Time to Find Our Place in the Sun
I know it’s up for me
If you steal my sunshine
Making sure I’m not in too deep
If you steal my sunshine
Keeping versed and on my feet
If you steal my sunshine
‘Steal My Sunshine‘ by Len may not be an eclipse song, but the moon will be stealing the Western New York sunshine in front of tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors on April 8, 2024. The words of the chorus are a good reminder that you need to be resilient even if things go awry. Words that our local leaders need to take to heart.
We have eighteen months to get this right.
What can local leaders do to be resilient and plan for the best? Here’s a non-exhaustive list to consider:
- Construction – April is usually the start of the season for many road and building construction projects. Nothing ruins the experience of a road trip more than a long delay through a construction zone. If the projected totals of a half a million or greater visitors comes to pass, that is adding double the number of cars on our highways. Consider delaying any project that reduces traffic volume until after the eclipse has occurred.
- Manpower – Maybe this week can be treated as a holiday week for municipal services like garbage pickups? It would free up the roads and workers could be used the day of the eclipse as paid volunteers around the community. Speaking of volunteers, time to set up a common volunteer database that can be shared among event organizers. Maybe this is a time to block off for vacations? Not only for municipal employees, but also in the tourism, restaurant and retail fields. This could be an all hands on deck event before and after the eclipse.
- Lodging – With the eclipse happening off-season for local tourism, hotels and motels will have to be ready for a huge influx of customers for the weekend. We will also be needing a huge boost from private lodgings (Airbnb, Vrbo, etc.). Rental agencies might want to book out their available furnished apartments. Realtors might check with their owners for fully furnished locations if they can open up for guests for the extended weekend. It’s time to reach out to the lodging industry to make sure they make plans for this day and that there is a vetting process for available private rentals.
- Dining – From fast food to fine dining, we can guarantee full houses throughout the weekend. Finding any space at the Anchor Bar or Duff’s will be a challenge, but can we get our guests to do the rest of the Buffalo Wing Trail? Move them from national pizza chains to local pizzerias selling Buffalo-style pizza? Get them our local favorites and tempt them with the local delicacies unknown outside our region like our Friday fish fry’s (no other place comes close), beef on weck, and spaghetti parmesan? And finish them off with the melt in your mouth experience of sponge candy?
- Schools – Should schools should be closed for the day? This could be a safety issue as the bus ride home will occur during the two and a half hours during either the partial or total eclipse. It would be tough to ensure that young children would wear the protective solar glasses on what would likely be a rowdy bus ride from school. It would ease up traffic concerns as well to remove the busses from the roads. Better yet, if the busses were available, they could be used as shuttles to move people to prime viewing locations without the traffic headaches that on-site parking would cause. We must also take into consideration that schools will be let out for the day during the eclipse – it’s a total safety issue with unsupervised children with unprotected eyes, all doing things kids do… look upwards towards the darkened sun. Let’s make sure that they are informed and protected.
We have eighteen months to get this right. New York State and the upstate counties in the path of totality need to get together to fund an advertising campaign to bring people from near and far to see what will one of the longest solar eclipses of the century and the last in the United States in twenty years.
Having the airports with the largest number of flights scheduled, Buffalo and Rochester will likely be the entry points for out of state visitors, so it would make sense that we would get a majority of the visitors here.
It would be neat to see a national ad during the pregame of 2024 Super Bowl with the Bills as the defending champions. And it would be great to have the two-time Super Bowl champion players as ambassadors at our local eclipse activities.
See Part I – Is this a Curse on Our Region?
See Part II – The Motion of the Celestial Spheres?
Part III – Sun, Sun, Sun – Will it Come?
Part IV – Closing Time is 4 am???
Lead image: Photo by Jason Howell
