Two developments in the last week triggered some reflection on Sweet Home’s future.
The first was the news that, beginning last Wednesday evening, we were losing our lake. Well, not completely, but if you’re a water skier or if you like going to Lewis Creek Park to swim, that’s pretty much the way it stacks up for you for at least the next few weeks. With the water level down 30 feet, most of the lake that’s attractive to swimmers and speedboats will be gone.
If we’ve ever taken our lakes for granted, maybe this is the time we rethink that.
Having Foster as a mud hole for the summer would mean losing a chunk of the folks who roll through town on their way to the water. That lake is on of several important keys to Sweet Home’s economic future and anyone who does not recognize that is either so comfortable on their little slice of paradise that they can’t see beyond their fence, or they’ve lost all grip on reality.
Granted, it’s going to take time to build Sweet Home’s commercial district into a downtown that can truly take advantage of the opportunities presented by Foster and Green Peter. We need more entrepreneurial, visionary people to give not only local residents, but the visitors, a reason to stop and shop.
That message was drilled home for me later in the week when I visited the bustling tent camp pitched on the Sweet Home High School athletic field. It was pretty impressive to see hundreds of bicyclists – bicyclists who rode because they wanted to, not because they had to – enjoying our country roads, our covered bridges and our town. They liked it, I was told.
Fact is, about two thirds of those folks were from the Portland metropolitan area and they aren’t the same demographic of visitors who roll through in RV’s to spend a week at the lake. These people drove SUVs and Subarus with racks on the back. It was a whole different group of people than the majority of our current tourist crowd.
Problem was, for them, there was little to do here except bike and sight-see. Some went to Lebanon to shop, I heard. Seems like some local business people could have something to offer an out-of-town bicyclist or two who were tired of riding and wanted to do a little shopping. That’s where I think we can go, and need to go, as a town.
If you’ve noticed that I keep harping on this tourism thing, don’t get me wrong. I’m just as eager to see the powers that be wake up to the fact that the national forests are anything but healthy and need to be thinned. But that’s going to take more than the initiative and purpose of the people of Sweet Home to get done. Sprucing up our town’s economy is something we can commit to and apply our purpose to in a productive way. It’s something we can control.
We need Foster Lake, but we have a lot more to offer – another lake, rivers, beautiful mountains and outdoor recreational activities galore. Those people from Portland came here because we have something they don’t.
We must remember that.
* * * * *
On a different note, I’ve heard a lot of feedback on Sportsman’s Holiday this year, some of it negative but most of it not. I personally had a very good feeling about it.
Now I know Sportsman’s Holiday is not what it was back in the 1960s and 70s, the Golden Age of Sweet Home. We don’t have powerboat races on Foster Lake, which would be really cool. (They have them in Albany now. )
We have a fun run now but old-timers fondly recall the good old days when runners would race out to Foster Lake and then paddle across on innertubes – or was it bathtubs? Regardless, it sounds like it was quite a show.
We’re not quite there yet, but let’s appreciate what we’ve got – and the fact that people aren’t satisfied.
Big thanks should go to the Chamber of Commerce board and volunteers who got this year’s show put together. Board members Billie Weber and Patti Woods, along with stalwart chamber volunteer Leita Thompson-Barr, stepped up in the absence of a chamber director and organized most of it. They even came up with some new wrinkles or revived some old ones, namely the Kiddie Karnival.
There were a few glitches, such as the fact that the Karnival didn’t get rolling till about 1 p.m., which meant there were fewer kids there than if it had been ready to go when the parade was over. But that fact wasn’t lost on organizers; and I learned a long time ago not to complain when volunteers, who are contributing a lot of hours that they could be devoting to something else, take a little longer to get something done.
Fact is, the Karnival was a blast for those who did show up. The biggest blast was probably my body hitting the water in the dunk tank – first time I’d ever had to sacrifice myself in that way. I’ve always managed to stay on the outside, taking photos. But the chamber volunteers asked, and I couldn’t say no. (Maybe next year I should have our reporter, Sean, take all the calls.)
A lot of people hadTwo developments in the last week triggered some reflection on Sweet Home’s future.
The first was the news that, beginning last Wednesday evening, we were losing our lake. Well, not completely, but if you’re a water skier or if you like going to Lewis Creek Park to swim, that’s pretty much the way it stacks up for you for at least the next few weeks. With the water level down 30 feet, most of the lake that’s attractive to swimmers and speedboats will be gone.
If we’ve ever taken our lakes for granted, maybe this is the time we rethink that.
Having Foster as a mud hole for the summer would mean losing a chunk of the folks who roll through town on their way to the water. That lake is on of several important keys to Sweet Home’s economic future and anyone who does not recognize that is either so comfortable on their little slice of paradise that they can’t see beyond their fence, or they’ve lost all grip on reality.
Granted, it’s going to take time to build Sweet Home’s commercial district into a downtown that can truly take advantage of the opportunities presented by Foster and Green Peter. We need more entrepreneurial, visionary people to give not only local residents, but the visitors, a reason to stop and shop.
That message was drilled home for me later in the week when I visited the bustling tent camp pitched on the Sweet Home High School athletic field. It was pretty impressive to see hundreds of bicyclists – bicyclists who rode because they wanted to, not because they had to – enjoying our country roads, our covered bridges and our town. They liked it, I was told.
Fact is, about two thirds of those folks were from the Portland metropolitan area and they aren’t the same demographic of visitors who roll through in RV’s to spend a week at the lake. These people drove SUVs and Subarus with racks on the back. It was a whole different group of people than the majority of our current tourist crowd.
Problem was, for them, there was little to do here except bike and sight-see. Some went to Lebanon to shop, I heard. Seems like some local business people could have something to offer an out-of-town bicyclist or two who were tired of riding and wanted to do a little shopping. That’s where I think we can go, and need to go, as a town.
If you’ve noticed that I keep harping on this tourism thing, don’t get me wrong. I’m just as eager to see the powers that be wake up to the fact that the national forests are anything but healthy and need to be thinned. But that’s going to take more than the initiative and purpose of the people of Sweet Home to get done. Sprucing up our town’s economy is something we can commit to and apply our purpose to in a productive way. It’s something we can control.
We need Foster Lake, but we have a lot more to offer – another lake, rivers, beautiful mountains and outdoor recreational activities galore. Those people from Portland came here because we have something they don’t.
We must remember that.