When I saw the headline "Officials Continue Efforts to Pave Riverside in Elkhorn", I thought I'd accidentally opened the Onion. Unfortunately, it wasn't a satire or parody, it was reality. There really is a small cadre of Elkhorn City elected officials who are calling for the paving of the river bank so their car club can have burnouts on the river.
There aren't enough words in the dictionary to describe how terrible this idea is. But for a town with a long history of shooting itself in the foot, it's pretty much par for the course.
This is unfortunate, because all of eastern Kentucky, all of the coalfields of our region, are at a crossroads. As our economy is altered by market related forces, we're scrambling to find alternatives. Many places won't make it. Elkhorn City is behind the eightball just like many other small towns. It's scary, not because outside forces are stacked against us, but because we continue to ignore what every tourism and economic development professional has told us: Elkhorn City could have a strong, year round, tourism anchored economy.
I've heard it from potential investors, from state tourism officials, from National Park Service officals, from economic development experts. For fifteen years, I've represented the town in tourism and development related matters...at least until a couple of years ago. That was the day we brought the Director of Adventure Tourism to a city council meeting to pitch Kentucky's new Trail Town program. She is a true believer in the potential of this place, but she was greeted with blank stares and skepticism about our possible place as a tourism hotspot. It was hugely discouraging.
Fast forward two years, the city itself has done basically nothing to move the Trail Town initiative forward. They've ignored the good work in city planning by the Elkhorn City Area Heritage Council (funded by a grant from the state that the city was a partner in). They've stood back, hands in pockets, as several long term businesses have closed their doors.
But they have no qualms about damaging our greatest asset so they can burn rubber. You'd think we were governed by 16 year olds.
The good news is, based on feedback from an in-depth local survey conducted by Eastern Kentucky University and the UK Appalachian Center, the people of Elkhorn City are ready to move in these directions. A small majority of those surveyed are even willing to accept alcohol by the drink in our restaurants (a cornerstone of successful tourism development).
But what will it take to get our elected officials to get serious about staking the claim for our town? With SOAR, Promise Zones, and a handful of other state and national initiatives, there are wagon loads of cash and assistance to help us realize our great potential. But you have to have a local government that is willing to go after it, that is willing to do the hard work to continue to attract people from around the country and world.
Once a boater, or angler, or bicyclist, or hiker, or theater lover (it's not ALL nature/adventure tourism) visits, they return. We have survey statistics to prove it.
But they ain't coming to burn rubber. If the minority who are pushing this project succeed, we might as well just pave the whole damned place. At least we could be a nice parking lot for the Breaks.