The Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in St. Joseph will once again offer lighthouse tours this summer.
Museum Director Marco Tomasi spoke to St. Joseph City Commissioners this week as they considered approval of the tours. It wasn’t possible to operate the tours in 2020 due to high Lake Michigan levels and the pandemic, but they resumed in 2021 and continued in 2022 and 2023.
Tomasi said the lighthouse tours are core to the museum’s mission.
“It’s part of the community,” Tomasi said. “We have it actually in our organizational chart as part of community outreach. We, from a business perspective, see it also as marketing for both the city and for our organization. So, we understand we’re going to probably take a loss on it, but even so, we’re trying to defray some of those costs involved with doing this program.”
Tomasi said they have enough volunteers for the tours, but are always looking for more. He noted about 80% of the volunteers this year are new.
“There was a small market turnover combined with just growing the number of people we had.”
In 2019, more than $20,000 in revenue was generated by the lighthouse tours, which had more than 7,000 visitors. The city and the museum split the revenue. However, in following years, the city agreed that all tour revenue could be kept by the Heritage Museum. Last year’s tours attracted 6,900 visitors and generated more than $16,000 for the museum.
The tours are $10 for those who want to climb to the top of the lighthouse.
You can book one at the website of the Heritage Museum and Cultural Center.
