Tourism: Not All Gloom And Doom

The dark­n e s s behind the windows at Bubbles & Chocolates adds to the quiet on Waitsburg's Main Street this winter.

Karen Gregutt shuttered her fine chocolates and champagne boutique in the Plaza Building recently, at least for the season. It's a development that follows the temporary closure of Betty's Diner the week before.

With about half of the 25 storefronts on Main Street and Preston Avenue vacant or closed temporarily, the air appears to have gone out of Waitsburg's mini renais­sance that reached its peak in the summer of 2011.

But it's not all gloom and doom for the little city's downtown core, where lodg­ing numbers continue to rise.

Funds returned from local hotel-motel taxes reached a record $1,115 in 2012, an increase of more than 200 percent from the $376 Waitsburg received in 2009. The city has conservatively budgeted $1,000 in hotel- motel tax revenues for 2013, City Administrator Randy Hinchliffe said.

The city uses the funds to spur more visitor interest in Waitsburg, by producing travel brochures, signage, maps, banners and so on, he said. This year, the focus is on getting Waitsburg in­cluded on the area's bicycle map put together by Tourism Walla Walla.

A lot of the revenue in­crease is due to the opening of the Waitsburg Cottages and the Seven Porches Guest House in the past two years. They added a dozen or more beds to the inventory that was already available at Nothing New Lodging, P.J. Vacation Rentals and Hi­romi's House, Hinchliffe noted.

Going forward, several developments could help boost tourism in town this year. Waitsburg hopes to install a historical interpre­tative kiosk and improve parking at the historic Wait's Mill site north of town. It has budgeted about $20,000 for the project on which it col­laborates with the Waitsburg Historical Society. Concep­tual drawings and additional grant requests are already underway. The city also wants to add public art as a sightseeing attraction.

Hinchliffe said he is also optimistic the new 50-room Best Western hotel on Day­ton's Main Street will gener­ate some spillover business for Waitsburg after it opens this spring.

Waitsburg has its own downtown hotel project at the Loundagin Building. However, its owners are hop­ing to attract more investors before finishing that proper­ty, which is designed to have eight high-quality rooms.

Most tourism experts believe success for any des­tination depends on a certain critical mass of activities - sightseeing, shopping, dining - that attract and keep travelers. Betty's Diner co-owner Bart Baxter said he experienced that first hand when Nothing New Antiques first closed in early 2012, about six months after his restaurant opened.

The store at the corner of Preston and Coppei brought quite a bit of foot traffic to the city's sidewalks, ben­efitting the restaurant. The retailers in the Plaza Build­ing served the same purpose for local restaurants, which rely on local customers for only about 10 to 15 percent of their business, several of their owners said.

Serving travelers is a catch-22. Some retailers say traffic is too scarce and too unpredictable to be open a great many hours, particu­larly during the week. But other observers said motor­ists who stop in town and press their noses against a closed door may never stop again.

"It all starts with people being able to count on you," said Joy Smith, owner of Hugs, Gifts & Collectibles who serves as president of the Commercial Club. She says her traffic this January is down substantially from the same period last year.

"I'm going to be here," Smith said. "I have to be optimistic because that's the nature of an entrepreneur."