ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 23, 1996 TAG: 9604230139
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON STAFF WRITER
Salem's representative on the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau board of directors has asked city officials for $25,000 to create a "quasi-visitors center" at the Salem Civic Center.
Carey Harveycutter, manager of the civic center and the city's football and baseball stadiums, has questioned the effectiveness of the visitors bureau and is considering asking Salem City Council to reduce its annual support of the bureau.
Salem usually gives $25,000 to the bureau each year. Whether council appropriates that amount this year will be decided during budget meetings in May.
The bureau is a 12-year-old tourism marketing organization created by area hotels and other businesses to advertise the Roanoke Valley's attractions. It operates a visitors center on the Roanoke City Market.
Salem's contribution represents 3.4 percent of the bureau's funding.
If City Council gives Harveycutter the money for his proposed visitors center at the civic center, the city will not necessarily reduce its contribution to the Roanoke Valley visitors bureau, said Assistant City Manager Forest Jones.
In a letter to Jones last week, Harveycutter requested the $25,000 to advertise the Salem area in several tourism publications and to create a brochure and update other brochures promoting Salem tourism.
And Harveycutter proposed that the civic center would function as a visitors center operated by civic center employees.
"We would be able to handle this function without adding additional personnel to our budget; and due to the fact that a large majority of visitors to Salem are for events at our facility or NCAA championships with which we are intricately involved, I feel that we would be an excellent site to start the center," Harveycutter said in the letter.
Some members of the Salem Merchants Association were angered after hearing news reports of the possibility of withdrawing funds from the valley visitors bureau and Harveycutter's request to create a visitors center at the civic center.
The merchants association and the Salem-Roanoke County Chamber of Commerce had presented to City Council in 1994 a proposal for a visitors center somewhere near the downtown area - possibly in a carriage house in Longwood Park.
"We had a proposal," said Sally Nunley, president of the Salem Merchants Association. "Nothing ever came of it."
Nunley and several other Salem merchants showed up at City Council's meeting Monday night, wanting to make sure they would be involved in any plans for a visitors center at the civic center.
"There will be nothing done on that visitors center without full participation of the merchants association," said Mayor Jim Taliaferro.
The chamber of commerce on North College Avenue serves as a visitors center now, mailing packets to newcomers and helping visitors who walk in off the street.
Nunley said there is a concern among some Salem merchants that the city may be asked to reduce its support to the Roanoke Valley visitors bureau.
"You just have to go to downtown [Roanoke] and see the number of tourists that go into that tourist center," she said. "We would like to see [funding] increase rather than decrease."
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