Ken Cox is one of the volunteers at the 18th-century Blandford Church, known for its Tiffany windows. (Photo by Adam DuBrueler)
Petersburg tourism is slowly making a comeback after the financially strapped city of 32,000 announced more than a year ago that it was going to stop funding marketing efforts and the city’s museums.
“It was a line item over $600,000 a year,” says H. Edward Mann, interim executive director of the Petersburg Preservation Task Force. The Petersburg City Council in September 2016 voted to shut its two visitor centers and three museums, including the Siege Museum, which was already closed because of structural issues.
Mann says the largely volunteer task force has taken over management of the museums, as well as tourism marketing, under a memorandum of understanding with the city. The memorandum comes up for renewal in April 2019, and the task force hopes the agreement can be extended for four to five years. The group sought donations and spent about $20,000 on advertising for the city’s attractions last year and plans to increase the amount to $50,000 this year. Tourism in the city also is promoted through the Petersburg Area Regional Tourism Corp.
“At first blush, knocking out that $600,000 a year was very shortsighted,” says Mann, the former executive director of the Jamestown 400th Commemoration Commission. “Tourism and preservation are one of the few things in town that are working.”
But, he adds, slashing those funds galvanized community supporters who treasure the city’s history. Mann says the task force has 60 volunteers who do everything from serving as docents at the museums and attractions to offering sweat equity on building maintenance and responding to unanticipated developments. One occurred when when artifacts had to be moved out of the still-closed, circa-1841 Exchange Building, which houses the Siege Museum, when the climate control malfunctioned.
“The effort could not be done without those volunteers,” Mann says.
Volunteers also have been able to keep open one of the city most visited sites, the circa 1736 Blandford Church, with Tiffany windows installed during a restoration in the early 1900s.
Another major tourist attraction, Centre Hill Museum, a mansion where President Abraham Lincoln spoke to Union soldiers in 1865, closed temporarily because a boiler blew out, but has reopened and welcomes visitors Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.
A separate nonprofit, Friends of Historic Farmers Bank, organized to operate and preserve the circa-1817 Farmers Bank museum, and planned to take over ownership from Preservation Virginia.
“We are all focused on working together to make this work,” Mann says.
