Paul Szmal: And welcome back to FLX Morning. It is 8.15 and joining us in studio this morning from the Finger Lakes Visitors Connection is Valerie Knobloch. Valerie, good morning. Good to see you again.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Good to see you, Paul. And I brought along with me Tracy Berkey from our office and just to see how it all works in here. Good morning, Tracy. How are you this morning?
Tracy Birky: I'm doing great. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Wonderful. Wonderful. Good to see you.
So, let's go ahead and update Valerie on the Virtual Museum Project.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Well, the Virtual Museum Project is a project that will bring alive blue signs from across Ontario County, the historical signs, by putting a QR code underneath and having more of the story told. Some of the spots we have targeted in Geneva include the Elizabeth Blackwell statue and basically if people go up there right now, they get to see the statue and see a couple words there, about 14 words, and then our idea is bring that to life. And so, we'll have a little story about Elizabeth Blackwell and there'll be 67 of these experiences across Ontario.
Paul Szmal: Wow. That's a pretty big number. Very good. Very good. And it's grown a little bit and, again, they're across the whole county and Geneva will be a big part of that program for us.
So, one of our wow projects is the Ansley Road Schoolhouse down on Preemption Road and we went out there filming last summer and we show what an experience it was like to be in a one-room schoolhouse in the, well, actually up to 1956 at that schoolhouse.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: I've been by that quite a few times. I drive that route semi-regular during the summer and I always wonder what it looks like on the inside. Now that I know that there's video of it, I can go take a look at that.
Paul Szmal: You'll pull right over and have your phone ready and you'll see more about it.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Oh, that's fantastic. That's a neat way to experience some of the stuff around here by doing it virtually. It is, and more people, we hope, will get interested in the history of the area and tie it to the cultural experiences exist for today as well.
Paul Szmal: Now, I know your agency has been very busy in what we will call destination management mode. To translate that into plain English, what does that mean for people?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Well, that means that a lot of people probably think of our agency as one that just promotes tourism and get the tourists to come and make sure their experiences are okay. But really what we want to do is look at the whole destination and say, what is it that can make our area the best to live in, visit, live in, work and play, and even build a business? So that's managing the whole destination. So if you want, often a first date with somebody who's building a business here is through a visit. They come and they go, wow, I'd like to see more of this. I'd like to live here. And yeah, I'd like to really live here and build a business here. So we have a role in all of that.
So we're going to be bringing together community officials from across the county, community leaders to say, what do you think should be good to grow our area in the areas that we intersect tourism and residential development and community development?
Paul Szmal: All right. So then we're going to put all of that information together. What happens after that?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: We'll make a bit of what's called a destination master plan or a destination vision plan. And then we will say we'd really like to have X, Y, Z happen here. And if we're going to be successful, that has to happen there. One of the issues that commonly comes up that I imagine we'll hear more about is transportation and getting in and out of the area. So a little bit more of the how to and who can we work with to get that situation improved. And that's an example of something that will come out of this, we'll say, what does a good transportation system look like for our area?
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Valerie Knobloch from Finger Lakes Visitors Connection here on FLX Morning. We're just on the doorstep of the month of March, happens to be one of my favorite months of the year because it is Maple Syrup Month.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: It is Maple Syrup Month. And if you go to our website, visit FingerLakes.com and just do a search for maple, you'll see about five different farms across the county that you can go have a maple experience in. Maple growers are very active this time of year. And there's Embers Rising up in Clifton Springs and Everson's up in Clifton Springs. And you can not only sample, you can buy some products. And I often take those to my family that live out of the state, take great big bottles of maple syrup with me. It's a great gift to have. Team that up with some buckwheat pancakes out of the Birkett Mills and great, great coffee from Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters. We got it.
Paul Szmal: Paul, I hate to break in, but I have to tell you, Valerie is retiring from the job after a million years. How'd you know that? I know everything, Valerie. Well, if you know a million years, you've been around that long too, Greg. Valerie and I used to work together a little bit. And so talk to Valerie about her retirement. Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, I wondered what trouble...
