A16 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017
FROM A1
BY THE WAY
BTW
Continued from Page A1
EO FILE PHOTO
Hermiston School District athletic facilities, including Kennison Field, seen here, are host to many games and tournaments
that bring players and spectators from all over.
VISIT
Continued from Page A1
“We have nothing to pro-
mote,” he said.
The city has invested
heavily in the Eastern Ore-
gon Trade and Event Cen-
ter on the southeast edge
of town, including a $1 per
room per night tourism pro-
motion assessment on hotel
rooms that goes directly to
marketing EOTEC (a sec-
ond dollar per night, added
last year, is being used to
pay off bonds used to com-
plete EOTEC’s construc-
tion). The project started out
the 2017-2018 fi scal year
with more than $350,000 in
TPA funds in the bank. Now
that construction is com-
plete and venue-manage-
ment company VenuWorks
is set to take over manage-
ment on Jan. 1, the EOTEC
board hopes to use that war
chest to start marketing the
facility in earnest for con-
ventions and other events
that will draw out-of-town
guests.
The city is also invest-
ing in things like a festival
street — with construction
planned for spring down-
town — to provide travelers
with something to do during
their stay.
“The proof’s in the pud-
ding that we are investing
in tourism assets and infra-
structure, but you don’t start
marketing the car before
you build the car,” Morgan
said.
When tourists come to
Pendleton, they often come
purely for vacation reasons,
and fi nd plenty of events,
tours, museums, outdoor
recreation, shopping and
dining experiences to keep
them busy during their stay.
Hermiston’s hotels, on
the other hand, tend to be
more full during the week
than on weekends. Herm-
iston Holiday Inn Express
manager Steven Arrasmith
told Elfering during Thurs-
day’s meeting that the hotel
has “a lot of corporate
travel, and not as much for
leisure.”
If hotels, restaurants and
gas stations are seeing an
uptick during the weekend,
it’s usually for sports tour-
naments held at Kennison
Field and other Hermiston
School District venues that
the community has invested
in. Chamber director Deb-
bie Pedro said Hermiston’s
biggest yearly attraction is
the Hermiston Farm Fair, an
agricultural trade show that
draws about 1,500 people to
town.
AAU basketball tour-
naments and trade shows
at EOTEC might not be
as glamorous as the Pend-
leton Round-Up, Morgan
said, but they can still direct
out-of-town dollars into
local businesses. They just
require a different strategy.
“The engineer that has
to come here for work,
what are the things that
would get dollars out of his
pocket?” Morgan asked as
he described Hermiston’s
tourism focus.
Umatilla County’s tour-
ism lodging tax seemed to
lean more toward the Pend-
leton style of tourism, which
relies on a distinctive Pend-
leton brand of a good time
in the “real west.” The pro-
posal put together by the
county spoke of “marketing
Umatilla County as a desti-
nation” via brand develop-
ment, membership in state-
wide tourism associations,
location options.”
The news release stated
that the chamber has
enjoyed working with var-
ious groups over 22 years
in the conference center
and thanked everyone who
had been “so supportive of
the Chamber and its long
time success in managing
the Hermiston Community
Center.”
CHAMBER
Continued from Page A1
to the conference center will
also help alleviate crowding
at city hall.
In April the council also
voted to offer the chamber
space for free in the base-
ment of the former Carne-
gie Library, which the city
planned to spend $125,000
remodeling. But attendees
at that city council meeting
called the offer of a base-
ment an insult to the cham-
ber after its years of being
a valued community part-
ner, and questioned whether
the city would run the center
with the community truly
in mind. The chamber for-
mally turned down the offer
of the Carnegie Library in
social media campaigns,
grants and paid media cam-
paigns with analytics gath-
ered from “our outside-of-
area target audience.”
For those reasons, Pend-
leton hoteliers and those
affi liated with Travel Pend-
leton and the Pendleton
Convention Center were
opposed to the tax. They felt
that Pendleton — with 15 of
the 29 hotels in the county
that would be affected —
would be contributing to a
fund that would duplicate
Travel Pendleton’s efforts
inside Pendleton and dispro-
portionately subsidize other
communities outside of it.
