🔒Q&A: Tower Hill to reopen with reduced capacity

On March 16, Tower Hill Botanic Garden shut down in order to protect the health of its employees and customers through the coronavirus pandemic. CEO Grace Elton talked with WBJ in advance of its June 8 reopening.

How much revenue have you lost?

We estimated if we were shut down between March 16 and the end of June, we would have lost $1 million of our $5 million in annual revenue. It will still probably be pretty close to that.

We did have to lay off 10 staff, all part-timers who were front-facing. The rest of the core staff is still on. The education staff is working from home because they are putting a lot of content online, aimed at kids. We partnered with Worcester Public Schools to provide that information, particularly for parents who are now home educators.

The garden did not stop, so we did everything we could to keep the horticulture staff going. The garden still needs to be worth the price of admission.

Our private event rentals have all stopped, as customers have either been cancelled or deferred. We have been fortunate in that we haven't lost any wedding business, as they largely just deferred to next year. We usually do about 35 weddings, mostly outdoors.

We are still waiting on the state to lift the group size limitations, so we can have events again.

How will reopening help?

Our business model has changed because we were built on volume. Now, we have knocked our capacity down to 500 people per day, and we are lowering prices because not all our amenities will be open, like the library, gift shop and indoor conservatories. Admission prices went from $16 per day to $10.

The garden is looking really fantastic as our staff has been working hard during the shutdown. I can't wait for people to see it. We’ve really enhanced the experience, with more trails and flowers.

What are your new safety measures?

We are lucky the property is 171 acres, so we have a lot of space for people to spread out. About half of that property is open to the public, and the rest is managed woodlands.

For our employees, no one is working in groups. We aren’t sharing tools, and everyone is wearing masks.

For customers, we are limiting ourselves to 500 people per day, placed into four timed windows. We have a no touching rule, and everyone must wear masks and not congregate in large groups. All tickets must be purchased online at TowerHillBG.org.

How do you recover from $1M lost?

We have created a resiliency fund. Our goal is $500,000, and we've already raised about half. We did receive a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan for $565,000, which helped us keep our staff on board, but that is ending soon. The resiliency fund will help us as we adjust to our new revenue models.

Long-term, we have to make some hard decisions. It is all about being fiscally responsible for the garden's future.

For example, we decided not to do Night Lights this year, and I know that is going to be a disappointment for a lot of people. That is our very popular holiday event, and it sold out at 45,000 tickets last year. I made the decision now to cancel it because we basically needed to start preparing now by buying hundreds of thousands dollars worth of supplies and mobilizing an army of volunteers to get it ready. Because of the risk of a second surge and a possible shutdown again, I didn't want to risk it.

Long-term, do you think people will still want to come to Tower Hill?

Once there is a vaccine and people's comfort level is back, visitors will come flooding back to Tower Hill. You see people are being more drawn to nature now, and that is something we can provide. As soon as people are comfortable being around each other again, this is the place where they will want to be.

I don't think this will have a long-term negative effect on Tower Hill. We had a record 170,000 people visit us in 2019, and for the fiscal year ended March 31, we finished in the black. We were a strong organization before the pandemic, and we will be strong after.

This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by Brad Kane, WBJ editor.