It’s time.
When the Sign Team volunteers post the distinctive yellow campground signs, the sound and stage contractors’ rigs appear on our streets, the green Sunbelt Rentals trucks roll by, and the fences go up around the high school athletic field, we know the Oregon Jamboree is upon us.
This is the Jamboree’s 19th year and every indication is that it will be bigger and better than ever, with new wrinkles designed to make that happen – particularly the second stage in Sankey Park that will provide more music and more artists than would be possible with just the main stage.
This is an important time for everyone in Sweet Home.
Many of the 700-plus volunteers who make the show happen understand this. So do many residents who may not necessarily attend the event.
But I wonder if a lot of people really appreciate how important the Jamboree is to us. I know I didn’t when I first arrived in Sweet Home, in 2005.
If you’ve never been to the Jamboree, it’s hard to grasp the reality of what it is, even if you’ve heard the echoes of the big stars over the years. It may be an inconvenience to some of us in some ways – traffic, street and park closures, noise, etc. – but it is a major boon to this community in many more ways.
I cannot overstate that.
I wasn’t here when the Jamboree started, but I understand, to some extent, why it started.
My home town is Grants Pass, where, before canny activists convinced judges to force the shutdown of logging in the national forests due to concerns over the spotted owl, there were quite a few thriving mill operations. None remain, though remnants of the one closest to where I grew up, the Spaulding Mill, still stand as a stark reminder of a lost industry.
Grants Pass has recovered to a great extent, re-inventing itself as a tourist destination and center of light industry. It’s a completely different community than it was when I grew up.
The Jamboree is Sweet Home’s effort to turn things around. With the local forestry industry largely confined to private timberlands, wise people decided it was time to find a way to re-invent Sweet Home. They needed finances to do that and thus the Oregon Jamboree was born, in 1992.
The Sweet Home Economic Development Group was formed and two of its members, Marge Geil and Leslie Ancke pursued their vision for a three-day country music, camping and fund-raising event. Defying the odds, they got Wynonna Judd to perform at the 1992 and 1993 Jamborees. That got the ball rolling, though there were a lot of early hiccups, including the cancellation of the 1998 show and a financial bailout by local citizens, who ponied up thousands of dollars to keep the Jamboree alive at one point. (They got their money back.)
I’m reviewing this history to remind us of why we have the Jamboree in the first place.
Since the original Jamboree, Sweet Home has hosted almost half a million country music fans. It has made money and a lot of that money has been invested in our community, though some has been saved for what hopefully would be the purchase of a permanent amphitheater.
Here’s some of what SHEDG has done for Sweet Home with revenue from the Jamboree:
n Provided more than $170,000 in grants, distributed by the Sweet Home Community Foundation, to fund projects ranging from playground equipment for children to the Meals on Wheels program for senior citizens.
n Provided money to refurbish the Weddle Covered Bridge, build new community tennis courts and a trail at Foster Lake, fund a portion of Sweet Home’s Main Street median project and pay for restroom improvements at Shea Point.
n Provided money for the Sweet Home Active Revitalization Effort (SHARE) to fund projects including building façade improvements, murals, banners, events and the marketing of Sweet Home. If you’ve noticed new paint and new signs on buildings in the downtown area, the Oregon Jamboree is responsible for much of it.
n Provided much of the funding necessary to hire Brian Hoffman to serve as Sweet Home’s economic development director. Brian has coordinated the efforts and energy of SHARE volunteers and has brought expertise from his own background in northern California logging towns and in a small crossroads community in Kansas to advise local businesses and plan strategies to help promote Sweet Home as a business and tourism center.
Some of the benefits of the Jamboree that are easy to forget are how it provides big opportunities for youth groups and civic groups to fund-raise in a fun atmosphere. Just one example is The Rotary Club’s booth, which has served at least 30,000 hamburger and curly fry baskets over the years at the Jamboree, raising more than $100,000 for scholarships for local students going to college.
It’s also easy to forget the economic boost that having a crowd half the normal size of the population of Sweet Home roll into town brings to local businesses and to the folks who sell parking spaces in their driveways.
In 2010, the Jamboree paid the school district $16,636 to rent the school grounds and will pay a facility use fee this year that is indexed to the increase in City of Sweet Home water rates – in other words, slightly higher. The Jamboree also paid the district $20,669 last year to use school buses for the shuttle service. In addition, school athletic teams, the band, the Spanish Club, FBLA, and the Elementary Parent-Teacher clubs combined to earn $31,236 from last year’s event.
That’s more than $65,000 going to school children.
The Jamboree has been very successful in recent years – until 2010, when it ended up in the red.
That’s why we members of the community need to take seriously the challenges we face and make sure we are doing our part – talking it up to our family and friends, making sure people aren’t confused between what we are offering and what the other festival down the road is, putting up with the inconveniences because it will pay off for all of us.
If we value what the Jamboree has contributed to our community, now is the time to step up and support it. Even if you aren’t attending yourself, be patient with the complications it may create and be welcoming to the folks who come to town to enjoy it.
Give them the sense that they’ve come to a place that truly is a Sweet Home.