It’s been a difficult year for Pagosa Springs. Many of my neighbors are looking for work, many of my business associates are struggling to pay their rent.
“If things don’t turn around, I think we are going to see half of the businesses in Pagosa close their doors this year,” suggested a downtown business owner a couple of days ago.
In such a situation, two things often happen.
One, people start looking around for somebody to blame.
And two, people start working together to fix the leaky roof — that leaky roof we all ignored while the sun was shining.
 One group here in Pagosa that has been the focus of blame lately is the Pagosa Springs Chamber of Commerce, a non-profit association that seeks to serve the local business community. The organization has lost members over the past year — a possible sign of member dissatisfaction — but perhaps more important than that, I have heard numerous business associates complaining openly about the Chamber operations.
I don’t recall hearing such a significant number of people complaining about the Chamber in all the 16 years I’ve lived in Pagosa.
That complaining, of course, fits into both categories. We are looking for someone to blame. And we are coming together to fix the leaking roof.
For the first time I can remember, the Chamber of Commerce board elections, completed last Saturday, had more than the requisite six board-nominated candidates. In an unusual turn of events, three local business people solicited places on the ballot via a petition process: Thaddeus Cano, Wen Saunders and Bill Schwab. That gave Chamber members a total of nine candidates to choose from — to fill three vacant seats.
Except that it appears there were actually four vacant seats when the voting took place on Saturday. More about that little controversy later on.
I had a chance to interview the three winning candidates who were announced on Saturday — the ‘new blood’ who will join the remaining six — well, actually, five — Chamber board members. Madeline Lyon, the owner of Wild Spirit Gallery on San Juan Street, right across the street from the County Courthouse, was one of the winners. Thaddeus Cano, manager of the Ski & Bow Rack and one of the petitioners for the board seat, also won a place at the board table. So did Paul Boyd, a relative newcomer to Pagosa who works at Wells Fargo Bank as their Senior Commercial Relationship Manager.
I also had a chance to sit down with the Chamber’s executive director, Mary Jo Coulehan and talk about the possible changes in store in the coming year, now that nearly half the nine-member board will be newcomers — if we include the fourth vacant seat in that total.
I think I’m going to do this chronologically. I did all four interviews on the same day — and all four were different, and interesting.
I started off Monday morning with an interview with Madeline Lyon, sitting across from her at her desk in the center of the Wild Spirit Gallery. Numerous galleries have come and gone in Pagosa since I’ve live here; Wild Spirit is perhaps the largest and most professional looking.
Click here to visit the gallery website.
Madeline was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where, after high school, she spent eight years in a convent. She later married and had two children, John who lives in Silver Spring, MD, and a daughter, Anne who lives in Mechanicsburg, OH. Madeline’s family here consists of two dogs and four cats — all adopted.
“I was a little ambivalent at first, when they asked me to run, but then I thought, ‘Yeah, I will run.’ Because we just need to do what we can do.
“I truly think we need a merchants association.”
Madeline’s gallery is situated near the west end of the old “downtown historic district” — a part of town controlled to some degree by the Town Historic Preservation Board. That central block of commercial buildings formed the heart of Pagosa’s business for the first 100 years of the town’s existence — but more recent businesses have expanded the commercial areas to the east and, perhaps most importantly, in the Pagosa Lakes area five miles west of downtown. That disconnect — between the old downtown and the new “uptown” shopping area — has challenged local associations like the Chamber to think of Pagosa Springs in a unified way. But many business people have complained that the Chamber, with its own offices downtown, favors the downtown businesses when planning events and projects.
“I’ve heard nothing but negatives when this subject is brought up, but I think if merchants would stay open later and on Sundays —
Madeline paused for a moment.
“It’s a chicken and egg situation. They say people don’t come out to shop in the evenings. But people aren’t going to come out if they know we aren’t open.
“So you have to do those things and let it build. And maybe the first year, no, we won’t see increased sales, traffic may be very low. But we need to build.
“I remember a patron in here, a couple of summers ago, who has a gift shop somewhere near Grand Canyon. And he said, ‘We are open until people are off the street. I look around here, and there’s nobody on the street.’ Why not?
“And I don’t know if we can get Wyndham to help promote downtown more.”
Wyndham, of course, is the massive timeshare resort in the uptown Pagosa Lakes area — an operation that brings in more than 1,000 people a week during the summer months. These relaxed, happy vacationers are known, by local merchants, as a good source of ‘non-resident’ sales — though apparently our vacationers were not quite as free-wheeling with their wallets during the past tourist season.
“The new resort, San Juan Mountain & Golf Resort, is really making an effort to promote local merchants, and that’s huge.
“I have a hard time figuring out what really drives the economy here. I don’t think it’s construction. Certainly, the second-home owners are important, but I don’t think downtown merchants rely on local residents. They don’t shop here, unless they really need something specific.
“So if tourism is what really drives our economy, then we need to look at that. Maybe we need a ten-year plan?
“A lot of businesses have closed. What can we do to replace those?”
Madeline returned to the idea of a merchants association.
“If we could come to an agreement about open and close hours. If the movie theater is having a special midnight showing, then let’s have something special as well, late in the evening. We can’t rely on the Chamber to develop all the events to draw people. The Town Tourism Committee — it’s not just the new Visitor Guide, but they did a big national advertising campaign — and not a mention of the arts. All they mentioned was outdoor activities.
“The outdoor activities are extremely important. But we need to let them know — there are other things to do here. Concerts, theater. We have all kinds of things in the arts, not just the galleries.”
Read Part Two, tomorrow… |