Judy Castleberry on Ken’s Think Tank Season 4, Episode 2

“By supporting outdoor rec, it helps diversify our economy.  That means we have businesses across the scale.  It also attracts people in from outside, which is back to my push on marketing.”

“Do we really want every visitor to just go to Durango?  Nothing against Durango, but…”

I love Durango.

“Love Durango, but we want these visitors to come here.  We want them to spend a day on our river.  We want them to go see the play at the Lions Wilderness Park in the evening.  We want them to go to the Museum.  We want them to go mountain biking.  Because, what do they do when they do all that?  They spend the night in motels, they eat in restaurants, and they bring money in from outside.”

Do some local shopping at retail places.

“Exactly.  All those downtown merchants that are working so hard right now to maintain during this construction, they will go spend money there.  All of these things build on each other.

Yeah.  It’s brilliant.  For those that don’t know, the whole idea with the Outdoor Recreation Industry Initiative (ORII) is that we’re trying to attract people – end users – people that would come here and partake in our outdoor recreation resources.  We’re also trying to attract businesses that cater to those people.  We’re also trying to attract industry people – manufacturers – who are manufacturing things for that industry.

“It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing.  You have to start someplace.  If people come to Farmington and say ‘I want to go down on the river and go rafting, but I don’t have a raft and I just drove into town, and I don’t know everything,” they’re not going to stay the extra to do that.  You have to have the businesses to support that.”

Yeah, have it available for them.

“So, it is kind of chicken and egg.  You gotta have the businesses, and you gotta have the people.”​

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