By KEVIN NEVERS

Here’s a conundrum: how do you get the tens of thousands of people who visit the Indiana Dunes every year actually to leave the Dunes, drive a mile or so south, and pump some money into the Duneland economy?

That, in essence, is the question to which two national consultants, Roger Brooks and Monica Dixon, attempted to provide an answer in a presentation last week at the Porter County Visitors Center.

The services of Brooks and Dixon were contracted earlier this year, partly with $15,000 in funding from the Porter County Convention, Recreation, and Visitor Commission, partly with a $5,000 grant from the Indiana Tourism Office.

This is what that money bought: visits early this summer from Brooks and Dixon of the Tri-Towns, Portage, and Beverly Shores, as well as of Valparaiso and Southern Porter County, in which they conducted an on-site assessment of each community’s signage, curb appeal, attractions, and other amenities.

The results of that assessment Brooks and Dixon presented on Thursday in the crowded theater of the Visitors Center. They began their presentation with a few general comments. Tourism is not merely an end in itself, Brooks noted, but an economic-development engine. “A tourism friendly-city will spawn non-tourism industries faster,” as visitors come for the fun, then return to re-locate their businesses.

The “heart and soul” of every community, Brooks added, is the Downtown, but “if locals won’t hang out in your Downtown, neither will visitors.” They won’t hang out in it either if they can’t find it, hence Brooks and Dixon’s immediate focus on signage.

Signage

In fact, Brooks said, signage “wasn’t a terrible problem in this area,” at least not within any given community. But along U.S. Highway 12—the Indiana Dunes corridor—wayfinding signage is desperately needed “to pull visitors away from the Dunes,” Brooks said. “There’s no place to shop in the Dunes.”

In his own case, Brooks observed, nothing pointed him in the direction of Duneland, so he ended up taking U.S. 12 all the way to Michigan City and did his shopping there.

Still, signage within the Tri-Towns could be improved. The “Gateway to the Dunes” sign on the west side of Ind. 49 is difficult to read, what with all of the service organization plaques bedecking it. “You’ve got just four seconds to read a sign” from a highway at speed, Brooks said. “Make it usable.”

The signage at the northwest corner of Ind. 49 and East Porter Ave., on the other hand, is just a mess: a European Market sign competing with a “Welcome to Chesterton” sign competing with a couple of CHS championship signs. By the way, Brooks and Dixon never did manage to find the European Market, despite the sign for it. “You know what Broadway and Third Street means to us? Nothing,” Dixon said.

Brooks and Dixon both loved the monument sign installed by the Chesterton Hometown Improvement Project but they weren’t crazy about the directional signage installed by the Chesterton/Duneland Chamber of Commerce some years ago. The lettering is too small, there are too many arrows, and it’s too confusing.

In all three of the Tri-Towns, Brooks said, signage is in need of repainting. And someone needs to get out with a shears and prune away the vegetation obscuring some of it. “Signage is all about connecting the dots and doing it decoratively.”

Curb Appeal

A lick of paint and some more flowers would do a world of good in the Chesterton Downtown. To the embarrassment of some of the businesspeople in attendance, Brooks had photos of chipped and peeling storefronts (“We’re working on that,” conceded a voice from the audience), weedy alleys, ugly dumpsters, trashy gutters, decrepit benches, junky newspaper boxes.

Smart businesspeople, Brooks said, work to “soften the transition between the facade and the sidewalk.” They also try to “extend window displays to external spaces.” An ice cream table and a couple of chairs can do that. So can planters. Brooks and Dixon love planters. Not only do they beautify a storefront, they offer incontrovertible proof that a business is in business.

“Curb appeal,” Brooks remarked, “can account for up to 70 percent of sales at restaurants and shops.”

Critical Mass

In fact, Brooks said, the Chesterton Downtown is quite nice and an “awesome job” has been done in Thomas Centennial Park. One problem: at 5 p.m. on a Saturday the place was virtually deserted.

“This is a waste of a beautiful community,” Dixon lamented. “People need to be gathering here.”

“Turn your park into a plaza,” Brooks added. “A little amphitheater would be nice. It’s about gathering places, not pretty places.”

To that end Brooks introduced his rule of “critical mass”: the 10/10/10 rule. Every three linear blocks, he said, should have 10 places which sell food—not necessarily all of them sit-down restaurants—plus 10 destination retail shops—antiques, books, home accents, and the like—and 10 places which are still open after 6 p.m. “That’s what it takes to be a destination. You have to think like a mall.”

Branding

Finally, Brooks highly recommended every community develop its own brand. What do you want your community to be known for: antiques? pizza? dining? art?

Whatever the attraction, however, it needs to be something that a visitor would have a hard time finding elsewhere. It needs to be “unique,” he said, while emphasizing that “unique” is an unfortunately overused word that rarely accurately describes a shop’s—or a community’s—offerings.

And Brooks offered one pointed warning: “Politics is the killer of any branding effort.”

Posted 9/25/2008