“Please don’t hamstring
Pendleton to supplement
other towns in Umatilla
County who haven’t com-
mitted to tourism and may
not have the infrastructure
or events to host tourism,”
Pendleton Convention Cen-
ter manager Pat Beard wrote
in a letter sent to county
commissioners.
Bill Elfering heard them
loud and clear, and said the
county was abandoning the
idea.
“It’s off the table at this
point,” he said.
Last Supper Dining,
at 508 E Main Street
in Hermiston, has now
expanded
its
hours
to include lunch. The
restaurant is open from
11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday
through Saturday.
Desert Rose Ministries
started the biblically-
themed restaurant in July
as a way to offer jobs to
people struggling to fi nd
employment due to a
criminal record or other
barriers.
The church has also
opened Devine Blessings
Thrift Shoppe next door
at 524 E Main St. The
secondhand store is open
from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• • •
Hermiston High School
will be opening a new
parking lot behind the
school on Jan. 2. The lot,
which can be accessed via
Orchard Avenue, was built
to help relieve congestion
in the school’s other
parking lots and Highland
Avenue.
Students will have
access from the lot into
the school via the doors by
the weight room. All buses
will continue to enter the
school grounds from North
First Street.
The fi rst 200 students
to use the weight room
entrance from the new
parking lot on Jan. 2 will
be greeted with a free hot
chocolate.
• • •
The Echo Community
Benefi t Plan is providing
grant money to spruce up
two landmarks in Echo.
Repairs will be performed
to fl oor joists and
plumbing at the old VFW
Hall, the kitchen will be
renovated and the hall will
receive new fl ooring and
new paint, according to a
post on the city of Echo’s
Facebook page. A second
grant will go to repairs of
the historic Fort Henrietta
Park Blockhouse, where
some of the wood has
rotted.
• • •
The city of Hermiston
has a new fi nance director.
City Manager Byron
Smith introduced Mark
Krawczyk to the city
council Monday after
his fi rst day on the job.
Krawczyk is replacing
Amy Palmer, who resigned
in July for family reasons.
He
was
previously
assistant fi nance director
for Fort Worth, Texas and
said all of his career has
been spent in fi nance,
including 16 years in the
utilities industry.
———
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for our weekly By The
Way column by emailing
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media using the hashtag
#HHBTW.
IN BRIEF
‘Elf’ raises money
for Operation
Graduation
A special showing of
“Elf” will help usher in
the holiday season and
raise money for Riverside
High School’s Operation
Graduation.
The event is Friday,
Dec. 22 at 7:15 p.m. at
the SAGE Center, at 101
Olson Road, Boardman.
People are encouraged to
dress in their cozy pajamas
The cost is $3 per person,
which includes a bag of
popcorn. Additional dona-
tions will be accepted.
For more information,
call 541-481-7243 or visit
www.visitsage.com.
Art exhibit off ers
unique gift
shopping
More than 50 fi ne arts
crafters are featured in the
Art of the Gift.
The unique exhibit and
sale offers many one-of-
a-kind gift ideas. It’s open
Tuesday through Fridays
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and
Saturdays from noon to 4
p.m. at Pendleton Center
for the Arts., 214 N. Main
St., Pendleton. It runs
through Dec. 31.
In addition to Saturday
shopping, visitors can par-
ticipate in free drop-in art
and craft projects. For more
information, call 541-278-
9201 or visit www.pendle-
tonarts.org.
Climb aboard for
‘Polar Express’
event
Kids are invited to put
on their favorite pajamas
for a “Polar Express” party.
Hot chocolate, cookies,
a photo booth and other
fun activities are featured
during the free event. Kids
and their families will want
to climb aboard Thursday,
Dec. 21 from 3-6 p.m.
at the Hermiston Pub-
lic Library, 235 E. Gladys
Ave. For more informa-
tion, call 541-567-2882.
FILE PHOTO
Hermiston Chamber of Commerce director Debbie Pedro,
right, and Kelly Schwirse take phone calls in April in the
offi ce at the Hermiston Conference Center.
June.
Since then, the cham-
ber has been searching for a
building to call home before
the end of the year. A news
release from the chamber on
Tuesday called the move to
the Cornerstone Plaza “tem-
porary” and said chamber
staff, board members and
volunteers “are currently
exploring all permanent
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