Come see Polk County
State tourism team sees great opportunities in enticing visitors
It’s a problem that cities and counties across the country face all the time. What does a community do when it doesn’t have direct access to the interstate to bring people in?
Polk County is no stranger to being off the beaten path. At one time when the Silver Comet ran through the county on a path northward, there were at least brief visitors who saw the rural landscape from their seats and could spread the gospel of Cedartown and Rockmart far and wide.
Nowadays, the Highway 27 and Highway 278 corridors bring more truck traffic than tourists, though those numbers are on the rise as the former rail line now serves as a bicycle trail from the Alabama state line all the way to the metro Atlanta area. The Cedartown Museum of Coca-Cola Memorabilia next door to the Standard Journal attracts people during weekend visits (they sometimes even confuse the office doors with those of the museum on Saturday mornings.)
It would be happy dreams come true for local businesses to see a huge increase in the amount of tourism dollars being spent in downtown areas, since these customers are the kind Polk County enjoys. People who come to see the sights, spend their dollars and cents in restaurants, shops and gas stations, and send them onward to tell others what the area has to offer.
New efforts are now underway to get to those goals with the help of the state’s Department of Economic Development Tourism Product Development team. It gives local officials a blueprint that may bring growth in visitor spending and give businesses new revenue streams to fill their coffers, and reinforce many ideas that are already being pursued or have been completed.
Their visit back in fall 2018 took them to all corners of the local area, from the Silver Come Trail and local parks and museums, to places off the beaten path like Hightower Falls and Carlton Farms.
The team was back in Polk County providing a report last Thursday on where locals should focus their efforts first. The 100-plus page was too long to regurgitate in full for officials in the meeting at the Slate Building in Rockmart, but they hit highlights of what they believe should be the main areas to develop. Top among them, and where efforts were tried in the
past and are still ongoing: signage.
Getting around Polk County
For people who live in the local area, directions might go something like this: “turn right out of here and go down to the light. Turn left there, then turn right again… If you go past Huddle House you’ve gone too far…”
That’s not exactly a helpful way to get people who don’t have license plates proclaiming their home as Polk. One of the team’s first suggestions for officials from the cities, county and local businesses and organizations was to get signage up to direct people around Cedartown and Rockmart.
Especially for those trying to find the Silver Comet trailheads spread across the county in Rockmart, Cedartown and select spots in between.
They also wanted to see Polk County put up gateway signage much in the same vein as what Rome has when residents get within the city limits, or Griffin or Dalton. Signage also is needed to direct people off of Highway 27 or Highway 278 into the downtown areas of Rockmart and Cedartown, and along the trail as well.
The team pointed to the example of the signage used on the Swamp Rabbit Trail on Greenville County, South Carolina as an idea for local officials to pursue in order to get some signage up.
It’s efforts that have been tried before. The Polk County Chamber of Commerce in years past attempted to spearhead an effort to put up real gateway signage into Polk County, but couldn’t get any landowners to donate small parcels of land to put up large signage in years past.
Instead, they settled at the time on being able to put up new signs that replaced the “Welcome to Polk County – Where Folks are Friendly” signs with smaller ones on poles at major entryways into the county.
The tourism team also said in their report and during the presentation that local officials needed to work on unified signage to make getting around as easy as possible for visitors. Having several different styles of signs would only confuse those from out of town, but also compliment what is already here.
Utilizing resources already here
Nick Chubb. Sterling Holloway. Carlton Farms. West Cinema.
All of these are recognizable names both here, and in many cases far afield from Polk County. (Especially for lovers of old films, and current NFL stars.)
The tourism team wants to see those names and places be a greater part of Polk County’s efforts to attract visitors.
Here’s a good for instance they pointed out: Nick Chubb is indeed from Cedartown, but Chubbtown which bears his family’s name plays just as important a role in Polk County’s robust history, but isn’t easy to find from the downtown area.
Sterling Holloway is one of the few voices from a long run in film who can be recognized by children far and wide as the original Winnie the Pooh and many other characters from Bambi, Alice in Wonderland and more. Yet the tributes around town to him don’t include him speaking to those who stop by.
Even add to that Carlton Farms: owned by the same family for a century in Polk County and in recent years starting to become a destination next door to Rockmart High School. Yet people wouldn’t know it was open to the public with a farm store at first glance.
These kinds of items are ones the Tourism Product Development Resource Team wants to see better emphasized.
Give people who want a farm experience the information they need to visit a place like Carlton Farms, and then promote locally grown food served in restaurants in Rockmart as well. Provide historical information on the impact of Chubbtown.
Play Sterling Holloway’s voice through a system when people walk in the door of the Cedartown Welcome Center. Create a place for golfers to come and visit the great collection of Doug Sanders.
They had many other ideas as well utilizing technology with history by creating downtown walking tours that people can undertake and listen into interpretations of the life of the city on their smartphones.
Branding is also a big part of what the tourism team saw as a step that the cities and county can take in the right direction.
They already saw potential in Cedartown’s rebranding last year of the city’s logo and website with a tree-based theme, and provided insights and ideas of how that can be expanded. For instance, small cedar cutouts of trees could be sold as mementos to keep from a visit to Cedartown.
It was even suggested local officials plant Eastern Red Cedars in places around the city to incorporate natural effects into the branding as well.
Rockmart’s iconic bricks are another example of how that branding can help raise an area’s image to a greater audience.
