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Grants Are An Investment In Promoting New Spending, Revenue & Sales Tax From Tourism Events
By Tina Traster
An encore for Visit Nyack, the nonprofit that promotes Rockland County’s river village – the organization nabbed $30,000 at Rockland County’s Tourism award ceremony held at The Angel Nyack – the largest prize and a $5,000 increase over 2024’s award.
“This award allows us to continue our tourism efforts,” said Thomas Schneck, president of Visit Nyack. Schneck said the monies are allocated to advertising campaigns to attract tourism from outside the county. He said the additional monies will mean Visit Nyack can up its poster campaign from 50 to 60 subway stations in New York City.
Friday’s festive event was doubly satisfying for Schneck and his wife Susan Wilmink, who purchased the First Reformed Church of Nyack at 18 South Broadway for $2.5 million to transform into a cultural center that incorporates elements of the church’s critical functions.
Friends of Harmony Hall in Sloatsburg and the Garner Arts Center trailed with $20,000 apiece, while the Penguin Players theater, The Hopper House, the New York Boulders and the Holocaust Museum trawled $15,000 a pop. Visit Nyack’s grant represents nearly 10 percent of the $316,000 meted out to 30 groups, while the next six largest recipients makes up roughly 30 percent of the monies.
Since 2016, Rockland County has been granting about 30 cultural, historic, and economic organizations awards annually to promote tourism. From year to year, the list of grantees stays relatively consistent, though this year’s newcomers were BridgeMusik, which received $2,000 and Round Table Brewery in Garner Arts Center, which scored $10,000. Round Table took over the former location of the Industrial Arts Brewery in 2023.
BridgeMusik’s mission, according to its website, is to create affordable and empowering opportunities for school-aged music students through mentoring, collaboration and performances with world-class concert artists in community venues.
Other nonprofits receiving grants include the Haverstraw Brick Museum, Haverstraw River Arts, Friends of Orangetown, and the Rockland Historical Society. A handful of local economic/business groups got monies, including the Suffern Chamber of Commerce and the Nanuet Chamber of Commerce.
In prior years, grantees were told the amount of their awards at the ceremony; this year’s program diverted from that format with a video on Rockland’s tourism but without any revelation of each organization’s grant prize.
“Tourism is a powerful driver of economic growth – it creates jobs, boosts local businesses, and enhances community infrastructure,” said County Executive Ed Day. “Since 2014, Rockland County’s sales tax revenue has consistently increased every year, except for 2020 due to pandemic shutdowns. This achievement is a testament to our strategic investment in our local economy.”
Day said the average household in Rockland would have to pay an additional $618 in yearly property taxes to maintain existing services without tourism-generated sales and local taxes. In 2023, tourism generated 6,860 jobs countywide and $556 million in visitor spending, an 8.4 percent increase over 2022, according to the county.
“Tourism fuels economic investment,” Day said, adding “this is not a giveaway.”
Rockland’s Economic Development and Tourism Director Jenna Nazario said tourism is about “energy, opportunity, prosperity.”
She added, “This is a call to action. To remember the pride. You are the keepers to all the stories.”
Nazario works alongside an outside group the county hired in 2023, the Alon Marketing Group of Farmingdale, NY. The annual contract for $95,460 is to coach Rockland’s tourism’s assets to work more collaboratively to create county-wide tourism itineraries and to educate stakeholders on the tourist trade, according to the county. The contract for 2025 with Alon was renewed for 2025.
This year’s awardees are:
