Towns hope for economic boon from eclipse
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The tiny town of Herculaneum, Mo., canceled the Fourth of July this year.
It’s saving its celebrations for the Super Bowl of celestial events — a total solar eclipse that will turn the Mississippi River-hugging burg of 4,000 dark for a full 2 minutes, 32 seconds on Aug. 21.
Scores of cities from Oregon to South Carolina are planted in the 70-mile-wide path of totality for the historic eclipse. With less than a month to go, they are watching with wary excitement, bracing for an onslaught of eclipse chasers and hoping for a solar system-sized economic boost.
“We’re doing a two-day festival prior to the eclipse,” said Herculaneum Mayor Bill Haggard, who is also overseeing the sales of city-stamped eclipse glasses, Tshirts and commemorative coins. “We’ve been working on this for a couple of years now trying to get the word out.”
A total solar eclipse last touched the U.S. in 1979, turning day to night along a path of a moon shadow that crossed five states. The Aug. 21 eclipse is the first coast-tocoast total solar eclipse in 99 years. The regions of the country not in the totality path will be able to view a partial eclipse. In Pittsburgh, the passing moon will block up to 81 percent of the sun.
For many in the totality path, it will be a once-in-alifetime experience, with hotels filling up more than a year in advance and reservations spilling over into university dorms eager to cash in on their location.
But economists doubt a significant economic boon will be felt in most areas.
Small towns are limited by how many people they can house, feed and entertain. At the same time, unlike a sporting event held in a specific city, the coast-tocoast eclipse spreads out spending with no one town as a focal point.
“Nashville is the largest city in the path, and it will see the largest impact because it has the biggest hotel capacity,” said Jeff Humphreys, director of economic forecasting for the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. “A lot of the smaller towns won’t have the infrastructure to accommodate big crowds so people won’t be spending a ton of money in them.”
Because the eclipse is happening in August when many families still are vacationing, Mr. Humphreys said there might be some “displacement” spending — where non-eclipse vacationers with plans to visit areas in the eclipse path will have to reschedule to other times.
Still, he doesn’t think anyone is adding significant dollars to their vacation budgets for the eclipse, meaning that money would have been spent on vacation-type expenses — hotels, gas, meals — anyway.
“The good news is, it’s an entire three-day weekend of spending,” Mr. Humphreys said, noting the eclipse falls on a Monday. “If it was midweek, it would make for a much smaller impact.”
In Rexburg, Idaho, officials are anticipating the town’s 30,000-person population to triple for the eclipse, but they aren’t sure how much money that will bring to businesses.
Scott Johnson, Rexburg’s director of economic development and community relations, said every hotel within 100 miles is booked, and he has heard of rentals going for as high as $1,500 per night.
“It’s amazing, the demand,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s getting pretty crazy.”
Mr. Johnson said earlier this month that there still were open campsites, and private dormitories at Brigham Young University– Idaho in Rexburg also are renting out rooms for eclipse tourists.
For a nightly fee of $500, and a two-night minimum, people can stay in an apartment at the Park View Housing Complex at BYU-Idaho. There is also a house with 12 twin beds, a game room, pool table, vending machines and a fire pit. That’s going for $2,500 a night.
“We say a two-night minimum, but if people are willing to pay $4,000, we’re letting them stay the whole week for that one,” Corey Sorensen, a Rexburg businessman and owner of the Park View apartments, said about the house. “It gives us a good opportunity to show off Rexburg and BYUIdaho.”
But Mary Eschelbach Hansen, a professor of economics at American University, said she is pessimistic about long-term potential benefits for a town in the path of the eclipse.
The best thing for communities to do is to gather data on who is visiting and how much they spend so they can generate a formula to estimate the impact of hosting events such as a youth baseball tournament or small festival.
“In some places, there may be a bump in sales tax revenue, but these places have got to be thinking about how they are going to control the crowds,” Ms. Eschelbach Hansen said. “They will need people to direct traffic, have cooling stations and first responders on duty.”
Those expenses could be more costly than the revenue that comes in, she said.
Mr. Johnson said Rexburg has limited the number of special events surrounding the eclipse because emergency officials were fearful they would be stretched too thin.
In Herculaneum, which is bisected by Interstate 55 south of St. Louis, Mr. Haggard is most concerned about traffic.
“The highway patrol is getting a little concerned,” he said. “They asked me the same question about how many people we are expecting and I just said, ‘I don't know.’