Their point was that by taking the resources already here and well known and putting them to greater use to get more visitors to come and stay for a day or two and explore the area.
Some of this is already underway, with Cedartown’s new Tourism and Economic Development department looking at a summertime honey festival around Sterling Holloway, and moving events around on the calendar and in locations to better suit the sometimes shifting weather.
Yet many of the suggestions the team wants requires a greater amount of places for people to rest their head. So it’ll come down to what kind of options for lodging can be generated in the near future on how popular Polk County can be in the long term.
Where’s a good place to stay?
One other major area the tourism team wants Polk County to work on is affordable lodging options for those coming to enjoy the Silver Comet Trail.
There are a few hotels in Cedartown and Rockmart, but Airbnb options and lowcost hostels for cyclist groups just aren’t here. And without a good place to stay, what could have been a two-day stop in Cedartown and Rockmart on the trail suddenly turns into a few hours riding through and looking for options elsewhere.
So the tourism team wants local officials and business owners to work on providing several options, which would include looking at boutique hotels, utilizing upstairs spaces above Cedartown and Rockmart businesses to open bunk-based hostel spaces with limited amenities that would remain inexpensive, and expand glamour camping, or “glamping” options at places like the Rock Campground and others.
Vintage campers that have been spruced up or yurts to expand not only the amount of bed space available for sale to overnight guests, but also to attract visitors who want outdoor experiences but don’t want to give up the luxuries of city living.
The team said the Rock Campground was among one of many local businesses the team featured, along with Hightower Falls.
One of the team even included a sample itinerary she and her friends are planning to follow in a trip in the near future enjoying Polk County, and hope to spend time within the cabins at Hightower Falls, and visiting Cedartown and Rockmart if and when hostels are setup in both cities while riding the Silver Comet Trail.
Having options to eat were also an item the tourism team focused on as well.
They wanted to see more local restaurants in both cities to attract the dining dollars of visitors, and also for those destinations offer up locallygrown cuisine in the process. It is part of an overall effort to promote Georgia Grown products throughout the state, and the branding is already available for local officials to utilize and businesses to take part in.
Arts and culture can attract people too
Where both Rockmart and Cedartown can also attract people into town is through the arts. The team were highly complimentary of the available theater spaces and arts opportunities overall in both cities, pointing out that many of the places in Georgia they’ve previously stopped in and provided similar reports didn’t have the available arts communities to help reinforce tourism efforts.
However, they pointed to several areas of growth for the cities to work toward, which included using temporary murals on the outside of the Cedartown Performing Arts Center to attract greater interest locally and abroad, increasing the number of performances at both the CPAC and the Rockmart Arts Theater, and approaching outdoor spaces currently unused for both events and arts viewing spaces.
The team pointed to a vacant building on South Marble Street that would be a prime example of how to transform a space without a store that is also a shell into an activity space. They pointed toward an effort already underway in several cities that bring in rotating exhibits and use the space for outdoor activities on a quarterly basis.
Murals were also a big focus in this area of the report, and the tourism team suggests even more artistic expressions on outdoor buildings in both cities.
There are already several murals in Cedartown and Rockmart, but they had the idea of using old style Coca-Cola advertising such as one already painted on the Cedarstream building on Main Street in Cedartown as an example of how those efforts can act both as advertising for the attraction, and get people stopping by for pictures as a standalone reason to visit.
Spreading the murals throughout Polk County was also among their suggestions, to get visitors to different spots and other attractions outside of the downtown areas. An example of that kind of artwork would be the “See Rock City” signs spread throughout the region around Lookout Mountain pointing people toward Chattanooga and the longtime mountaintop stop where people can “See Seven States.”
Among their suggestions for promoting cultural arts were also for the local history museums in Rockmart, Aragon and the Polk County Historical Society in Cedartown to work on preservation and interpretation of exhibits and also to provide more for youth to enjoy during tours of the facilities.
They also want Polk County to look at film-based tourism, utilizing local areas that have previously been featured on large and small screens to international audiences who might be big enough fans to want to see firsthand where their favorite shows and movies were shot.
Even more important is ensuring that Polk County has a full database for the state’s film initiative to give producers of television and features various opportunities for locations to shoot in the future.
Additional information can be found where?
They also asked for the cities and county to work on an effort to be better digital promoters and provide websites geared specifically toward out-oftown guests, and to have more information at visitors areas in downtown Rockmart and Cedartown.
The Silver Comet Trailhead building in Rockmart and the Cedartown Welcome Center and Depot do provide information already, and the Welcome Center also was last year designated as a regional visitors information center as well.
Lighting too was also among the items that efforts already saw some work completed. The first phase of the lighting project in downtown Rockmart was completed just in time for the 2018 Christmas parade, and the second phase was recently completed.
Efforts to bring additional lighting to attract nighttime visitors as well were among the plans of Cedartown in the near future.
The tourism team also provide local officials with multiple pages in the report of information about available grants to help develop tourism on a city level or countywide, on programs that can help better promote Polk County attractions, and even one to help bring bigger talent acts to Cedartown and Rockmart’s stages without having to break the bank as part of the statewide Georgia Presenters program. (See the full report online with this story to find all the resources Polk County can utilize to increase tourism development.)
Yet with all the information that’s out there and offerings of help to local officials, it will come down to what best fits the traditions and history of Polk County, and how those are presented to the world.