EDITORIAL: Who owns 'Emerald Coast'?

You don’t have to agree with Ted Corcoran to admire his willingness to take up a fight that has left everyone else beaten and discouraged. The president and CEO of the Greater Fort Walton Beach Chamber of Commerce is arguing that the “Emerald Coast” label should apply only to southern Okaloosa County.

“The goal here,” he said last week, “is for Okaloosa County to own the Emerald Coast.”

Officials in Fort Walton Beach and other south-county municipalities have passed resolutions in support. The county and its cities are being urged to use a new Emerald Coast logo on their websites. There’s even talk of adding the name “Emerald Coast” to signs at the county line.

Trouble is, all of these efforts ignore history.

Junior high school student Andrew Dier coined the name “Emerald Coast” for a 1983 contest. He won $50 for his trouble.

At the beginning, the label was meant to apply to Okaloosa and Walton counties. It was expanded in 1984 to include Navarre and Navarre Beach. By 1998, when the Daily News’ Lee Forst wrote a brief history of Emerald Coast promotions, its use was much looser. “I guess it’s caught on that the Emerald Coast is from Pensacola to Panama City,” said an official with the South Santa Rosa Tourism Development Council.

Sure, local boosters tried to restrict the “Emerald Coast” brand. They tried to limit the name’s use to businesses that were TDC or chamber members. They failed.

“For a while, we attempted to control the name from a business standpoint,” Gary Alden, founding president of Okaloosa’s TDC, said for our 1998 story. But “we had to include everybody because our white sands go a long way.”

A later TDC honcho, Darrel Jones, said lawyers had advised him that limiting “Emerald Coast” would be impossible because “it’s too generic a term.”

It’s also too popular a term. Tourism boosters across Northwest Florida use it because it’s exotic and evocative.

Now Mr. Corcoran and the TDC want to take an ever-expanding Emerald Coast and shrink it to the size of Okaloosa’s beaches. They have their work cut out for them.