How Monticello weathered the economic storm

Minnesotan Chris DeBaun sits in her bag chair and sips a diet soda with her feet propped upon on her BMW F-650 motorcycle, stuffed with baggage for her cross-country ride, and considers her next move.

“I’ve spent a couple of hours up at the house and decided to go for a cold drink and thought I’d go ahead and meet my husband at the KOA Kampground,” she says as traffic pulls in and out of the parking lot by Monticello’s visitors center. “He’s probably hanging around the pool, so I may just take another hour or two and look over the visitors center and maybe get lunch. I’m not much into movies, but maybe I’ll check this one out.”

DeBaun’s debate describes the dilemma Monticello’s leaders hoped would happen when they opened the attraction’s new visitor and education center a year ago, added tours and expanded exhibitions.

It’s a strategy that seems to be working for the historical venue, as attendance has remained stable even as the economy has struggled.

Figures released by mountaintop officials show 2009’s 451,816 visitors was the highest attendance since 2004 saw 458,865 tour Thomas Jefferson’s homestead. Last year also marked a two-year consecutive increase in visitors, and Monticello officials say preliminary year-to-date figures indicate attendance is holding pace with last year.

“It’s been a challenge to attract people to historic sites across the country for several years now and this makes us feel pretty good about what we’re trying to do,” said Gary Sandling, vice president of visitor programs and services for Monticello. “People come with high expectations about what their experience will be like at Monticello and we want to provide an experience that meets those expectations.”

Monticello is owned and operated by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Inc. According to the nonprofit’s financial forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service, gifts, grants, contributions and membership fees for the foundation brought in $11.45 million in 2008 compared with $21.26 million in 2007. The foundation’s totals often vary widely, however: $13.87 million in 2006, $9.35 million in 2005, $18.62 million in 2004. The numbers vary depending on fundraising, attendance and special grants and projects.

Officials estimate that 2009 figures, yet to be filed, will show about a 2 percent increase over 2008.

“The last few years we’ve seen slight increases in attendance and, given the state of the economy in the last two years, that’s great performance,” said Leslie Greene Bowman, the foundation’s president and chief executive. “When the [stock market] went bad in 2008, we lost money like everyone else, but we didn’t lose as much and we’ve been recovering from the losses quickly.”

Bowman said the venue, like others, could see attendance fall in bad weather and rise during good weather.

“Our current attendance rates are on par with 2009 and may be slightly ahead and that makes us feel great, considering we were closed for nine days during the winter,” she said. “We had 66 inches of snow up here this winter and that tends to keep the doors closed.”

Smith Travel Research, an international research firm that compiles information on the hotel and travel industries, found that hotel demand in Virginia fell 2.9 percent during the first nine months of 2009 compared with the same period in 2008. It found, however, that demand at hotels across the United States fell by more than twice that.

Monticello, and other local historic venues, bucked the national trend of decreasing income and visitors in 2009, officials said. Both Montpelier, near Orange, and Monticello saw increases in visitors, but both had new offerings for visitors. James Madison’s home reported a 13 percent increase in visitors in 2009 after reporting increases of 39 percent and 25 percent in 2008 and 2007, respectively. Since 2005, paid visitation was up 110 percent, according to Montpelier officials.

The historic site, which at one time was owned by the DuPont family, underwent a restoration the last few years that returned the house to the way it was during Madison’s era. The restoration effort itself attracted many visitors.

Monticello completed the high-tech Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center and Smith Education Center, which includes a hands-on series of static and computer-driven displays designed to reveal Monticello as a society rather than a home and Jefferson as a man rather than a revolutionary icon.

Nearly a decade in design, the 42,000-square-foot, $43 million project was nearly three years in the making from the time officials broke ground.

The center includes a ticketing area, cafe, theater, classrooms and offices. It features four exhibitions using computer-generated graphics, artifacts found on site and storyboards to depict the lives of Jefferson, his family and the community of free blacks, slaves and hired tradesmen who lived there.

It also includes a 30-minute film depicting Monticello’s importance to Jefferson and Jefferson’s importance to the nation and world. To bring the scholarship home, the Griffin Discovery Room provides exhibits featuring hands-on displays.

Monticello has also added new tours of Jefferson’s home, opening up the entire house, including the previously private dome room, to the public.

“Our business is visitor-centered. We want to know what our visitors want and what they expect so that we can offer what they’re interested in,” Bowman said. “The more we know our visitors, the more we can provide the experience they appreciate. The more we can do that, the more successful we’ll be.”

While focusing on visitors — local, state, national and international — the foundation is focusing its fundraising in the same places. Recent fundraising campaigns have been conducted in New York and other far away locations, recognizing the universal appeal of Jeffersonian ideals, Bowman said.

“Thomas Jefferson is a person known and respected across the world: Half of the nations on the planet have [government documents] that are similar to the Declaration of Independence,” she said. “We even have a display in China that depicts Jefferson with the words ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ That somehow got by the Chinese government.”

The visitors center and additional tours and events have helped retain visitors longer at the site, Sandling said.

“There was an understanding that we needed to provide visitors with more opportunity to explore not just Jefferson and the home itself, but the community that lived here and that’s been part of the goal,” Sandling said. “People staying more than three hours on the grounds have doubled since 2005. They’re shopping the gift shops, eating lunch and making Monticello a whole-day experience. That’s good for them and good for us.”

Out in the motorcycle-specific parking space outside the visitors center, long-distance rider DeBaun agrees.

“I didn’t even know the place was here. I ran into a motorcyclist on the Blue Ridge Parkway and he said we should come up here to see Jefferson’s place and I said Jefferson who?” she laughed. “I could spend all day here, and so far I have. I’m having a great time and it’s been a great experience. I’d definitely come again.”