Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408160003
SECTION: DISCOVER PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The rejuvenated crooner and the two public radio personalities each visited Roanoke in the past six months, and each lauded the area's scenic beauty from the civic center stage.
These are not homebodies. They are, to varying degrees, traveling entertainers who have seen the world. If the Roanoke Valley looks heavenly to them, how might it seem to the city-bound hordes whose views of mountains come mainly from television and movie screens?
Maybe, just maybe, we should be spotlighting our outdoor offerings to get them - and their money - here. Not to the exclusion of the City Market, the Mill Mountain Star and our available industrial sites. In addition to them.
Explore Park, which opened along the Blue Ridge Parkway in July, is a start. Now it's time to begin thinking of Roanoke as a destination for sportsmen and ecotourists.
Ecotourists? They are proponents of ecotourism.
Ecotourism? ``Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people,'' said Michael Brown, an Illinois planner, in an article he wrote for the April 1993 issue of the journal of the American Planning Association.
Ecotourism emphasizes sustaining the natural resource that attracts people, rather than killing the golden goose. It requires careful planning and marketing, and a devotion toward the long, rather than the short, term.
The Roanoke region already has a largely unspoiled slice of mountains, valleys, lakes and rivers. It's chock-full of outdoor recreation and wildlife opportunities.
But how many people outside of the area know that? And how easy is it to find out about specific hiking, biking, camping and fishing spots, for people passing through or even for those who live here? Not very, for there is no tightly focused, concerted effort at touting what the mountains have to offer.
This so bothers Jim Revercomb Jr., a Roanoke businessman and outdoors enthusiast, that he and his friends have discussed how to get out the word.
He would like to equip the Roanoke Valley Visitor Information Center with concise, detailed information about the region's outdoors. It could be distributed at hotels, including the reopened Hotel Roanoke, or sent to visitors' homes in advance of their trips.
And Revercomb wants to go a step farther.
``If a dentist were coming for a convention and he sees we have great fly fishing and he wants to go by himself, he could call the visitors center and they would recommend a spot - like a concierge service, with a knowledgeable full-time person who could send them maps and recommend that they go by the Orvis store,'' the fly-fishing outlet that already draws visitors from several states.
This concierge, if you will, also would book guides for fly- or striper-fishing trips, mountain biking excursions and canoe floats, confirm reservations and follow through the way a recreation director would at a resort.
Roanoke? A resort?
No, but Roanoke as the hub of a recreational wonderland is not a silly notion.
The trick, as always in these parts, is to tie everything together - boating, water skiing and fishing at Smith Mountain Lake, cross-country skiing at Mountain Lake, mountain biking in Jefferson and George Washington National Forests, hiking on the Appalachian Trail, snow skiing at Wintergreen, camping on the Blue Ridge Parkway, golf at the region's courses, birdwatching everywhere and so on.
It sounds complicated, but it can be done. Farther southwest, economic development officials, businesses and government agencies raised $43,000 to produce a simple folding map that lists nearly 200 festivals, musical events, state and national parks and other attractions from the New River Valley to Bristol and points west. Since July 1993 copies have been sent to the state's welcome centers, to all AAA offices east of the Mississippi, to bus tour companies and trade shows. Advertising paid for the first printing of 200,000.
``We're about to do our second printing and we're trying to raise that much again,'' says Kitty Grady, director of tourism and information for the town of Wytheville, and spokesperson for Virginia's Blue Ridge Highlands, the subject of the campaign.
``The demographics, especially the ones from the state, have shown that people who live in cities and metropolitan areas are looking for different things to do,'' she says. ``They've already done the theme parks and the roller coasters. They're looking for a different kind of tourist attraction, and ecotourism is definitely one of our main points.''
To the Roanoke region's credit, there is talk of establishing a low-band radio outlet that would disseminate information about the area to people driving through, and grant money has been found to develop programs on the region's railroad heritage. Roanoke Mayor David Bowers is promoting a railside park to tie the Market area to an upgraded Virginia Museum of Transportation.
