After Florence, is Wilmington still battling an image problem?

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With lots of jobs and money at stake, region looks to bounce back after national media portrayed a community devastated by the hurricane

WILMINGTON — In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Florence as Southeastern North Carolina waded through the debris and harsh realities of the storm-wrought devastation, it was also burdened with an image problem.

As the hurricane bore down last September, the area was swarmed by national news cameras, each staking their claim on a vantage point for its arrival. When it passed, the hyper-focused attention on the global stage broadcast footage of a community submerge by floodwaters and cut off from the world — but then, they were gone.

Most never returned to show the recovery effort, leaving an impression the region was devastated beyond repair.

“Within the the first couple of weeks after the storm, maybe even the first two months, I think the perception was that Wilmington was underwater,” said Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo.

He said he spoke with businesses leaders who heard from companies and projects once eyeing Wilmington that were now having second thoughts because of some of the images broadcast across the country.

One of those high-profile projects was Warner Bros. Television’s “Swamp Thing,” which almost pulled out of the region last fall due to the coverage. Saffo, along with local film officials and producers on the series, all reached out to Warner Bros. to assure them Wilmington was on the road to recovery and could still more than handle the multi-million-dollar project.

It worked, and the show went on to film what turned out to be its first and only season in Wilmington.

But Saffo said it’s that kind of concerted rehab of the region’s image — in Wilmington and throughout the area — that went a long way in pulling perception back from the edge before it irrevocably affected tourism and local businesses.

Tourism on the rise

A year after the storm, New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties all reported record tourism spending by 2018’s end — the first evidence tourism had weathered the storm.

In 2018, New Hanover County saw $612 million dollars in tourism spending, up 6 percent from 2017. Brunswick also spiked 6.48 percent to $599 million, while Pender was up 4.8 percent to $101 million.

Those numbers don’t look like the kind of post-hurricane numbers you might expect, but Saffo said that’s because the city and area businesses made an extra push to get the positive word out.

The city set aside specific funding for a targeted marketing push to let people know the city was open for business. The Wrightsville Beach Market Advisory Committee made a similar initiative.

“We wanted to let people know that while Southeastern North Carolina was recovering, we are open for business,” Saffo said.

Part of that effort was trying to lure national news organizations back to do follow up stories, but none ever came to fruition, the mayor added.

Florence gone, far from forgotten: Click here for previous StarNews stories, editorials and letters about Hurricane Florence and its impact.

Serving the community

For organizations and businesses, they didn’t wait for the region’s government awareness to rise — they did it themselves.

One year to the day after it closed for Florence on Sept. 11, 2018, Cape Fear Museum closed the book on its repairs with a two-week closure.

The museum was closed for a month after the storm, but reopened to the public with limited exhibits on the first floor and free admission. It also launched a few new projects to promote the museum beyond its walls, including a mobile science education cart that was wheeled out to heavy-traffic events like Saturday farmer’s markets.

Although most of the second floor was closed, museum director Cheryl Mays said staff wanted to not only offset visitor declines as much as possible but continue to provide a service the community.

“We wanted to be a place for people to feel like they can get away from the issues of the hurricane and find some routine again, especially for the children,” she said.

In total, the museum was down by about 3,000 visitors year-over-year, largely due to less school groups taking field trips to make up for lost days.

The museum remained free until July 1 in an effort to balance expectation with continued repairs and still get guests to come back to the museum. But even after ticket prices kicked back in, the museum saw a steady rebound.

“We were up 20 percent over last July,” Mays said. “That was exciting to see people coming back and being willing to pay after being free for so long.”

Hurricane fatigue

In Wrightsville Beach, where Florence unfortunately made landfall, the recovery process took longer than most beach communities.

“We’re not used to getting knocked down that hard, and the more we worked to get back up, the more we found things to do,” said Mayor Bill Blair.

A year later, he said it’s almost back to business as usual, with solid figures throughout the summer and almost all businesses operating normally.

But Blair said he still feels there’s lingering hesitation in some tourists when it comes to planning trips in the thick of hurricane season.

“I imagine there’s some subliminal hurricane fatigue,” he said. “When people talk to me about storms, I’ve noticed a lot of people are paying more attention these days than they used to.”

Saffo said the region’s recent brush with potentially devastating storms like Hurricane Dorian last week illustrates that awareness best.

“I think the negative publicity of Florence is behind us, but that is not to say when you have a hurricane like Dorian, it doesn’t remind people about the possibility of what could happen,” he said.

Blair is eagerly awaiting the room-occupancy tax (ROT) figures from September to see if there is a notable decline in the traditionally busy Labor Day weekend to see if that fatigue did have an impact. The ROT is a special 6-percent tax added to hotel stays and rentals under 90 days.

Although the summer of 2019 will go down as a win in the region’s mind from a tourism perspective, it is just one facet of the ongoing recovery process that still has a long road ahead.

“I think recovered fully in the eyes of a lot of people outside of our community, and I think that shows in our tourism figures,” Saffo said. “But I personally will feel we have fully recovered when every citizen who has been displaced is back in their home.”

Reporter Hunter Ingram can be reached at 910-343-2327 or Hunter.Ingram@StarNewsOnline.com.