ASHLAND — While the exact number of people who showed up in Ashland to view the eclipse aren’t available (yet), the Chamber of Commerce and Ashland Main Street both say the once-in-a-generation event went well from their perspectives.
“I think it was perfect,” said Sandra Tunnell, the executive director of Ashland Main Street.
Amy Daubenspeck, the president of the Ashland Area Chamber of Commerce, added the weekend eclipsed her expectations after almost 18 months of planning for the event.
“It was just an amazing experience, and for me, it was just like the reward for all the planning and all the meetings and all the time,” Daubenspeck said.
“Then boom, it actually happened and we actually got to see this once-in-a-lifetime thing, literally in my own back yard.”
Highlights
Tunnell and Ashland Main Street hosted a “Total Eclipse of Downtown” party all weekend. The event featured the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, silent discos, Ashland’s Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area in effect and more.
While Tunnell didn’t have exact numbers, she said downtown businesses seemed full all weekend, and saw a lot of people who hadn’t attended Ashland Main Street events before. She added she heard many people saying they’d come from out of town to stay with family or friends during the eclipse.
Many businesses told Ashland Source yesterday that they’d sold out (or had nearly sold out) of eclipse gear, too.
That was the same case for Explore Ashland’s eclipse boxes, according to its president, Amy Daubenspeck.
Daubenspeck added the week before the eclipse, she knew of at least one hotel that had reached three-quarters capacity for Sunday night. That’s higher than normal, she said, and could’ve increased since she’d heard of it.
The morning of the eclipse, she said a steady stream of people visited the Chamber’s office searching for eclipse glasses and information too.
Tunnell said she talked with people who’d visited from Kentucky, Los Angeles, Virginia, Washington and a slew of other Ohio towns that weren’t in the path of totality. Daubenspeck agreed, adding she’d seen license plates from at least seven different states.
Insights
The event also offered further insights for both organizations as they handle large events moving forward.
Tunnell said she hopes to debrief with other Main Street organizations and get more ideas from their successes during the eclipse too. She also said she hopes that in the future, there can be a way to collect information from event attendees about where they came from and why they came to Ashland for such events.
Ashland Main Street recently signed a contract with Placer.ai, a technology that uses anonymized location data from mobile devices to offer information about how many people are in one place.
Tunnell said that program has about a three-day lag on collecting information for a specific day.
But, later this week, she said she’ll have numbers indicating how many people were in Ashland in April 2023 versus April 2024. That information will offer a better understanding of how many people may have come to Ashland for the eclipse, Tunnell said.
Daubenspeck said, in her opinion, Ashland was almost over-prepared for the eclipse Monday.
“There was really no way to know if we’ll get an influx of people, or traffic and all of that, and I think everybody was really ready to be on their A-game and we were very fortunate that there weren’t any incidents or anything like that where we had to worry about it,” Daubenspeck said.
“… It was just nice to have everybody come together and experience it together.”
