PORT ANGELES — The Port Angeles Visitor Center should be run by either the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce or at businesswoman Edna Petersen’s Necessities & Temptations gift shop through Soroptimist International Port Angeles-Jet Set, the city Lodging Tax Advisory Committee has unanimously recommended.
The panel, which met Wednesday, also endorsed the chamber, Laurel Black Design of Port Angeles and Vertigo Marketing of Bend, Ore., as choices to market Port Angeles as a tourist destination.
The recommendations now go to the City Council for final decisions on how to spend the $527,100 in lodging tax allocations for 2015.
Recommended allocations were marketing, $175,000; visitor center, $78,500; event grants, $70,000; Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts, $70,000; city parks and recreation, $62,000; Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, $26,300; Olympic Peninsula Tourism Commission, $23,500; Laurel Street improvement debt, $23,500; and lodging tax administration, $1,500.
The money comes from the city’s 4 percent room tax on overnight establishments. These dollars can only be used for tourism-related efforts.
The advisory committee, chaired by City Councilwoman and former Mayor Cherie Kidd, forwarded its recommendations to the council, which could decide on allocating the 2015 funding at its regular meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers at City Hall, 321 E. Fifth St.
Big tent
The action on $70,000 to the Juan de Fuca Foundation was not an outright recommendation for approval of its request to fund purchase of a circus-size tent in which to stage some of its events.
The allocation includes $60,000 that would be set aside for possible purchase of the tent and $10,000 that would be spent to determine maintenance and operation costs, where it would be stored and to resolve other “due diligence” issues, Kidd said.
Foundation Executive Director Dan Maguire would have to get final approval for the purchase by again first seeking a recommendation from the committee and approval from the council, Kidd said.
“We don’t have enough information to give him the [$60,000],” she said Thursday.
Maguire said at the meeting that the allocation was a onetime capital request.
“After that, it will be self-sufficient,” he said.
The Laurel Street allocation covers debt incurred for sidewalk improvements that had to be made to preserve the city’s historical underground, Kidd said.
The debt expires in 2021.
Ranking
Lodging tax committee members ranked the marketing and visitor center proposals by awarding up to 10 points on five criteria each, ending up with hundreds of points being allotted for each of the applications.
Some committee members did not rank some of the applicants.
Committee members are Kidd, Hannah Hooper, Fowler Stratton, Mike Edwards, Betsy Wharton, Holly Dempsey, Ryan Malane, Scott Nagel and Dave Shargel.
Visitor center criteria included scope of services and knowledge of the area, while marketing criteria included marketing strategy, cost and ability to work with local entities.
Committee members allotted one to 10 points in each criteria to each applicant.
Applicants also were ranked first, second or third according to their total points.
Fewer than 10 points separated the top two finishers for both the visitor center and tourism marketing.
Ben Braudrick, assistant planner with the city community and economic development department, offered different totals Thursday that did not change the outcomes but corrected an error in the calculations, he said.
One committee member’s rankings were not included in the totals Wednesday, Braudrick said.
“It was an oversight, basically,” he said.
Visitor center
For the visitor center, the chamber received 314 points and three firsts, five seconds and no thirds.
Soroptimist-Jet Set had 306 points and six first places, one second and one third.
The third applicant, Jessica Elliott and Dale Wilson, publisher of the free newspaper Port O Call, received 208 points and no firsts, one second and seven thirds.
According to the Soroptimist proposal, submitted by group President Becky McGinty, the visitor center, now at 121 E. Railroad Ave. near the Black Ball Ferry Line terminal, would operate out of Petersen’s shop at 217 N. Laurel St., about a block away.
Jet Set would rent space in the store for the visitor center.
It would have two full-time employees and volunteers who would be subcontracted out to the store.
Soroptimist would provide oversight to the visitor center and subcontract out daily operations to the store.
The group proposed an annual cost of $63,648.
Nagel said he was concerned about the proposal.
Unanswered questions included if the visitor center area would be walled off from the store and how its marketing aspects would be handled.
“There are a lot of complex issues of who does what,” said Nagel, an events coordinator.
Petersen and McGinty could not be reached Thursday afternoon for comment.
The chamber, which now also has the marketing contract, presented a two-part proposal.
One calls for the visitor center to be operated by the chamber with two paid staff, 35 volunteers and no marketing contract for $120,712.
The second proposal calls for the same number of staff and volunteers “combined with the economies of scale provided by the chamber receiving the tourism advertising and marketing services contract for $83,130,” according to the proposal.
Marketing
There were nine applicants for the marketing funds.
Vertigo Marketing — of Carnation, Wash., and Bend, Ore. — had 706 total points with five firsts, two seconds and no thirds.
The chamber, which now runs the visitor center, had 697 points and four firsts, one second and one third.
Laurel Black Design had 621 points and one first, two seconds and no thirds.
Other applicants for marketing were Wheeler & Associates of Port Angeles; DVA Advertising & Public Relations of Bend, Ore.; Atlas Advertising of Denver; CMG/KIRO-TV of Seattle; marketing and public affairs consultant Ellen Hiatt of Stanwood; and BMH Marketing Inc. of Edmonds.
Wheeler & Associates received 448 points and no firsts, seconds or thirds.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
