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The Galena Creek Regional Visitor Center will be built on USDA Forest Service land adjacent to Galena Creek Park, which lies on the Mount Rose Scenic Byway between the internationally-known tourist destinations of Reno, NV, and Lake Tahoe. The visitor center is a cooperative project between the Carson Ranger District of Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and the Washoe County Department of Regional Parks and Open Space.
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The EDA project team was tasked to write an interpretive plan for the visitor center, and, on completion of the interpretive plan, was hired to complete an exhibit concept plan. These two projects were among several that EDA completed under an IDIQ (indefinite-in-quantity) contract awarded to our firm and our longtime partners, the firm of Case, Lowe and Hart, Architects and Engineers, of Ogden, Utah.
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The challenges of this process included targeting multiple audiences. A steady stream of tourists is expected at the facility, but the park is popular with local residents as well, and visitation is split roughly equally between visitors and locals. Reno, like many western cities, is experiencing rapid growth that includes a significant increase in the Spanish-speaking population. A thorough audience analysis was among the first tasks completed. It included projections of a continuing increase in the proportion of Latinos in Reno that led to the strategic recommendation for bi-lingual interpretive content.
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| Another preliminary step in the process was a “managers’ meeting” with Forest Service and Washoe County administrative staff. The meeting’s purpose was to identify specific problems (i.e. fire and fuels, dog waste) that could be mitigated through interpretation, and to define the objectives for the facility. This meeting was followed by a two-day design charrette at which statements of significance and primary themes were developed. |
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Stakeholders who attended included scholars from the University of Nevada at Reno and representatives of special-interest groups (i.e. equestrian clubs), the Nevada Department of Transportation, Nevada Rock Art Society, Desert Research Institute and the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority.
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The output of the charrette was a set of statements of significance and four primary themes. The EDA team then developed a set of subthemes that guided the development of more than twenty exhibit concepts. Forest Service and Washoe County staff ranked the concepts in order of priority for implementation. This list formed the foundation for the exhibit concept plan.
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What sets this interpretive plan apart? First, it is solidly-based on a derivative process. Each exhibit concept is described in a flowchart that leads from objective to theme to target audience to media recommendation to desired outcome. If a concept could not be clearly linked to an objective, it was rejected. Second, the audience analysis was exhaustive, and it included a segmentation of park visitors into distinct target audiences based on recreational preferences. |
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Finally, the plan included strategies for retailing, fund-raising, developing partnerships and monitoring/evaluation, some or all of which are missing from many interpretive plans.
Despite the fact that the Forest Service has had a moratorium on the building of new visitor centers in place for a number of years, an exemption giving approval for construction of the facility has been received from the Washington Office of the Forest Service based on the plan written by EDA.
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