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ELKINS – A "Randolph Ready" virtual event was offered this week for community leaders and residents to both voice their opinions and supply ideas for future development in Elkins.
Stacey Raffo, with the West Virginia Community Development Hub, a nonprofit group based in Charleston, is ready to go to work as Elkins' Community Coaching Programs Associate for the HubCap program.
"I'm excited about the work that is already in place in Elkins and I'm looking forward to working with the community on exciting projects that lay ahead," she said. "Potential projects include trail development, civic engagement, riverfront redevelopment, and downtown redevelopment. We have established a leadership team and are working to create a task team that will be focused on these projects."
Her organization, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, selects high capacity communities for its two-year program. Elkins is participating in the fourth round of HubCap, with this round focused on six Mon Forest communities. Previous communities HubCap worked with saw success in business, downtown redevelopment, beautification, building remediation, and community engagement, officials said.
"We will be working with several organizations to provide knowledge, resources and technical assistance throughout the program," Raffo said, "including partnerships with WVU, USDA, The Forest Service, Woodlands, and the Brownfields Center at WVU. These partnerships will be able to provide assistance and resource development."
Attracting more tourism to the community is essential and the main reason why Elkins joins hands with programs such as HubCap. Even though COVID-19 has slowed the tourism industry down a great deal in 2020, Randolph County wasn't hit as hard as many others, not only around the state, but across the country as well, officials said.
"Seven months ago we would never have thought that tourism would take such a downward spiral and create such an unexpected drop in the area's economy," said Ann Beardslee, Elkins Welcome Center executive director and chairperson for the Elkins/Randolph County HubCap program.
"The 2018 statistics on Randolph County reported that we had a 54 million and a half income from tourists," she said. "The bad news is that our current tourism is down 30 percent, which means the loss of about 18 million this year to our county. However, the good news is that we're only down 30 percent, while other counties and states are down as much as 50 to 65 percent.
"We are very fortunate to be able to provide just the atmosphere the traveling public is craving," Beardslee said. "Studies show that travelers are looking for places they can drive to in one day, and tens of millions of people live that close to here. Although our guests can't ride a train, visit a museum every day of the week, attend concerts or participate in the arts, what statistics show is that people want to visit primarily small rural towns. They want places to bike, hike, fish, rock climb, and places where they can stay in individual cabins and be able to socially distance from other people."
Beardslee said Elkins also offers the kind of businesses tourists are looking for and that HubCap will help the area expand the tourism economy.
"Travelers are looking for great and varied locally owned restaurants, coffee shops, micro breweries and retail shops. We already have all these things right here in Randolph County," she noted. "The traveling public is recognizing that Randolph County is a great place and has a great deal to offer, even during this unusual time.
"However, we also recognize the need to continue and increase marketing activities to attract the people who are not going to be ready to travel for at least six to 18 months. One of the most important reasons I'm excited about HubCap and what direction we will be taking, is that their mission is to increase recreational tourism," she said. "This will help us determine the best way to expand the tourism economy and to offer an even wider variety of activities for visitors, making us less dependent on one or two attractions."
Many area business leaders, residents and politicians took part in the virtual meeting, including Delegate Bill Hartman, D- 43rd District, also feels that tourism in the area is ready to take off.
"I think that tourism is our strong suit right now," Hartman said during the virtual event. "And I think we should approach tourism in this region on a regional basis, given the assets that Randolph, Tucker and Pocahontas County have as far as attractions are concerned. I think we should look real hard at regional promotion and regional development of tourism."
For more information on HubCap go to the organization's Facebook page, WV Community.