Mining
Tillamook’s natural assets
An entrepreneurial group looks to nature-based tourism to
diversify the economy.
By Oakley Brooks
Travelers to rugged Tillamook County are mostly left to their
own imagination. There are no arcades, quaint downtowns, outlet
malls or bustling bay fronts. Few hotels and no resorts. And
only one man-made attraction to speak of, albeit a popular one:
the cheese factory, up Highway 101 from windswept, quiet
downtown Tillamook.
Most visitors come to run four-wheelers in the sand, hike
along the rocky coast, then hole up in tents and vacation
homes, or just leave. And for years, while places such as
Cannon Beach and Astoria have been bending over backwards to
accommodate tourists, local officials have cast a sleepy eye on
Tillamook’s tourism trade. They’re content to rely
on the dairy, timber and recreational fishing outfits to run
the economy.
“I think we’ve just been laid back about
it,” says Bob McPheeters, mayor of the city of Tillamook.
“Traditionally, tourism has been less than 15% of the
economy.”
But the people come anyway. And some tourism operators and
entrepreneurs, having watched the increased number of kayaks,
bikes and other toys coming over from Portland (affectionately
called the “roof-rack effect”), want to exploit
that interest and the area’s natural assets to accelerate
the tourism industry in Tillamook County.
Marc Hinz, who owns the guiding company Kayak Tillamook
County, is at the center of the new tourism efforts. Hinz
figures the county’s hundreds of miles worth of river,
estuaries, canals and calm bays can be leveraged into more
local dollars. He’s predicting that with a little support
from local leaders, the county could eventually attract 100,000
kayakers and other visitors. Hinz boldly compares
Tillamook’s potential to Hood River, one of
windsurfing’s world capitals. “You can get more
diversity of paddling here than anywhere else in the
world.”
It’s part of the push by local tourism operators and
recreation groups for more “nature-based”
tourism.
The goal is to help smooth out some of the local boom and bust
cycles tied to Tillamook’s heavy reliance on natural
resource industries. Local dairies have benefited from success
of the Tillamook Cheese cooperative and the local timber
industry recently has been revitalized. But the recreational
fishing industry stands to take a hit this summer, as salmon
season limits discourage anglers (the season is proceeding
normally for other fishing). And local dairy farms are coming
under steady pressure from environmental regulators to limit
cow populations, and manure runoff, in the area.
Meanwhile, there are worrisome economic signs in the county.
Poverty and underemployment run rampant while unemployment, at
6% for 2005 and early 2006, hovers above the state average.
Wages are at three-fourths of the state average, and more than
half of local school kids qualify for free or subsidized lunch,
according to local economic development officials. A flood of
wealthy second-home buyers has driven the average home price to
close to $200,000, squeezing many locals out of the market.
So far, Hinz and others are struggling to show that turning
Tillamook into a nature-based tourism capital will help.
They’re trying to prove to local leaders that
they’ll be able to develop a new industry with economic
clout and attract the numbers of new visitors they’re
claiming.
“I think they’re being a little overly
optimistic,” says Chuck Hurliman, a Tillamook County
commissioner. “I would say it’s not quite risen
onto our radar yet.”
IN MID-APRIL, THE FLEDGLING nature-based tourism cluster
gathers in Tillamook High School’s cafeteria for a small
summit. But neither Hurliman, the more-supportive McPheeters,
nor any of their colleagues in local office turn up (state Sen.
Betsy Johnson does make an appearance.) Hinz is miffed, having
rallied birding groups, a hang-gliding school and a
sight-seeing boat captain, among others, to show off
what’s up and running in the county. He’s also set
to highlight a mapping effort by a local nonprofit of the
region’s waterways, for paddlers interested in
self-guided tours. He wonders aloud if political leadership
will be interested in anything other than agriculture, logging
and fishing.
“There’s a huge general population of people here
who are more accepting of this stuff,” says Hinz, 36, a
Portlander with a master’s degree in public
administration who began teaching at the Tillamook Bay
Community College in 2003.
Hinz would like to enlist local government support to invest
in launch sites and restrooms and even bring in cell phone
towers to keep contact with trips in the backcountry.
But lately, Tillamook commissioners have been focused on
elevating tree harvest levels in the Tillamook State Forest and
boosting the local timber industry. Log sales revenues from the
forest, which sprawls across the eastern two-thirds of the
county, provide roughly half of the $12 million county budget.
The wood also fuels three local mills. Even with harvest levels
below state targets, the recent mini-boom is big enough that
mills are having a hard time filling job openings. An expected
boost in harvest levels would not only fuel the industry, it
would help pay for a rapidly deteriorating road system in the
county.
“Timber makes up a good portion of our economy. How big
depends on the level we’re harvesting at,” says
Hurliman, a Tillamook native who worked for three decades as an
engineer with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management.