Yet there are no signs on Interstates 81 and 581 advertising the Jefferson National Forest headquarters at Valleypointe office park as an information source for forest recreation.
The Virginia Department of Transportation has approved such signs, says Dave Olson, the forest's public information officer, but the service lacks the money to erect them. It would cost about $17,000, Olson says.
This shouldn't be a tough sell.
A marketing plan and economic analysis compiled last year by the department of hotel, restaurant and institutional management at Virginia Tech found that 65 percent of tourists interviewed rated scenic beauty as a very important attraction for the Roanoke Valley. Seventy percent cited the ``pleasant attitudes of local people'' as very important, and 66 percent judged its ``restful and relaxing atmosphere'' the same way.
The outdoors mixes nicely with all three.
Already, the Orvis store on the Roanoke City Market draws customers from several states to its fly fishing schools and guided trips - about 200 for the schools alone each season, says Robert Bryant, the manager. The students stay at the Roanoke Airport Marriott, fish on a private stream in Craig County and stop for dinner at the Homeplace in Catawba.
``That's what people want,'' Bryant says. ``Then, if we show them the streams, they can come back on their own.''
The mind teems with related ideas - even a marketing effort for tying natural attractions together.
Bob Rogers, a Blacksburg architect, proposed this very thing last fall in a ``visioning'' session of the New Century Council, the group that's trying to form a long-range economic plan for the region. Dubbed the Virginia Grande Park, it would publicize and promote such things as Explore, Claytor Lake State Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway as one, interrelated entity.
``It goes beyond the concept of marketing and somehow involves how you organize yourself and the amenities you already have into a concept that just makes sense for our area,'' he says. ``You don't try to force it into some strange contortion.''
The New Century Council's director, Beverly T. Fitzpatrick Jr., will tell you that this outdoors emphasis may help the area, but it alone won't do the trick.
``It's not everybody's bag,'' says Beth Doughty, executive director of the Regional Partnership of the Roanoke Valley. ``I talk to a broad range of people, and some get real excited about it and some it doesn't make any difference to.'' She adds, though, that a comment on the area's beauty is ``the first thing they say to me when they get in the car. They look around and say, `Boy, is this beautiful.'''
And she agrees that in order for the image to take hold, ``You have to make sure you have a product you can sell. Just the lake or the mountains is not a product.''
There are some obvious negatives. The natural drawing cards might be ruined through inadequate planning, unrestrained development and environmental ignorance, to say nothing of unwieldy crowds.
Certain sites in the area already are overcrowded, ar least on pretty weekends. These include McAfee's Knob and Dragon's Tooth on the Appalachian Trail, and the Cascades, a waterfall in Giles County, which attracts some 170,000 hikers per year.
Then, too, the people who love the natural gems might be loathe to share them with others.
But if controls are put in place, the threat should not be severe.
Skeptics might say, ``Great - you bring all these people to the area, and you put them out in the woods'' rather than in the restaurants, hotels and shops that want their business.
But that's a misconception, says Sue Bland of the public affairs office of the Virginia Department of Tourism. A 1992 study revealed that the outdoors enthusiast ``does a lot of everything else, as well,'' including cultural pursuits. A good approach for the Roanoke Valley might be ``to show that it's a great cultural resource nestled in the midst of it all.''
Finally, there is the matter of numbers. How much money does the outdoors bring in now, and how much more can it be expected to? Dollar figures are elusive, says Catherine Fox of the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. She characterizes outdoor recreation as ``an added attraction.'' This does not mean it cannot be developed.
Between 1992 and 1993, attendance at Claytor Lake State Park in Pulaski County rose from 330,000 to 371,000, says Gary Waugh, public relations manager for the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation. Other parks in the region showed similar increases.
Waugh credits increased advertising and hot weather for the some of the boosts, but says travel trends favor an outdoors approach.
``The days of mom and pop and the kids taking two- to three-week vacations are behind us,'' he says. The tilt is toward shorter trips, including long weekends.
``We let the natural beauty of Virginia be our gimmick,'' Waugh says. Shouldn't the Roanoke Valley do the same?
by CNB