EVANSVILLE — Alexis Berggren has a little formula to open people's eyes to the sheer scope and importance of what will happen in Evansville on April 8.
The total solar eclipse — a celestial event that won't be repeated here until long after this generation is dead and buried — is projected to bring 80,000 people to the area for the weekend leading into April 8, a Monday. It's an influx of humanity comparable to the World War II population boom, when the city became a center of wartime manufacturing.
It's Evansville's big chance, Berggren said.
"Tourism is really the beginning of the economic development cycle," said Berggren, president and CEO of Explore Evansville. "When you get a person to visit an area, if they enjoy the area they’ll want to return. And if they return, they might relocate. And if they relocate, they might invest — and if they invest, then they attract more visitors."
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Berggren noted studies that show about two-thirds of travelers prefer to visit a place before relocating there. Explore Evansville's projection of 80,000 visitors includes many who likely will be visiting friends and relatives — and many who might not otherwise have ever come to Southwestern Indiana.
Warrick, Posey and Gibson counties, and Henderson County, Kentucky will see some visitors, Berggren said, but "the bulk of those folks are going to be staying in Evansville, eating in Evansville, shopping in Evansville, over those three or four days."
There won't likely be a lot of northerners among them. All told, nearly 500 cities in the U.S. are located on the eclipse's path of totality. Given that Indianapolis is among them, Explore Evansville's marketing has been aimed at parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia that are in reasonable driving distance.
More: Everything you need to know about the April 8 total solar eclipse
Capitalizing: The long view and the short view
Explore Evansville has led the community outreach arm of the city's eclipse preparations for more than a year. Part of that outreach is counseling local businesses on the importance of not only engaging with guests and visitors, but staying in contact with them they leave with an eye toward luring them back.
That can mean requiring email addresses for RSVPs or ticket purchases, or it can be even more elementary than that.
"If they don’t have systems in place like a lot of retailers do in terms of, you know — before you even hand them your credit card, they’re asking for your phone number or your email address," Berggren said. "If (businesses) don’t have those kinds of systems in place, we’ll help them set up QR codes. We can help them set up even simple email forms to capture email (addresses)."
But those are relationships that can take years to build and to pay off. The short view is Explore Evansville's projection that visitors will spend at least $7.7 million on lodging, transportation, retail, recreation and food and beverages in Vanderburgh County alone in the runup to the total solar eclipse.
More: Here's a list of events leading up to, and on the day of, the April 8 total eclipse
And that number is "really conservative," Berggren said. She pointed to the experience of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 2017.
Evansville was only on the fringes of the "path of totality" traced across the Earth by the moon's shadow as it crossed the sun on Aug. 21, 2017. That year's total solar eclipse was the first such celestial event to hit North America in 38 years.
The Evansville area wasn't in position to see a total eclipse, which happens when the moon completely blocks the sun from the sky. Local residents still bought shareable, reusable and inexpensive protective glasses in numbers that forced convenience stores, sporting goods stores and other suppliers to scramble to meet demand.
And they flocked along with people from other states and nations to Hopkinsville, dubbed the ideal place to watch. As the moon made its trek across the country, it would be closest to the Earth when it passed Hopkinsville. It was the darkest point along the path of totality.
Brigette Jones, director of the Hancock County (Kentucky) Tourism & Visitors Center, recently pegged the 2017 eclipse's economic impact to Christian County, home to Hopkinsville, at $28.6 million.
More: Need glasses for the April 8 solar eclipse? Here's where to find them in Evansville.
Jones made no bones about the opportunity that attracting so many visitors represents to a community.
"People have to eat your food and stay in your hotels," she told the Daily Reporter. "They’ll want to buy things and get the T-shirt, and will be looking for something to do. If you own a restaurant or a business or farmland, this is your opportunity to cash in on that."
'It takes that perfect alignment'
Evansville is directly in the narrow Texas-to-Maine path of the total solar eclipse. The sun gradually will be eclipsed by the moon, bringing total darkness for slightly more than three minutes at 2:02 p.m. in Evansville and six seconds later in Henderson, Kentucky. Henderson is expected to have about two minutes and 30 seconds of totality.
Because Evansville was on the fringes of the path of totality in 2017, Gary Barr said, many area residents may not appreciate how rare and majestic is the event coming on April 8.
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There will be partial eclipses in the decades to come and total eclipses elsewhere on Earth, said Barr, an Evansville-based solar system ambassador for NASA and frequent host of eclipse explainer events. But the next total eclipse in the Evansville area won't happen until Oct. 17, 2153.
More: Total solar eclipse in Evansville: What if it rains?
"People say, 'Oh, I’ll just wait another five years, and it’ll happen again,'" Barr said. "No, it will be past your lifetime before the next one happens in our area.
"It takes that perfect alignment of the moon and the earth and the rotation of the earth to put that mark right over Evansville again."
Planning for all the economic, traffic-related and community outreach implications of such a staggering event is the work of committees that began meeting more than a year ago.
That's how important it is that Evansville get this right, Alexis Berggren said.
The city has received national attention before and can be expected to gain more from the eclipse experience, Berggren said.
"But if this goes well, I think we’re going to gain some really positive sentiment across the region, across the country," she said. "It will only play to our favor as we try to attract more people to the community."