AUGUST 6, 2009 ISSUE
Mission: Make Watauga County Top Recreation Destination in East
Meet Eric Woolridge, WCTDA Senior Outdoor Recreation Planner
Eric Woolridge, the WCTDA senior outdoor recreation planner, will strive to make Watauga County a top recreation destination by increasing and standardizing local recreation infrastructure. He plans on creating more mountain biking trails, securing more areas for rock climbing and creating paddle trail access points for the Watauga and New rivers Photo submitted
Eric Woolridge, AICP, was hired in the middle of March this year as the senior outdoor recreation planner for Watauga County Tourism Development Authority (WCTDA), and he has already begun the groundwork for increasing outdoor recreation opportunities in the Boone area.
“Our goal is to be one of the top recreation destinations in the East, at least,” Woolridge said.
He is responsible for creating a recreation plan for the WCTDA for the upcoming years that will lay out the necessary improvements to create more outdoor recreation infrastructure in the area.
Improvements will include more mountain biking trails, securing more areas for rock climbing and creating paddle trail access points for the Watauga and New rivers, he said, “with the goal of providing locals and visitors [with] access areas and preventing some issues like trespassing [by creating] legitimate places to get in and out [of the rivers].”
The many types of increased outdoor recreation opportunities will benefit both visitors and locals.
Woolridge plans to “tie all this together through signage and information,” he said. Collaborating with Watauga County Parks & Recreation, he plans on creating a design manual so that all outdoor recreation areas, from county parks to paddle trail access points to rock climbing areas, will have the same look and feel—including standardized signs and picnic tables.
“Right now, I’m trying to bring together experienced architects and experienced landscape architects to create some of these designs,” he said. “The hard part is land acquisition. With the state budget like it is, lots of resources that have been there in the past are dried up at the moment.”
Most TDAs are structured with two primary focuses—one on marketing and branding and one on capital investment, Woolridge said.
The goal of marketing and branding an area is to bring in more travel and tourism, and the capital investment side creates more infrastructure, to “develop physically things you can market to bring more travel and tourism,” he said.
The WCTDA is a six-member board appointed by the county commissioners, he said.
“At the end of the day, we’re doing economic development, and the type of economic development we’re engaged in increases the quality of life for residents that live here as well,” Woolridge said.
Watauga County and the surrounding area has a lot of assets and resources, but “not necessarily a good system in place,” he said. “What I’m doing is product development…I’m creating something for the marketing arm to market.”
His job involves establishing the priorities—determining where the TDA should put its financial resources—as well as creating more outdoor recreation, bringing in more money for projects, establishing close relations to user groups and writing grants.
“One thing I’m really doing right now is talking to a lot of user groups,” Woolridge said, adding that these groups include avid fly-fishers, mountain bikers and climbers, and he discusses the challenges, goals and opportunities of those activities with them.
“These user groups are helping me create plan framework, the skeleton of the plan,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of excited users that I’ve been in contact with that have been helping me to understand how we can improve access [and] where the big gaps are in terms of local outdoor recreation.”
From his explorations of the area, Woolridge has begun to identify where the opportunities are, he said.
“There are some great opportunities for…projects out there, [and] there are a handful of small ways we can really improve outdoor recreation,” he said, adding that he’ll bring some of these ideas to the public in late fall or early winter.
Woolridge graduated in 2001 with a degree in community and regional planning from ASU’s geography and planning department. He has lived in Boone since 1997, but for five years, he commuted to Lenoir to work in Caldwell County in long-range planning, development and land use.
His current title of senior outdoor recreation planner came about because his former job title was “senior planner,” he said.
Woolridge did “conservation and subdivision kind of work, then got into community asset planning and place-based economic development,” he said. “Both are models that use existing resources [that you] can’t outsource [and] can only be found in this area, this community.”
In Caldwell County, he did a number of greenway projects and community parks, working with landowners, conservation organizations, land trusts, conservation easements and trail easements, he said.
Negotiating with developers, he created public trails in private communities and has also been doing environmental mapping work for eight years with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and other systems.
Woolridge did some work for the WCTDA as an independent contractor, such as helping them secure grant money and doing some planning work, prior to his current job.
A mountain biking and disc golf fan, Woolridge is also a strong proponent for ultimate Frisbee. He has played the game for 12 years with a variety of teams across the state and started the Boone Ultimate Alliance, a community-based organization that promotes the game.
He also is an advocate for greenways and multi-use trails.
“I enjoy the Virginia Creeper Trail, [and] I took my daughter to the New River Trail in Virginia,” he said, adding that those are rails to trails—former railroad lines converted into trails.
“We don’t really have those opportunities here,” he said, adding that it is a more challenging task here because constructing a trail requires working with property owners who are willing to participate in that kind of project.
“I think multi-use trails really impact a lot of people. Those trails can really connect urban areas to rural neighborhoods and communities.”
Multi-use trails are utilized by both young and old, rich and poor, moms with strollers and inline skaters, he added.
For more information, call Eric Woolridge at 828-266-1345 or email eric@ExploreBooneArea.com.
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