Scott Swanson
Well, that was a sizzling Jamboree – in more ways than one.
I remember, when I first arrived in Sweet Home, a decade ago, hearing about the “Oregon Jamboree” and expecting, well, something along the lines of a concert at the County Fair.
The Jamboree didn’t have much of an online presence in those days, and I’d looked at some of the event programs from years gone by, and even put together the one for that year – 2005. But seeing it was was believing.
I walked onto the high school athletic field and did a triple take. It was amazing – the complete and utter transformation of the grounds into a giant concert venue and the similar transformation of the town for a few days into a bustling marketplace (for lack of a better word).
I’m still amazed, even though I’ve seen it 10 times over. The festival’s gotten a little slicker. The green-grass motif has been a great idea, and the staff’s use of social media to sell it was another great one.
But it’s the festival itself, the thousands and thousands of generally happy people, who show up to enjoy the music they love and hang out in the campgrounds around town, that make it special.
Since my office window faces Highway 20, I see them come and I see them go, hundreds of RV’s and, as the old “Convoy” song put it, “rigs of every size.”
Once again, local folks’ ingenuity was in full bloom, with little makeshift business enterprises springing up everywhere. I enjoy seeing that. That’s what Sweet Home needs, except all of the time.
If we ever want that Livability Study, the Community Forest, the tourism opportunities, to get legs, it’s going to be up to us, the local community to make it happen. We have to display the energy and ingenuity that is evident during the Jamboree, just on a longer-term basis. The Jamboree provides us with opportunities. So do these other things – they just may require a little more imagination and planning. But more on that some other time.
Despite those triple-digit temperatures, it seemed like the majority of the folks who came this year had a great time. Part of my responsibilities bring me in close contact with the Information Booth, where people come who’ve lost something, who have a bone to chew or who simply want to say they were enjoying themselves – and I’m not stretching it here: There were quite a few of those.
A lot has changed for the Jamboree since I’ve started participating. The venue’s gotten bigger. The stage is bigger. The sound is bigger (or am I just older?). And we haven’t been making money, at least with the festival, in recent years. That’s the elephant in the room here.
It’s the biggest problem facing the people in charge of an event that belongs to the community, particularly to those who put their own money on the line and their time and energy to get it off the ground, who learned how to do it and laid the table for the current administration.
The Jamboree has to make money to survive. When I look at 20,000 people having a great time (for the most part) in triple-digit temperatures, I think that this problem can be solved. But this is a business and the Sweet Home Economic Development Group board, which holds the reins, needs to answer those awkward questions about how well things are adding up. The math doesn’t lie.
SHEDG has a chance to move onto a new site that offers room for many more patrons, more room for camping, more potential to be developed and realized. It’s going to take ingenuity and creativity to get the necessary financing. It’s going to take dedication and purpose to do the hard math and set goals to get the Jamboree into the black again.
Local naysayers who complain from the wings about the noise, the congestion, the interruption of their routine are simply short-sighted if they don’t realize what the Jamboree does for them indirectly, if not putting money right in their pockets. Many local businesses get more foot traffic and revenue flow than any other time of the year. Money is rolling into the schools, the clubs, churches and all manner of private pocketbooks.
This may not be the revenue generated by logging, but it’s cash flow. It’s jobs. Yeah, it’s a little inconvenient, but so’s going to work.
Whether Sweet Home’s future revolves in some way around the outdoors, or whether it’s music or some other attraction, it’s clear to me and many others that there’s a lot of unrealized potential here. When you get 10,000-pllus people to congregate in a little town on the edge of nowhere, something’s working.
A friend of mine who was a successful retail businessman in a large city often would say that a key to success is “Location, location, location.” We’ve all heard that. It’s true. We’ve got it here.
We have a new director for the Jamboree, Robert Shamek. We have a board of directors whose responsibilities extend, at least on paper, far beyond the festival itself, who are intelligent, focused and accomplished in their own fields.
It’s my hope that they will figure out what needs to happen to keep the Oregon Jamboree a healthy, community-building, community-supporting enterprise that will continue to draw eager visitors to one of the most pleasant places in the state of Oregon – Sweet Home.