Tillamook’s heavy reliance on traditional resource
industries stands in contrast to other coastal counties, whose
economies are now increasingly tied to tourism. In Lincoln
County, for instance, hotel and other hospitality jobs grew 27%
over the last decade, while jobs in forestry, wood products and
fishing fell between 30% and 60%. Tillamook County grew its
forestry and logging jobs and shrank its leisure
workforce.
In Astoria, businesses and local officials have combined
investments in older sectors with tourism; the town’s
refurbished waterfront serviced by its trolley line also
includes a new Bornstein Seafood factory.
Hurliman argues that continued support for the timber industry
will deliver more “family-wage” jobs in mills,
which he says are worth more than lower-paying positions in the
tourism industry.
But that’s a presumption that Todd Davidson, the
state’s tourism director, takes issue with. While he
acknowledges that the tourism sector needs an abundance of
housekeepers and wait staff, he says more than 70% of
businesses in Oregon’s $7 billion tourism sector are sole
proprietorships, which own all the profits of the
operation.
“Those owners have an opportunity to earn a family
wage,” Davidson says. “That often gets overlooked
in this discussion.”
At Kayak Tillamook, Hinz, who started the business last June,
has made an effort to push more profits to his staff by
offering them ownership stakes in the company and paying his
five guides $15-$30 an hour.
Hinz hopes more recreation will attract related light
manufacturers to Tillamook to help expand the economy further,
similar to the way Hood River windsurfers led equipment
companies to set up shop there.
And he says more tourism would jibe with the city of
Tillamook’s downtown revitalization, which includes a new
library and Safeway. Additional visitors might spur hotel and
restaurant development in town as well.
Tourism supporters in Tillamook are also making it clear that
they’re not a front for an urban, environmentalist effort
to undermine traditional industries. Dairies in the area have
been the target of clean water suits by environmental groups
and the tourism group carefully avoids using the term
“ecotourism” to describe their activities.
“It calls to mind tree huggers who don’t want any
pollution in streams,” says Christy Vail, the director of
the county’s economic development council, which is
supportive of tourism efforts.
Hinz emphasizes coexistence with other industries.
“We can have kayaks and cows,” he says.
But Sen. Betsy Johnson notes that an economy’s
transition toward more tourism will
inevitably encounter bumps along the way.
“I think the windsurfers in Hood River were first viewed
with some hostility,” says Johnson, who represents the
North Coast area. “But now they’re made to feel
welcome and there’s a whole industry that’s cropped
up around them. Bend has done the same thing with
skiing.”
MARK WITTWER HASN’T SEEN THE BOTTOM LINE of new tourism
in Tillamook pencil out yet, but he’s putting some skin
in the game, believing that it will eventually. He and his wife
joined up with Hinz recently to become shareholders in Kayak
Tillamook. They’re contributing their guiding fees toward
ownership equity. But while his wife is offering up much of her
time to guide kayak trips, Wittwer has kept his day job farming
oysters in Tillamook Bay and guides only occasionally.
“I wish I could work in kayaking fulltime but I need to
pay the bills,” says the 48-year-old Wittwer, who was a
commercial fisherman before turning to oysters around 1990.
“We’re just building the business now.”
Wittwer thinks Hinz’s target of 100,000 new recreators a
year in Tillamook County is reachable and that a more robust
nature-based tourism industry could engage new
second-homeowners and draw greater support for keeping wild
places open or even buying them for parklands. Much of
Tillamook’s waterfront property along rivers, sloughs and
bayfronts is in private hands, but development there
hasn’t overwhelmed the landscape.
“If we wait too long it’s going to be bought up by
new owners and turned into trophy homes,” says
Wittwer.
Hurliman agrees that a vibrant nature-based recreation will
keep the county wild and open to a cross section of people.
Local residents listed protection of wildlife habitat and
related recreational opportunities as important in recent
surveys by a citizen’s group, the Tillamook County
Futures Council.
The widespread sentiment comes as two resort proposals, one
near Sand Lake and another near the Tillamook airfield, vie to
become the county’s only upscale destinations.
“Nature-based tourism is an important way to connect
people to the environment,” Hurliman says. “If we
don’t watch it, sooner or later we price ourselves out to
the elite.” He says he would be open to a Futures
Council recommendation to pursue more recreational
opportunities in the county.
“The difference of opinion right now,” Hurliman
adds, “is at what level in the economy
nature-based tourism operates.”
But after a day of showing a small band of visitors around the
city of Tillamook’s Hoquarton Slough, a paddling spot and
site of a new city walking trail, Hinz seems even more
convinced that his ideas for a new economic sector are
ascendant.
“You can say you were here at the beginning,” he
enthusiastically tells one visitor, “before this whole
thing took off.”
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