested by the wonderful
volunteers of the Gasport Beautification Committee. They’ve made downtown look
nice with flower pot contests, signage, painting, and regular clean-ups.
Market your
port online. Travelers get their information from the internet. They’ll
plot their stops based on what they find online from other boaters or from
community websites. Not every town has its own Chamber of Commerce to do market,
but every town does have a clerk or volunteers who could update their website
with a tourism page or make a Facebook page. Give visitors reasons to dock at
your bridge and explore your neighborhood. List the events, things to do, and
places to eat and shop.
Build an
information center. For voyagers who make an impromptu stop, you want to
prompt them to stay a while. If every town erected a kiosk at their docking
area they could educate folks on the same sort of things that the website would
mention – history, things to do, places to go. What would help immensely is a
tri-fold brochure that a visitor could pull from the kiosk to use as a
directory and map (plus, it’s easier to update than a large painted map/sign of
town if businesses close).
Train
service workers to treat everyone as a guest. I’ve written of this before –
one of my hang-ups with too many Niagara County restaurants and pubs is the
assumption that wait staff make that everyone is from around here. The greater
Niagara Falls area is a world-class destination (and as an outcome of that so
is canal). Yet, I rarely hear workers ask where people are from. That can lead
to great conversations like, “Ooo! Do this!” or “Do that!” Front line workers,
like they are for their own business, are the best cheerleaders for our entire
community. Use them that way.
It’s hopeful that these practices – and many more –
will further help to highlight the Erie Canal as a place to travel. It’s a
great public asset that we need to promote and utilize. You never know when the
next Geraldo will come to town.
From the 04
June 2018 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Batavia Daily News
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