The largest musical fountain in the world drew us back to Grand Haven last night, along with a couple of hundred Americans, eating pretzels and popcorn. They were also eating Superman Icecream, which purely in the interests of reasearch we tried. It tastes as weird as it looks!
Grand Haven reminds us of Scarborough and Harrogate and other towns with visitor attractions so how does it measure up?
1. All parking is free and there is lots of it. All the people who visit Grand Haven come by car and so the town has a policy of encouraging people to come by making parking easy. The car parks are designed well and have trees to give shade to the visitors.
2. The museums are also free and cheerfully tell a local story and have a trusting touch based approach to their history. They are also air conditioned which makes the visitor stay a bit longer.
3. The restaurants and tea shops are imaginative. We went into one that had a hat stand and you were encouraged to chose a hat and wear it whilst you drank your tea! We didn’t, we are English after all but it was a fun idea.
4. The hook, the musical fountain, was also free and in a kind of naff way a bit impressive! Every community needs “the thing” that people locally talk about. “Grand Haven? Isn’t that the place with the musical fountain?”
5. Finally the environment: the place is beautiful and clean. The huge beach stretches for miles and the lake and rivers give it a real holiday air. Money is clearly being spent on Rest rooms and tourist facilities and keeping them pristine.
Clearly this is a place for short term visitors and locals and as such they are well geared up to making you feeling at home quickly. I also get the impression it is drawing local people in to use its facilities as well. I overheard one lady, working in a shop, saying that when her shift got off she was headed to the beach. You don’t feel that you are being milked for every dollar but rather in a relaxed way encouraged to spend at the local businesses that no doubt pay for the facilities through the local taxes. The provision of really nice street architecture, especially benches encourage people to sit a while and add to the relaxed feeling.
Maybe the reason we can’t be so creative in Britain is the lack of space, we simply don’t have the capacity to take these kind of numbers. If for example we were to try to take this approach in Hebden Bridge the question would be where would they park? Are we rationing the number of visitors by the charges we make for parking?
1. All parking is free and there is lots of it. All the people who visit Grand Haven come by car and so the town has a policy of encouraging people to come by making parking easy. The car parks are designed well and have trees to give shade to the visitors.
2. The museums are also free and cheerfully tell a local story and have a trusting touch based approach to their history. They are also air conditioned which makes the visitor stay a bit longer.
3. The restaurants and tea shops are imaginative. We went into one that had a hat stand and you were encouraged to chose a hat and wear it whilst you drank your tea! We didn’t, we are English after all but it was a fun idea.
4. The hook, the musical fountain, was also free and in a kind of naff way a bit impressive! Every community needs “the thing” that people locally talk about. “Grand Haven? Isn’t that the place with the musical fountain?”
5. Finally the environment: the place is beautiful and clean. The huge beach stretches for miles and the lake and rivers give it a real holiday air. Money is clearly being spent on Rest rooms and tourist facilities and keeping them pristine.
Clearly this is a place for short term visitors and locals and as such they are well geared up to making you feeling at home quickly. I also get the impression it is drawing local people in to use its facilities as well. I overheard one lady, working in a shop, saying that when her shift got off she was headed to the beach. You don’t feel that you are being milked for every dollar but rather in a relaxed way encouraged to spend at the local businesses that no doubt pay for the facilities through the local taxes. The provision of really nice street architecture, especially benches encourage people to sit a while and add to the relaxed feeling.
Maybe the reason we can’t be so creative in Britain is the lack of space, we simply don’t have the capacity to take these kind of numbers. If for example we were to try to take this approach in Hebden Bridge the question would be where would they park? Are we rationing the number of visitors by the charges we make for parking?
It could be even more basic than that as the petrol here is $3.86 a gallon which is about a $1 a litre I think, or 50p a litre? You might think this means that people here don’t care about the prices, actually the price of petrol has doubled and they are really unhappy about paying as much as they do. The reason is that public transport is so bad here. If you don’t have a car, you really are stuffed, and it’s a real issue of poverty. Even shopping is difficult without a car, in some areas impossible.
Where are the churches in all this? Well the enormous reformed church was holding an Ice cream outreach event whatever that means, and around the area there are a lot of churches, but these tend to be out of the centre of the town. A bit like in Britain I guess church members are doing things but the church itself keeps to the business of looking after those who look after others.
So impressed are we by the musical fountain we think Peashom Park should have one and so I will be suggesting Scarborough Town Team makes its plans and bids to Yorkshire Forward! If it's good enough for Grand Haven it's good enough for Scarborough.
I'm not sure whether we are quite ready for Superman Icecream.
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