California county seeks heritage branding

National Heritage Areas add $12.9 billion annually to the national economy Santa Clara County wants to be one

Quick, name the county where Silicon Valley is located.

Do you know the way to San Jose, Calif.? It’s the seat of Santa Clara County, America’s tech capital — home of Apple, Facebook and Google, to name a few.

But the county’s broader identity often gets overshadowed by the greater San Francisco Bay area, of which it’s a part.

Dave Cortese, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, is out to change that. He’s spearheading an effort to have Congress designate the county as a National Heritage Area (NHA). NHAs are regions where natural, cultural and historic resources combine to form a “nationally distinctive landscape” that tells a story of national importance, according to the National Park Service (NPS) website.

“If you say Silicon Valley, you can make the argument that we’re a well identified, well labeled, well defined, well branded area,” Cortese said. “On the other hand, where the hell is Silicon Valley?

“Is that tech or is that really intended to represent what our heritage is really about here?” San Jose was the state’s first capital — before Sacramento — and the Santa Clara Valley has a rich agricultural history.

Since 1984, Congress has designated 49 NHAs, and counties have often taken a lead role in creating them. In Ohio, four counties — Cuyahoga, Summit, Stark and Tuscarawas — comprise the Ohio and Erie Canalway NHA, and Park County, Colo. is home to the South Park NHA.

Santa Clara County’s proposed NHA would be the first in California or any other West Coast state.

National Heritage Areas contribute $12.9 billion annually to the national economy, according to NPS — primarily through heritage tourism, economic development and branding. They are not units of the Park Service, but NPS provides them with technical, planning and limited financial assistance.

The Ohio and Erie Canalway NHA has attracted more than $100 million in private, local, state and federal investment for its main feature, a multi-use recreational trail along the canal’s tow path, said Dan Rice, president and CEO of the Ohio and Erie Canalway Association.

Each year, the South Park NHA awards about $100,000 in sub-grants to local nonprofits, according to Andy Spencer, director of Heritage, Tourism and Community Development for Park County.

 “Designation can be a long and arduous task. … However, with a strong community, it can be done,” he said.

Santa Clara County formed a task force that’s been meeting since May —  one of whose committees is developing a community engagement plan. Last month, the group conducted three community meetings across the county.

Cortese said the county hopes to have its feasibility study done by this fall, and the county has asked Stanford University, San Jose State and the University of Santa Clara to be “academic partners” in this process.

Obtaining congressional approval of an NHA is hardly a slam dunk.

It took three tries before the Ohio and Erie Canalway area was approved. After unsuccessfully applying in 1992 and 1994, the organizers had a “change in perspective,” and their persistence paid off, Rice explained.

“We didn’t stop working on the designation, but we just accepted the fact that we are a heritage area, our resources are worthy.

“We weren’t going to wait until someone in Washington or Congress blessed us,” he said. That continued effort paid off in 1996, when Congress approved the region’s NHA.

Santa Clara County is at the beginning of that process with a clear goal in mind.

“People have been talking for years in the county and the city of San Jose about the fact that for a lot of the rest of the country, there’s no ‘there’ there,” Cortese said. “We do think a National Heritage Areas will help change that to some extent.

“It will build an even greater sense of community here, and it would certainly be useful in terms of visitors and convention bureau-type branding.”