Ensuring Local Communities Benefit from the Outdoor Recreation Boom

By Seth Brown, Vice President

Velomont Trail, Vermont

We are at a pivotal moment for outdoor recreation in this country.

While tourism spending crashed during the pandemic, many Americans rediscovered their love of the great outdoors. Significant federal funding for outdoor recreation infrastructure has come through the Great American Outdoors Act, American Rescue Plan, and bipartisan Infrastructure bill. Sixteen states have established offices of recreation, or similar structures, to advance the outdoor recreation economy and the related benefits such as health and wellbeing, community infrastructure, transportation, education, conservation, and climate resilience.

It’s not all good news. The reality is that while the outdoor recreation economy accounts for 2% of GDP and 3% of all U.S. employees work in outdoor recreation, access to outdoor recreation assets is not equitable. And too often, local communities do not directly benefit from the recreation assets in their backyard. New outdoor recreation infrastructure is difficult to fund, and existing assets are even harder to maintain.

I believe much of this is attributable to two persistent challenges:

• How to provide more technical assistance to rural communities to develop, sustain, and expand recreation assets

• How to attract more flexible capital to cover some pre-development costs, unlock additional funding, and bridge the arbitrary divide between wholly publicly and privately funded projects

At Quantified Ventures, we see the evolving outdoor recreation landscape as an opportunity to address these problems in a coordinated manner. As an intermediary, Quantified Ventures sits at the nexus of the key stakeholders working to equitably advance the outdoor recreation economy. This provides us with a distinct vantage point on how we see the conversation shifting to a more holistic view of the benefits of outdoor recreation. And we see each stakeholder group pivoting, but not pivoting together.

More specifically:

• Government is trying to better leverage partners to get more done across land boundaries

• Philanthropy is shifting from a focus on conservation to a broader view of how conserved land affects communities, economies, and public health

• Corporations in a variety of industries are increasingly willing to directly support local outdoor recreation initiatives that drive economic development, community health, and recreation access

• Investors are seeking viable opportunities to achieve returns from allocating capital to outdoor recreation

• Local implementors and NGOs bring deep knowledge of the community and its needs, but are learning how to navigate the complex funding web to get technical assistance on the ground

If the aforementioned stakeholder groups can better align their efforts and focus on what they each do best, there is a significant opportunity to deliver more technical assistance, attract flexible capital, and ensure local communities directly benefit from new and expanded outdoor recreation assets.

The good news is all groups are building a platform with a more holistic view of impact and outcomes at its core. Outdoor recreation, health and well-being, economic development, community infrastructure – the intersections and overlaps in this Venn diagram are much more widely recognized and communicated.

Baileys Trail System, Ohio

This bigger tent welcomes new partners and funding sources into the conversation about outdoor recreation asset development and conservation. Through our work on more than a dozen forestry and land use projects, including seven on national forests, Quantified Ventures has developed an outdoor recreation infrastructure playbook built on a similar philosophy and featuring three core principles:

• Joint governance and management among local public and private organizations

• Blended financing for projects from a mix of government, private, and philanthropic sources

• Sustainable business model through diversified revenue sources that keep economic benefits local

Take the Baileys Trail System in Appalachian Ohio as an example of these three principles in action.

The Wayne National Forest in Athens County has miles of abandoned coal mines. Together, the community and the US Forest Service re-envisioned this terrain as a world class trail system that could drive visitors to Southeast Ohio. They had a plan but did not have local capacity or access to capital.

Quantified Ventures worked with local partners and the US Forest Service to kickstart the development of the Baileys Trail System, a premier mountain biking trail system. Our work included:

• Quantifying the trail’s regional benefits and sharing those forecasts with local elected officials and investors

• Creating a local council of governments and a nonprofit partner to manage the trail as a social enterprise

• Securing $11+ million from public and private sources to finance the 88-mile trail system

• Providing technical assistance for business strategy, planning, and local capacity building

And we are working on similar projects in Vermont, California, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

This work is hard. Meaningfully engaging local communities, building support and local capacity, and identifying funding sources and sustainable revenue streams takes time. There is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all solution.

To help address the persistent challenges associated with technical assistance and flexible capital, Quantified Ventures is seeking collaborators to:

• Unlock funding for technical assistance that enables partnerships like Quantified Ventures’ work with the USFS that builds local capacity

• Build and capitalize an outdoor recreation infrastructure bank, that can bridge the arbitrary divide between purely public money and purely private investment is necessary to move projects further, faster

Working together, we have an opportunity to shift the conversation and to tell the full story of how that local trail or campground is an economic driver and a community asset. We also have the ability – as representatives of government, philanthropy, industry, investors, and local implementors / NGOs – to better align our efforts to develop the outdoor recreation economy and keep the benefits of economic development local.

Reach out to me at brown@quantifiedventures.com to learn more and get involved!