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The Best Little Business Plan in Town, Part One |
Bill Hudson | 10/26/11
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Something I had not known before:
In Pagosa Springs, we have over 244,000 ‘room-nights’ available annually. Only about 80,000 of those ‘room-nights’ are used each year.
These two little facts (which I admit I have not double-checked) are apparently the key drivers behind a push by the Town Tourism Committee to develop several new amenities — ranging from ‘amphitheaters’ to ‘zip lines’ — amidst the quiet pine forest atop Reservoir Hill. Since about 1965, that wooded park has been a natural sanctuary crisscrossed with dirt hiking trails and, more recently, the site of a disc course — and two annual weekend-long music festivals scheduled at either end of the summer tourist season.
For the past year, a subcommittee of the Town Tourism Committee (TTC) — the committee that oversees the annual expenditure of about $350,000 in Town Lodgers Taxes collected from downtown hotels and inns — has been working to develop a “business plan” aimed at justifying the Town’s decision, last summer, to purchase a used chairlift for $41,000.
Late last week, the Pagosa Springs Town Council listened to a PowerPoint presentation developed by TTC executive director Jennie Green and the members of the Reservoir Hill Task Force, and watched the accompanying slides projected on a screen in the Council Chambers. Outside the window to the east rose Reservoir Hill itself, mostly undeveloped and getting itself ready for a long, cold winter.
TTC executive director Jennie Green hands out copies of the draft "Reservoir Hill Business Plan" at last week's Town Council meeting. Also shown, Council members Bob Hart (left), and Don Volger (far, far, left) and mayor Ross Aragon, center. Town manager David Mitchem's arm is also visible. |
The speaker at the podium was former Council member Jerry Jackson, one of the community’s most enthusiastic promoters of “economic growth,” but — curiously perhaps — not a person I’d seen at any of the Task Force meetings I’d attended over the past year. (Admittedly, I attended very few of the regular weekly meetings.) Nevertheless, Mr. Jackson does a fine job of public speaking, and I could see why he’d been chosen for the job that day.
“These growth numbers are possible to achieve without increasing our current number of rooms,” Mr. Jackson was explaining, as slides packed with numbers and statistics and color photographs flashed before our eyes.
“The statistics you will see are based on the current number of visitors we have. This is not based on a projection of an unknown amount of visitors.”
You can click here to download the full presentation.
The goals of the Reservoir Hill project had been quantified:
“Increase overnight stays by at least 50 percent within three years.”
“Increase day trip traffic from competing tourism markets (Durango, South Fork, New Mexico)”
“Produce an economic boost to Pagosa of between $14 million and $22 million.”
“Create 15-20 new direct jobs, and numerous indirect jobs.”
“Develop a stable local economy based on tourism, to allow other industries to thrive.”
 I must say, by way of introduction, that the Reservoir Hill Task Force PowerPoint rollout was one of the most impressively professional presentations I’ve witnessed in the Council Chambers during the seven years I’ve been a Daily Post reporter. It was obvious that the subcommittee had thought deeply about what they were proposing, and had taken the time to research the pros and cons of each separate amenity included in the draft plan. I was also impressed by the fact that the TTC was not asking for permission to raise taxes or spend public funds, but rather had spent a full year researching and holding public meetings — and were now asking for permission to hold even more public meetings and do even more research.
I wish the Archuelta School District had been even one-quarter as thorough in the development of their (thus far still ambiguous and vague) mega-campus proposal before placing that $98 million tax increase proposal on the ballot.
Needless to say, the Town Council — after hearing the presentation, and the public testimony from the packed audience — voted unanimously to allow the TTC to continue refining their business plan.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. First a little bit of the back story.
I regularly take our dog Hank on walks through the park on Reservoir Hill, along the quiet trails, and I typically run across fewer than a handful of other people on the trails. It’s really very peaceful. You can hear occasional birdcalls, maybe hear a bit of wind rustling the pine needles, and far away, perhaps, a truck gearing down as it makes its way through downtown Pagosa — but not much else.
Last December, the Pagosa Springs Town Council appeared to be indulging a bureaucratic mid-life crisis when they agreed to purchase second-hand $40,000 chairlift that will require another $300,000 or so to install. By all accounts I’ve heard, the chairlift is in pretty good shape, and might be able, with some modifications, to bear locals and tourists from the Spa Motel trailhead to the water tower at the northwest corner of Reservoir Hill. The request to purchase the chairlift had come from the TTC, with the understanding that the chairlift could be sold on the open market to recoup its purchase price, should it prove impractical to install.
The Town Council was rather clear, as it authorized the chairlift purchase: the TTC would have to come up with an impressive business plan showing that the chairlift could be operated in a way that helped the local economy — without becoming a drain on the Town’s tax income.
Shortly after the purchase was approved, Town Tourism Committee chair Bob Hart convened a meeting of volunteers from various political and social segments of Pagosa society, as the “Chair Lift Business Plan Committee” of the Reservoir Hill Task Force. A few of the people are also members of the full TTC, but several of the folks were just plain vanilla citizens with some kind of interest in helping write a business plan for a possible chair lift installation.
The initial thought was to expand the use of Reservoir Hill as a downtown place to ski, snowboard and sled.
One of the first things the new task force discovered was that the chairlift was too short and too underpowered to reach the most “skiable” parts of Reservoir Hill. They also found out something they already knew: that the snow cover on the west face of Reservoir Hill is extremely modest in a typical year, compared to “real” ski areas.
So much for a “winter sports wonderland” on Reservoir Hill. It the chairlift could be justified, it would need to be justified as something that operated in the summertime, when we actually have tourists in town.
Because summer is the real tourist season here. Here’s a chart from the TTC’s PowerPoint presentation last week:
As we can see, Pagosa’s downtown hotels and inns have an occupancy rate of less than 50 percent for six months of the year. There is a spike up to 52 percent during spring break in March, and another spike during Christmas break, in December.
The only months of the year that show occupancy of over 60 percent are July and August.
But we had already bought the chairlift, and we now had a business plan subcommittee formed. If someone were going to ride a chairlift up Reservoir Hill in the summertime, what would they find at the top that would make the ride worthwhile?
Maybe a small amusement park? A “very low impact” amusement park? Occupying less than 3.5 acres of the 110 acres of Reservoir Hill?
Read Part Two... |
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