EDITORIAL: Be proud of what we can offer visitors

After living in an area long enough, you tend to overlook the uniquely beautiful things in your own back yard. This is often the case in the Pee Dee, but many local residents are becoming aware of this as Florence and Williamsburg counties are looking for ways to entice more tourist traffic to come to our area.

Robert Cleverdon, director of international projects of the Irish company Tourism Development International, or TDI, said during a forum in Kingstree last week that passion, commitment and champions are needed to go the extra mile and make tourism a success.

Many things are happening that make now as good a time as any for us to make a great push for more tourism.

One thing we should be proud of is that we’re blessed with wonderful natural resources.

In southern Florence County, we’ve got the the Lynches River County Park between Coward and Effingham and, quite naturally, the river itself. The park features a new Environmental Discovery Center, a tree canopy walk and a splash pad that’s popular during the summer.

Florence County also has the Great Pee Dee River, and Williamsburg County has the Black River, described as a “gem in the rough” last week by Williamsburg Chamber member Diane Boyd.

Of course, we have to do our best to keep these waterways as clean as possible so that we can continue to enjoy them and share them with our visitors.

Florence city leaders have been working for years and years on revitalizing downtown, where recently the new Florence Little Theatre building has opened, a Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center is being built, and the county has bought land for a new Florence Museum of Art, Science and History.

Downtown Lake City still has an amazing amount of local businesses and the National Bean Market Museum, which could tie in nicely with promotions of the area’s museums and rich history.

In November 2005, New Carolina’s Tourism Cluster Committee commissioned a study by TDI to complete a statewide Tourism Action Plan, which included a call for planning at the regional level.

It’s been a year since TDI presented its tourism assessment for Florence County, which said Florence County could quadruple its tourism income through a branding campaign based on Revolutionary War figure Francis Marion. That would be a $35 million investment, TDI said at the time.

While some suggested attractions, such as converting tobacco barns into “distinctive” lodging, might sound dubious, the assessment provided solid ideas such as downtown revitalization, better signage and improved visitors centers, which our area needs anyway.

Lake City recently hired contractors to place large green street signs over the city’s major intersections, and the city of Florence has a new, vibrantly colored logo it is using to promote the different facets of the city. These are steps in the right direction to making our cities more visitor-friendly.

One piece of advice from last week’s forum came from TDI Managing Director Peter MacNulty, who said that when visitors stop into a local town, we should ask them what they’re looking for in tourism attractions. What better way to discover the things that would make our area a destination for travelers?