EASTPORT, Maine — The Eastport Area Chamber of Commerce has opened a new regional visitor information center in the recently constructed Eastport Port Authority building.
In order to pay for its new location on the first floor of 141 Water St., the chamber is generating new income by selling multimedia and banner advertisements, according to Executive Director Meg Keay.
The chamber rents the space from the port authority for $12,000 to $14,000 per year. Add supplies and a cleaning person, and the cost reaches about $20,000 annually, Keay said.
“I presented [the chamber board] with a plan to pay for it over and above our operating budget,” she said.
That plan generates most of its income through ad sales on a multimedia system that includes several television screens in the visitor center. One will display a calendar of events and photos of the entire region. Another will display up to 90 individual ads for 10 seconds at a time. These ads will rotate through four times per hour and cost advertisers $250 annually. Another TV screen will display these same ads at the Roosevelt-Campobello Information Center in Whiting.
“It is a very reasonable fee for a multimedia system, and we wanted to do it this way to make it affordable for smaller businesses as well as larger businesses,” Keay said.
So far, about 45 of these $250 ads have been sold. When 90 are sold — enough to fill one screen — it will generate $22,500, at which time a second screen would be put in place for more ads. Another $4,500 would come from the sale of banner ads to be set up at the visitor center, Keay said.
By the end of the year, Keay hopes to sell enough ads to warrant a third screen to be added at a location somewhere in Lubec or Calais. Eventually, she hopes to sell enough ads to support as many as 10 screens throughout the area.
“The beauty of this system is they’re going to be situated in different locations,” she said.
Naturally, the information center also will offer brochures and other publications aimed at tourists. A table on one side of the room gives visitors a place to sit down and review materials about destinations in New Brunswick and Maine for a Two Nation Vacation.
The new information center also comes with amenities that were not available at the chamber’s previous location at 64 Water St.: public restrooms.
The lack of restrooms hampered chamber efforts to assist tourists and make them want to spend more time in the area, Keay said.
“How do you offer hospitality to travelers with no restrooms? You don’t,” she said.
The chamber was on a “crusade” to find a new location where it could offer restrooms.
“We looked at buildings that could possibly be renovated. … There wasn’t a stone we didn’t overturn,” Keay said.
Then, about 18 months ago, Gardner called and suggested the chamber rent space in the port authority building, which was under construction at that time.
The visitor center is unlocked 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days per week. For those who have questions, it is staffed during holidays and festivals and otherwise from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
“The idea is that if you can really give your travelers, your guests a lot of information, they may extend their stay … or come back again,” Keay said.
She stressed the chamber must think regionally in order to compete with tourist attractions, such as Bar Harbor and Portland.
“If we’re going to compete with those areas, we’ve got to think big and think outside the box,” she said.
Chamber board member Vern McKimmey, who also is marketing and communications director for the Roosevelt-Campobello International Park, said he is excited about the new visitor information center.
“I have high hopes for it. I think it will help Eastport, and if you help Eastport, you help Campobello,” he said.
McKimmey also does marketing for Charlotte Coastal Regional Tourism in Canada and believes the trick to helping any single destination is to get people to the region.
“We believe in regionalism,” he said. “Meg Keay and the Eastport chamber are leading the way.”
Gardner said he is pleased the port authority building was able to help the chamber, especially in its quest to find a place with restrooms.
“I’m glad we were able to do it for them,” he said.
The port authority designed the building to meet the needs of the community and rents space to other organizations, such as the University of Maine Sea Grant Program.
“This building actually makes money,” Gardner said. “It was an investment. Everything we do has to be an investment. … We’re proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish here.”
The port authority used about $150,000 cash and borrowed about $300,000 to construct the 6,000-square-foot-building at a total cost of about $450,000. It was completed in December 2014.
“This building was actually cheaper to heat than our old office,” Gardner said.
Heating costs last year in the new building were $1,800, compared to $2,100 for the old building during the same period the year before, he said.