Economic Impact of the James River Park System (VA)
Economic Impact of the James River Park System (VA)
Research
Virginia | 2017
Executive Summary
Large cities around the United States routinely engage researchers to examine the economic value of their Park Systems. These efforts generally assess seven core criteria including (1) property values, (2) revenue associated with tourism, (3) direct use, (4) health, (5) community cohesion, (6) clean water and (7) clean air.
- The JRPS has a positive impact on residential property values, across residential property type. In particular, single family properties in the City of Richmond see a $6.79 increase in total assessed property value for every foot they are closer to Park boundaries (or $8,963 per quarter-mile).
- Based on validated visitation counts and accepted Virginia-based visitor spending quotients (per Magnini & Uysal, 2016), the James River Park System has potential to generate $33,582,801 per year in tourism.
- Given JRPS’ FY17 budget of $557,337, every JRPS budget dollar is associated with $60.26 visitor spending.
- Finally, in-person interviews conducted with a targeted, but limited, sample of Park-related businesses (N=32) found that their aggregated annual revenue exceeded $15,850,000. Moreover, these businessmen and businesswomen estimated a 32.7% loss of revenue if the James River Park System did not exist. This represents a potential loss of $5,182,950 in revenue from these 32 local businesses alone.
