BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer

UPPER FREEHOLD — Money and signs. That’s what speakers at a public hearing at Historic Walnford on June 8 said would boost heritage tourism in the state.

Barbara Buono chaired the hearing, which featured representatives from the state Senate Wagering, Tourism and Historic Preservation Committee and a variety of historical preservation groups touting the economic impact of heritage tourism in New Jersey.

Buono said her committee wants to create a long-term plan and commitment to the state’s rich history and its historic sites.

Currently, she said, heritage tourism makes up only 3.7 percent of spending in the travel sector in the state.

“People think the shore and the casinos,” Buono said. “There’s an untapped heritage potential in heritage tourism.”

Buono added that while preserving and understanding history has intangible benefits beyond the economic sphere, the committee’s purpose for the meeting was to focus on the economic and tangible benefits.

Virginia Bauer is CEO and secretary of the Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission. She said that tourism is one of the most important industries in the state’s economy, bringing in $30 billion a year and generating 430,000 jobs, $12.3 billion in wages and $2 billion worth of annual tax revenue to the state’s coffers.

Bauer said the state has provided $1.85 million in sponsorship to leverage private sector funds to promote tourism, with most grants in the $10,000 range. A $45,000 cooperative market sponsorship was awarded to the Princeton region to promote historic sites in the Princeton/Mercer County area, she said.

The Crossroads of the American Revolution Association has received $25,000, Bauer said, and $6,000 has been given to Celtic festivals.

In addition, Bauer’s commission publishes the New Jersey Lighthouse Guide, which features the rich maritime heritage of the state. According to Bauer, historic guides will be published in the future, including those dealing with African-American history.

John Watson is the assistant commissioner for Natural and Historic Resources at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). He testified that his agency is in charge of 58 historic sites or districts, as well as 39 parks, seven historic villages and 11 forests, and is celebrating a century of stewardship in New Jersey.

“Some places are national treasures,” he said, citing revolutionary battlefields, Grover Cleveland’s birthplace in Caldwell and Walt Whitman’s house in Camden.

Watson said that acting Gov. Richard Codey has appropriated $75 million to a backlog of restoration and preservation. The backlog contains $220 million in projects, and Watson’s agency is in the process of prioritizing the projects for the available funding.

“Our rich New Jersey history remains too little known to citizens as well as visitors,” Watson said, noting that Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Peter Cooper, among others, called the state home.

In 2000, the National Park Service declared that New Jersey was the Crossroads of the American Revolution, Watson said. He said there was a “continuous civil war” during the revolution in New Jersey, which experienced five major battles and 291 skirmishes. George Washington spent half the war in New Jersey, he said.

Watson quoted one of George III’s ministers, who said, “All our hopes were blasted by the unhappy affair in Trenton.”

However, Watson said, there is no statewide database of historic places and those eligible for the state and national historic registers.

Sen. William Gormley, a member of the committee, asked if the agency had worked on any joint ventures with the History Channel. Watson said it had not, but that it has had shows on the New Jersey Network (NJN).

Gormley also asked about corporate partnerships, and Watson said that as they got seed money, they would reach out for matching funding. Gormley suggested contacting author David McCullough, who just published a book titled “1776.” Gormley said someone like McCullough would “be a magnet for certain corporate interests.”

Barbara Irvine, executive director of the New Jersey Historic Trust, explained to the panel that cultural heritage tourism is traveling to places and seeing artifacts and activities that authentically represent people of the past and present. Since 1990, her agency has spent $95 million on 114 projects, but it has received requests for $274 million for preservation needs.

Irvine said there are 236 historic structures or landscapes in the state that are appropriate for inclusion in heritage tourism. She said many of these sites require upgraded bathroom facilities. While the Garden State Trust Fund allows organizations to apply for up to $50,000 for individual and multiple sites, it does not permit funding for new construction, with the exception of making access to sites barrier-free.

It is also necessary to identify historic resources, especially African-American, women’s, immigrant’s and industrial history, Irvine said. She felt a New Jersey Task Force on historic tourism is needed, which would provide strategic direction to historic tourism and include every county in the state.

Marc Mappen, executive director of the New Jersey Historical Commission, said that funding for historic sites from the state had declined since the beginning of the decade. At $4 million annually, he said, it is $750,000 less than what was received five years ago. Mappen said an intellectual change was also needed so that organizations do not consider themselves guardians of just the state’s history, but of tourism destination and part of the tourism industry as well.

Michael Zuckerman, of the South Jersey Cultural Alliance, said that Cape May has 350,000 visitors a year, many of whom come for the history tour programs and arts events.

“Cape May is a national-level heritage tourism destination,” he said.

However, Zuckerman said that very few historic sites have the resources to compete in the national historic tourism marketplace alongside a destination such as Colonial Williamsburg. He said one important step to help state sites would be improved highway signage.

“[Signage] makes an inordinate difference,” Zuckerman said. “New Jersey, unlike other states, refuses to inform motorists of historic sites.”

He advocated that the state’s Office of Tourism do more for historic tourism and create a statewide historic tourism master plan.

Barbara Mitnick, president of the Washington Association of New Jersey, said a 1997 Task Force on New Jersey history found that from 1993-95, 9.1 adult historic tourism trips were made, including 5 million day trips and 4.1 overnight stays. Mitnick said the numbers are probably higher now. She said the state’s Revolutionary War sites could lure visitors throughout the nation and abroad.

“It could have an enormous impact on the state’s economy,” Mitnick said. “We have the stock in trade [so] why not use it to our advantage?”