Congratulations, Valerie.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Thank you. I wondered what trouble Greg was calling and creeping in behind me here.
Paul Szmal: Well, no, I wasn't quite sure whether you wanted to bring that up or not, but since it's out in the open now, we can talk about the fact that you've put in how many years of service now?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: 40 years at the Finger Lakes Visitors Connection, yes.
Paul Szmal: So is there a particular highlight of that time? Are there moments that stand out, things that you're particularly proud of accomplishing?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Oh my goodness. I think it's all weaves together after a while. There are some certain things that we did that I'm proud of, but it's mostly seeing the success of our industry and the growth of the industry and the new amenities we have. And while I didn't make all of those happen, I think setting the environment for prosperity and growth from the tourism sector overall, we can say, yeah, it's going pretty well here and it's got a great future ahead.
Paul Szmal: I've got to imagine that the fact that we've actually had a real winter for the first time in the past couple of years has probably had a little bit of a bump up on some of the winter tourism activities that happen in the area.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Yeah, I actually was with Steve Fuller from Bristol Mountain yesterday, and Steve was saying it's the best they've had in about four years because of all the natural snow. So while others may resent it being on our highways just a little bit, out at Bristol Mountain, we're glad to get the people to come and mostly glad because it's a launching pad for other experiences in the area as well. The breweries, I'm sure they'll be doing this maple syrup thing as well, going to our arts and crafts places.
Paul Szmal: And there's also the Our Brave Woman promotion that's happening with some of the neighboring counties. Can you kind of shed a little light on what that is, Valerie?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Yeah, Cayuga County's been the leader in the Brave Women promotion and March is Women's Month and there's great promotions going on in our particular area. Naples is having a Women's Weekend and you can go down and learn everything from art to, there's a woman down there that does welding. You can take a welding class. So think a little bit out of the box because these are brave women. And here in Geneva, Nova Cada Madre is the women-owned Trestle 31 and she's participating along with others over at the New York Kitchen in a women in wine series. So again, if people go to our website, visit fingerlakes.com and check the search for Brave Women, they'll see the activities we have and the blogs.
We also have a very interesting blog on there, Back to the History, about the women who made history in Ontario County. And it picks out five women and what they did and learned. And some are known, Susan B. Anthony, but others are a little less known, like Alicia Foote over there in Bloomfield, who was the first one to discover the idea of greenhouse, the greenhouse effect. But because she was a woman in that era, she wrote under her husband's name. And so it was just coming out in the open. Here was the real brains behind that idea.
Paul Szmal: There you go. Any other special activities you want to highlight that are happening in the area right now?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Well, I think just people getting out, you know, Canandaigua just had a successful winter weekend, getting out and playing.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, their Fire and Ice Festival, yeah.
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Yep. But going from that to just the general activities we have going on. This is a time for the arts, special activities at the colleges with the arts and some presenters at Fort Hill Performing Arts Center. I know they have a speaker coming up this weekend who is a national speaker on indigenous culture and women in indigenous culture. So all over again, go to that events calendar and see what's going on. And again, you can find the events calendar at?
Paul Szmal: Visit fingerlakes.com and you can scroll down. You can see the blogs, the events and all the standard activities are there as well.
All right, Valerie, much appreciated having you in. Congratulations on the retirement. Is there an official last day or?
Valerie Knoblauch, Tracy Birky: Sort of. It's hard. May 31st is the official last day, but it's going to be in my heart and I'll still be hanging around, won't I, Tracy?
Tracy Birky: Yes, she will. Speaking of brave women, on behalf of our board and our team, Valerie Knobloch is definitely one of them and has made a tremendous impact on Ontario County. So we will miss her, but we will continue her legacy in tourism.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. Well, thank you, ladies, both of you for being here this morning. We really appreciate it. It's 8.25 on FLX morning.
