City Council votes to keep Waynesboro Tourism Center out of town

Waynesboro City Council voted 3-2 Monday night to nix a proposed move for the Waynesboro Tourism Center from the top of Afton Mountain into the city limits.

The reason: fear of the unknown. Well, certain unknowns.

We know that 16,000 people a year visit the Tourism Center annually. What we don’t know is how many of those folks end up coming down the mountain to Waynesboro.

That’s one unknown. The other is we don’t know how many would visit the center if it were moved to the former Virginia Metalcrafters building on East Main Street, a 2.9-mile drive, according to Google Maps, which estimates the trek at four minutes.

What we would know there is how many of those people would end up in Waynesboro. There’d be a 1:1 ratio on that one.

Either way, the drive into town coming down Route 250 isn’t the most attractive of drives, not exactly the first impression that you want to make.

Of course, neither is the situation at the top of the mountain, which is a warts-and-all view of our otherwise picturesque Shenandoah Valley.

We might indeed be better off having visitors drive past our pitiful little Tourism Center and stop at Exit 94 five miles, and five minutes, away.

But then, Exit 94 is Anytown With An Interstate Exit, USA, with cookie-cutter chain restaurants as your options.

Don’t need much help from a Tourism Center to figure that out. Anybody with a smartphone can Google or Yelp their way to the chains.

Kind of brings up the question of why we commit resources to maintaining a Tourism Center, doesn’t it?

The current location is unsatisfactory, the best outcome is to hope people keep driving down the mountain, bypassing the actual town for the bright lights of the interstate exit at the edge of the city limits a few miles away.

Whatever money we spend on the Tourism Center, we could repurpose for better signs for the interstate exit.

Oops, sorry. The building and inspections office would nix that. They’ve got a reputation of not being friendly to business to uphold.

Tumbleweeds. That’s what we need more of. Low taxes, and tumbleweeds.

Just when I think this City Council can’t be any more short-sighted, they go out and do something like this, and totally redeem themselves.

Good work, gentlemen.

– Column by Chris Graham