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Originally Posted by Army_of_One  Maybe the 1st step would for everyone to call ICE every day until they do a raid...lol.
Seriously do you think that tourism can be revived in Dodge? I think it will take more than just an events center. I think it has to be a multi-faceted approach. I don't think there is just one golden ticket that is the answer. I think you need to reduce crime first and foremost. The city needs to be cleaned up over all. It's filthy. Drive around the town sometime and just look at it from the point of view that you are a tourist...There are so many stray animals running the streets it's not even funny. There should also be an ordinance passed prohibiting purple and pink houses...lol. Why can't we have a casino? |
Army,
Very well said.
Adding some thoughts on tourism. Dodge City became a household name for one reason; the long running popular Gunsmoke show. Unfortunately, the newer generations have not had that television show available to them. I still remember an interview on a Wichita television station a number of years ago with the curator of the barbed wire museum, when he made the comment that he was having a hard time getting the kids interested in collecting barbed wire. Well, duh. There are still plenty of people all over the world that are interested in the Western Lore and we need to target them.
Dodge City and its name have a lot to offer to tourism, but it is not happening now and I don't think a municipal building will be our salvation. Where are our entrepreneurs that could be capturing this tourism market today? For Dodge City to be a tourist destination there needs to be a mix of shops, attractions, eateries, which are all private business, then you can mix in the non-private sector, such as Boot Hill Museum, the Heritage Center, Ft. Dodge, even the Register of Deeds. In Dodge when the non-private attractions exceed the private enterprises, tourism will fail. After all we don't have the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon close by, but we do have a lot of negatives to overcome: stinky air, dirty streets, trashy neighborhoods, lack of water in our river.
Detector, I think you will see something besides meat packers in Dodge and here are my thoughts------
It would be nice for a clean industry like tourism to replace our dependence on packing plants. There will be life AP(After Packers). The packers will eventually leave Dodge. They are here for one reason and that is the supply of cattle from the feedyards. The feedyards are here because of the production of irrigated corn. The irrigated corn is here because of the Ogallala aquifer. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the production of irrigated corn will decrease in years to come because holders of junior water rights will be forced to shut their wells down. In turn feedyard output will decrease and at some time when the packing plants have some age to them, they will shut down. I don't know how quickly this will happen, but water is being mined from the aquifer at an alarming rate and there is basically no recharge. From Southwest Water, a publication of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District Number 3, Volume 2, Issue 1, January 2007, "O(sic) course, half of the 3 million acres irrigated each year in Kansas are located in GMD3 and less than one inch of average recharge gets back to the aquifer."
Back to the SEC. I would like to get the biggest bang for my buck possible. I see what Garden City does in attracting events to their 3i Building/Fair Grounds complex. To me that is a lot of bang for the buck. I personally liked the idea submitted by Phil Ochs and Steve Riegel on the SEC. I think that complex could attract the kind of visitors to our city that we are capable. I think part of our problem today is that some business leaders and governmental leaders over the years have tried to put down our image as a cowtown and make us into something that we are not. Let's promote our Western heritage, that is really our biggest asset.
Here's to a new improved Dodge City, cheers!
Duke