Welcome sign is back out again
After a six-day cross-country trek in a cramped Ford Mustang, perhaps few were more gleeful than Louisiana natives Dottie and Joshua Hartman to find the state-line visitor center reopening Thursday.
Tucked between Interstate 90 and the Spokane River, the Gateway Visitor Information Center served cake and cookies to celebrate the start of peak travel season.
The facility, which was shuttered by the state for about five years, was reopened last summer by a partnership between the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Spokane County Parks and Recreation department.
The chalet-style building is brimming with brochures, maps and other visitor resources. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through mid-October.
Jeanna Hofmeister, CVB vice president and director of destination marketing, said with additional signs along I-90 this year, she expects up to 5,000 visitors to drop in, twice as many as in 2006.
Tourism is a big boost to the regional economy. In 2005, visitors spent an estimated $688.7 million in Spokane County, resulting in $52.7 million in tax revenue, according to the CVB.
At the Gateway center, road warriors can picnic, relax by the river or hike the adjoining Centennial Trail. A new dog park on the premises provides a place for their pooches to run off-leash and take a potty break as well.
With record-high gas prices, more folks are expected this summer to vacation within 300 miles of home, said Pam Scott, CVB communications manager. The Gateway Park visitor center, she said, is an ideal place to sell the area’s attractions to passersby.
“It’s just the perfect opportunity to offer people information … that might make them stay a little longer. Once they realize what’s here, they want to stay,” Scott said.
Inside the center, Dottie Hoffman grabbed brochures on Spokane, Mt. St. Helens and the Oregon coast. She admired the surrounding trees, the first of their kind she’d seen since crossing the dry landscapes of New Mexico and Nevada.
CVB staffer Judy Ruddach greeted tourists for the second summer in a row. Visitors’ reactions to the visitor center are “always positive,” she said.
“A good example is those folks (from Louisiana),” she said. “They’re enthralled with Washington and they just barely stepped inside the border.”