Spending More on Tourism Advertising than the State—Only in Leavenworth

Leavenworth, WA is always my lead-off story for my BoomtownUSA talk. It is a fascinating story of how a small town rebounded after losing 80% of its population. At my talk yesterday at the Association of Washington Cities Annual Conference there were two Leavenworth City Council members in the audience. We spoke after it.

Tibor Lak owns two stores in Leavenworth while Robert Eaton is a regional sales rep who covers Canada, WA, OR, ID and AK from the tiny town. Robert told me, “I live in God’s country because technology allows me to.”

“We spend more on tourism advertising than the state tourism board for the entire state of Washington. 80% of our $5.5 million general fund is from tourism dollars. We were able to do our new $2 million festival hall in an old packing house from our lodging tax. We’ve also built a new $2 million swimming pool and a new skate park because we brought several groups together on the projects,” Tibor told me.

I also learned that Mayor Mel Wyles’ mother, Laverne Peterson, was one of the original eleven members of the Vesta Junior Women’s Club that got the ball rolling on Leavenworth’s transformation into a Bavarian Village. In fact she converted the Chikamin Hotel into the Hotel Edelweiss.

But Leavenworth isn’t resting on its laurels. It is making a push to be the training site for ski jumping in the 2012 Olympics. On the outskirts of town is the only 90 meter ski jump area that is west of the Rockies. Great agurbs® never give up on their constant quest to improve themselves.