Reinventing Edison
Trustees focus attention on inventor's image, marketablity
BY ROGER _WILLIAMS rwilliams@florida-weekly.com
S o far, the caretakers of the newly restored jewel known as the Edison & Ford Winter Estates have not invited

Bob Hey or Robert Poyner

to open a tattoo concession on the grounds and begin printing designs into the skins of visitors - say a pattern of five dots, the mysterious tattoo suggestive of dice that Thomas Edison sported on his left forearm, or perhaps something more contemporary.

That might only be because they haven't thought of it. Neither have Hey or Poyner, who make a life of tattoos at Poyner's downtown shop, Needful Things. "We use almost exactly the same technology Edison invented for the tattoo; it really hasn't changed much," says Hey. "He made a one-coil machine; now there might be more than one coil, but that's about the only difference. When electricity runs through it, it vibrates back and forth."

Although Poyner has used Edison's invention for eight years downtown, neither he nor Hey have ever set foot on the 20-acre campus where the inventor once lived, less than a mile away.

That disconnect between an awareness of Edison's character and contributions, and a desire to come see where and how he and his wife, Mina, lived in the winter months for decades - and what Edison thought about and did in his 84 years on the planet - has long been one of the two key challenges for Estates managers and educators. The other is maintaining the property and deciding just how to present Edison, Henry Ford and their worlds to a public increasingly attracted by razzle-dazzle and spectacle.

PHOTO COURTESY THE EDISON & FORD WINTER ESTATES The Edison & Ford Winter Estates appears in better shape than the day it was built.

The challenges are traditional, but the Estates managers both public and private have done something entirely new, something that few if any other American cultural icons and attractions have managed in recent years: They've changed direction and focus, reworking the place the way Edison liked to rework the car Ford once gave him, adding new and different drive trains, motor parts, his own battery inventions, instead of trading it for the latest fashion and model.

COURTESY PHOTO Edison's Laboratory

To do it they raised almost $10 million in public and private funds (that was the work of Fort Myers Mayor Jim Humphrey and his council, along with a stable of private volunteers and donors); they spent it restoring the property from a state of terrible disrepair; they reshaped the property to run as the saddle-horse of a private, nonprofit institution rather than a city-operated department; and they popularized a sophisticated soup of history, science, and Florida temperament, à la Edison and Ford.

All that occurred in about five years, and under the leadership of Chris Pendleton, the former city employee now working as president and CEO of the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Winter Estates, Inc. As if to rubber stamp their long effort, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Winter Estates one of 12 most noteworthy restorations in the country, and the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation honored the Estates with its top prize this year.

There's another reason not to dismiss the place as a beautiful lightweight just yet. "We're also being regarded more as an academic institution now rather than one that's suitable only for a pleasant cultural afternoon," Pendleton says. "We're academic and program oriented. We're building staff in professional and curatorial areas. The mechanical staff now includes those with degrees in biology, botany, horticulture - that's different than when we were a city project. That's new.

"We have an education manager and assistant -- that's a whole new department. And there's (a stronger) curatorial and program staff, which is a change from when we were only offering guided-tour experiences."

And the biggest change of all, she adds, managing to keep most of the glee out of her voice: "We're a not-for-profit so we don't make money. If we have funds that exceed annual operating budget they go into the reserve."

The results appear spectacular, although real details of the operation will come only when Pendleton delivers her first annual report to the city later in the summer, she says. She's required to do that under the lease agreement her nonprofit corporation - overseen by a 21-member board - has with the city, which still owns the buildings and grounds, and insures them against disaster, Pendleton says. The lease requires a $100-per-year fee through 2036.

"Physically speaking, it's in as good a shape or better that when it was brand new (121 years ago, in 1886)," says Mike Flanders, a city councilman and architect. "If we had to compare it to the day it was finished, I think it's better now."

Since October 1, Pendleton and the Estates' 56 employees, 125 volunteers and 21 trustees have operated a leaner, more focused attraction on a $4.2 million budget that paradoxically offers the public greater access and more opportunity than ever before - to fewer people. About 225,000 visitors are coming through in a 12-month period, Pendleton estimates, down roughly half from the high visitor tides of the 1990s, when money from the Estates came mostly from ticket sales, and went mostly to fund other city projects.

"The biggest challenge is to make money, and we are," says Suzanne Edwards, vice chairwoman of the board of trustees that now oversees all operations. "And also to insure that people are pleased, and they are. This has just been positive. I was on the Estates board for many years, and the advisory board, and I helped with three or four master plans that didn't go anywhere - but this board has more punch."

More punch, even, than the hurricane that flattened the wildly eclectic flora three years ago and allowed Estates managers to restore the grounds to the proximate state that existed in 1929, two year's before Edison's death, and 16 years before Mina Edison gave her property to the city for use as a park, and both she and Henry Ford departed the world.

Now the order of the grounds seems more open, with some labor and knowledge intensive sites, such as the moonlight garden, where elaborate landscape artistry is evident.

In early June - and probably at any time - visitors don't seem to overwhelm the property, and many do not move around it in flocks, as everyone once did. Rather they take advantage of the new audio tours, drifting among the 32 stops on both sides of McGregor Boulevard like a species of alien who habitually clutches old-style telephone receivers to its ears, then grows mute and goggle-eyed.

