Regional economists, business owners, and local governments agree: natural amenities are the economic engine of Western North Carolina. Tourism brings in more than $150 million annually to Watauga County, and directly provides 3,000 steady jobs to county residents. By designating a new Grandfather National Scenic Area (GNSA) in the Pisgah National Forest, the federal government can permanently protect some of the region’s most precious economic assets: scenic views from the Blue Ridge Parkway and the tourist destinations of Blowing Rock and Grandfather Mountain.

Designation of the GNSA will have the following economic dividends for the Blue Ridge region and North Carolina:

• Reinforce WNC’s brand as a scenic, conservation-minded region, attracting visitors along with mobile, well-educated workers.

• Increase the property value of homes and real estate in the GNSA viewshed.

• Benefit tourism-dependent businesses (i.e. Grandfather Mountain, Chetola Resort, The Blowing Rock).

• Preserve the attractiveness of the Blue Ridge Parkway as a vacation destination.

Experts on the role of natural amenities in
Western North Carolina’s economy

“In Western North Carolina, natural amenities are huge in terms of the economic base. It’s significantly based on tourism, and tourism to a large extent is centered around natural amenities.”

--Todd L. Cherry (Harlan E. Boyles Professor of Economics, Appalachian State Univ.)

“If the Forest Service were obligated by law to maximize the benefit to citizens from forest lands, they would need to take into account the scenic and other non-timber values of their lands in order to make the most efficient decisions. This would be especially clear in the case of an area like the proposed National Scenic Area in North Carolina, which is located in a region whose tourism-driven economy is dependent on the scenery. For example, our research has indicated that if scenic quality changes along the Blue Ridge Parkway, some visitors will reduce the number of visits they will make to the park; if it gets bad enough, some visitors said they will stop coming all together. This evidence provides a direct link between the scenic quality of the mountains in western North Carolina and its economy that, unfortunately, is not able to be fully recognized in current Forest Service decisions.”

--Leah Greden Mathews (Professor of Economics, Univ. of North Carolina at Asheville)

“Our survey results suggest that visitors [to the Parkway] do not want to see a decline in the scenic experience attributes. This was expressed both in the dollar value estimates of lost satisfaction and in visitor statements regarding future visitation behavior.”

“The average estimated value of a visitor’s lost satisfaction each year from a one level decrease in a Parkway attribute, all other things constant, is:

• • $240 from a decrease in roadside scenic view quality from current to low

• • $359 from a decrease in overlook scenic quality from current to low…

“If scenic quality declines, expenditure growth may decrease by $69 million to $360 million depending on the level of quality decline and our estimation assumptions. This represents a decrease in the potential gains for the communities surrounding this section of the Parkway.”

--Susan Kask (Warren Wilson College), Leah Greden Mathews (UNCA), Steve Stewart (Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville) and Laura Rotegard (Blue Ridge Parkway)

“Counties rich in natural amenities experienced dramatic increases in employment in a broad range of service subsectors, such as health care, personal services, recreation and entertainment but also export-oriented product and professional services.”

“If amenities are not recognized as a resource that can be managed and produced, they run the risk of being degraded. For as surely as soil can be degraded by poor farming practices, a beautiful scenic vista can be degraded by poor land use planning or poor forest management practices. As the rural planner Daniels (1999, p. 3) has noted ‘In the new knowledge economy, an area’s quality of life translates into economic growth.’”

--David Marcouiller (Univ. of Wisconsin) and Greg Clendenning (Nexus Market Research)

“Long-term rural families residing in high growth amenity and recreation areas tend to have higher family incomes than do their counterparts in non-growth amenity/recreation areas. This is true regardless of family size or the sex, race, or age of the family head.”

“Socioeconomically disadvantaged long-term residents (e.g., female-headed families, less educated family heads) appear to find relatively more economic opportunity in amenity growth counties as compared to counties without such growth.”

--Lori M. Hunter, Jason D. Boardman, and Jarron M. Saint Onge (Univ. of Colorado)

“Amenities can stimulate the local economy in another manner that the economic base view tends to ignore. Amenities can attract in-migrants of working age whose very efforts to take up residence in the area can also stimulate the local economy…Local amenities among other things may attract workers, which influences labor costs and creates an attractive labor supply that draws economic activity. Jobs may also follow people.” (64)

--Thomas Michael Power (Chair of Economics Department, Univ. of Montana)

“Places have shifted from being areas of production to becoming areas of consumption…the importance of mineral, cattle, and lumber production is diminished by an economy based on a new paradigm of the amenity region, which creates increased demands for amenity space, residential and recreational property, second homes, and environmental protection.”

--J. Matthew Shumway and Samuel Otterstrom (Geographers, Brigham Young Univ.)