FALL RIVER – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Bicentennial Park, while honoring the many Vietnam veterans who sacrificed their lives to protect our freedoms, will also be a positive economic stimulus for the city, creating a total direct and indirect economic impact of between $772,750 and $777,742, according to a Salve Regina University study.
Business students in professor Sam Sacco’s "Introduction to Econometrics" class at Salve Regina presented their findings to the project’s committee members and guests during a virtual meeting Monday. In addition to calculating economic impact, the students presented several strategies to increase the number of visitors to the site in the future.
When completed, the 360-foot-long wall, located in Fall River’s Veterans Memorial Bicentennial Park, will be an 80 percent replica of the original Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. The project’s committee broke ground last June and hopes to dedicate the wall on Veterans Day 2020.
Sacco said the students’ research shows how the Memorial Wall presents a significant opportunity to better integrate Bicentennial Park with adjacent Fall River neighborhoods and downtown businesses, as well as tourist attractions like Battleship Cove and the Marine Museum.
“The site can serve as a focal point for many community events and activities," Sacco said.
Findings in the study include:
The Fall River Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall will attract 10,813 to 10,885 annual visitors after installation.
Over time, with more integration of Bicentennial Park with local community events and activities, annual visitors may increase 20% to 25% to approximately 13,500.
The Fall River Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall will create a total direct and indirect economic impact of $772,750 to $777,742.
“This is not going to be one of those studies that gets done and sits on a bookshelf,” said Joseph Marshall, committee chairman of the wall. “The idea is to use it, and we plan on presenting it to the mayor. I can assure you that we’ll be going to this study often until we do everything it says in there.”
Sacco commended the students for delivering the impact study on time during a semester turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic.
“We started the semester traditionally and finished remotely, and these students never missed a beat,” Sacco said. “They worked from their homes across the country to get it done.”