These are the do-it-yourselfers, and they appear to be enchanted wherever they go. At any stop, they're able to press a button on the machine, and hear the voice of Pendleton or others describe a given tree or a room or a piece of furniture or a garden or a historic moment or something else, for a minute or two.

This delighted sisters Allison and Wendy Gray, who had arrived last week from the Hamptons on Long Island, New York so Allison could interview for a job on Sanibel.

"I would never have come here after reading just the travel guides, because to me they made it sound so much smaller and less interesting," Wendy Gray said. "I'm amazed at the botanical richness. It doesn't feel overstuffed, it feels familiar. And we've pretty much never seen ANY of these plants."

Her sister pointed out the humorous irony of a sign that warned of falling figs, while nothing was posted about the twopound coconuts that hung in clusters 50 feet above the heads of tourists, like little bombs.

"And I'm struck by the little benches by the water, and by the fact that Edison rarely put bait on his hooks," Allison Gray added, theorizing that perhaps he was a secret Buddhist, after all, interested in the journey, not the destination, or the fishing, not the catching.

While that may have been true of Edison in some respects, in others he was fiercely goal-oriented, and may have admired a similar quality in the new nonprofit organization that is reliant not just on fishing for dollars, but on catching them, too.

Programs and prices for adults and children or museum concessions may not yet include tattoos, but they're more inventive, more varied, and in some cases more expensive than once-upon-a-time at the Estates.

Ticket prices have gone up to $20 for individual adult visitors and $11 for children 6 to 12 (or $24 for adults who visit not only the houses and gardens but take a botanical tour), but there are plenty of options that benefit local folks, like the family membership program.

For $75, the basic family fee, a family of four can visit anytime, seven days a week, throughout the year (that annual family membership is $25 or $30 higher than the Calusa Nature Center, or the Southwest Florida Museum of History, and roughly equivalent to a family membership at the Imaginarium, for example). And nonprofit groups can apply for a reduction in rates, too, according to Estates literature.

"The membership program is brand new," notes Pendleton. "From the start, last October, we've climbed to 550 members. That means we have a constituent group of families and individuals who use us regularly. They sit on the bench next to the river, they take programs (short seminars and classes in architecture or art or horticulture, or the children's summer camps for example) - we weren't used that way in the past. We weren't looked to as a cultural resource, or as a park. So now we have a group who we call our regular friends."

If it seems cozy, it is. Family members have special privileges, can visit other museums for free in some cases, receive discounts, and the like.

Business members, who can pay $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000, can conference in the caretaker's cottage, the oldest building on the place, as well as visit anytime, and gain various other benefits.

And there's more to learn at the Estates now, Pendleton says. "We have a much more aggressive exhibit program inside the museum. We have an exhibit coming up this summer on Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Everglades. In late fall we're bringing forward our own new exhibit, a natural history of the Edisons and Fords and Firestones and the environment, called 'Into the Florida Wilds.' We have an opportunity to blend more science into what we offer."

All of this is part of the latest master plan, the one that's working, finally, says Suzanne Edwards - a plan with a huge second phase about to get underway. That will include the much-publicized and long-discussed effort to restore the lab, and later to move the entrance off McGregor way around back, to Larchmont, where some of the grit of an old and threadbare neighborhood remains visible from the Estates parking lots.

And it will ultimately require the raising of as much as $20 million. "We have a big hurdle now in front of us to raise the money and do the rest of the project, and the longer we wait, the more the price tag will go up," Edwards says. "We need to get on it."

What Estates officials do not want to get on or into is a discussion of the economic details of the operation.

They have struggled, for example, to address the complex insurance questions and costs, and now, "we're covered for loss of collections at their appraised value, and assets of business - the loss of business revenue. And the city insures the buildings," Pendleton says. Which is nice to know at the beginning of hurricane season, the new nonprofit's first.

One of the biggest problems faced by Thomas Edison & Henry Ford Winter Estates, Inc., has been to switch payrolls and benefits, including insurance and retirement benefits, for the 56 employees who enjoyed the city's largesse in benefits and security.

The organization's accountant, Gary Bracken, would not speak about the details to a reporter, saying he had been asked not to by Pendleton, who describes it this way: "We have employee bonds and we have all the standard and above-standard categories covered - we're covered in everything."

Asked her own salary, she would not name it, but she said it was comparable to what she made as a city employee and director - about $90,000.

"They've got to money up and deal with those insurance and retirement issues, and I think they are," says Flanders. "And the great thing about this nonprofit group is that they can give more professional oversight than the city every could. Now they have accountants, professional people with licenses in their fields, a lot of experts. In the old days they had to come to city hall and ask the finance office for help, or for maintenance they had to ask public works to send out some carpenters or something."

Not anymore.

Now, the Winter Estates carries the same appeal once again, perhaps, that inspired the famous naturalist John Burroughs to put this inscription in the guestbook maintained by Thomas and Mina Edison: "I come here to find myself. It's so easy to get lost in the world." Edison Estates by the numbers 56 >>Employees 125 >>Volunteers

225,000 >>Yearly visitors 4.2 >>Million dollar budget 21 >>Trustees