A Welcoming Community Development
Last month I wrote with a tone of cold resolve for the New Year. This month, despite cold winter days and an extremely challenging national climate, I will focus on something warmer: how communities think about welcoming. From community organizations to local government leaders to chambers of commerce and the private sector, all have an investment in the success and sustainability of their communities as a destination and welcoming place for existing and future residents.
Destination organizations navigate how communities welcome new visitors and potential new residents, while managing tensions that may arise between visitors/potential residents and existing residents. These destination organizations often work with dedicated tourism funds that come from lodging or occupancy taxes. In some states like North Carolina, those funds are required to be spent on marketing tourism, but each state is different.
Because of their work with tourism, their history, and dedicated funding, sometimes our destination-oriented colleagues are seen as separate from community development. Yet their work is important, is similar to broad community development, and is driven by many of the same important strategic concerns for the quality of life for our communities. Cross pollination between the two may lead to ideas for collaboration and partnership.
No matter whether your community has many natural amenities, financial resources and capacity, or is more a place of potential, a good strategy in both destination work and community development has similar underpinnings. It’s still about building the capacity to create a compelling, beautiful, and competitive community.
If this capacity is key, let’s look more closely at an example that shows how that happens. Durham, NC where I partly grew up and I’m now based is a high capacity area but is not seen as a naturally spectacular amenity place in the same way as North Carolina’s mountains or coast. The area has however worked to develop more amenities within its control.
For example, Durham leaders championed construction of the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC) now closing on 20 years ago. The venue is a real amenity, appealing across many demographics so long as one can afford the price of a ticket.
More recently, Durham invested in creating a Destination Master Plan. In considering implementation of that plan, destination organization leaders reflected on financial options for construction of additional amenities. Because the destination marketing organization recognized it had very limited tools of developing new projects, they thought about new creative approaches. Sound familiar to community development leaders?
The destination organization was limited structurally from seeking grants, and after studying the issue and getting themselves organized, these Durham leaders took steps toward energetic implementation of their carefully made plan.
First, they were able to secure a lodging tax change to support the additional identified investments, once DPAC was paid off. This required collaboration with local government leaders and bipartisan legislative change in Raleigh to benefit the community. The City and County agreed to have the destination organization manage some of the funding, which was seen as enabling local governments to focus elsewhere, while the destination organization focused on implementing the Destination Master Plan.
Second, the destination organization formed a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to seek matching dollars to the hospitality and local government funding and solve that structural limitation. This also helped take pressure off the city and county, as there would be a separate vehicle they would not have to administer directly to raise funds and work on the destination master plan implementation.
Underpinning success in this case, the destination organization had built relationships and coalitions over time with leaders outside of tourism, and it worked to everyone’s advantage when it came time to collaborate. That does not mean a top-down angle where key leadership is provided is never called for, but it is important to have options by planning and building relationships ahead of time, as happened here.
A reader can probably see the similarities between this destination-based work and the capacity that leads to more traditional or even creative community development, such as the arts-led development my colleague Wendy Holmes and I published about in December. That is why I work with communities and organizations both in an organizational capacity and on destination strategy and execution.
One final and important parallel between destination-focused work and community development is the importance of consistent education of stakeholders. The stakeholder education work that destination organizations must do to be effective has similarities with the case that community development organizations make to economic developers and local government leaders.
We all want to welcome warmly and build bridges, with those of our neighbors already here and those that don’t know they will be here soon. In all these cases: organizational development considerations, clearly thinking ahead, and a plan tied to the realities of community priorities and resources are essential.