Mayors list top tourist locations
By TIM KANE - tkane@kcchronicle.com
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| Sandy Bressner – sbressner@kcchronicle.com
Rachel Matzuka, 16, of St. Charles, with Brandon Bell, 17, close behind, passes by the Hotel Baker in downtown St. Charles on her bicycle Wednesday afternoon. |
A trip of a thousand miles begins with a single step, the old saying goes. The Tri-Cities area is the destination for many visitors, many of whom travel more than a thousand miles to get here.
Visitors come here for leisure and business, marketing studies show.
The money visitors bring and spend here is important to the local economy.
This year, the city of St. Charles made about $1.8 million from its hotel tax, down from $1.9 million last year, said Chris Minick, the city’s finance director.
The average family of four who resides in Illinois saves $1,100 a year in taxes because of visitor spending, according to the Illinois Bureau of Tourism.
Amy Egolf, executive director with the St. Charles Convention & Visitors Bureau Bureau, said her organization is constantly looking for ways to increase the number of visitors that come to the Tri-Cities area.
Monday afternoon, a work crew was putting up a new logo over the door of bureau office on North 2nd Street, located in a small shopping center.
The logo change was prompted by a bureau-funded study conducted by TDSM, an Ottawa-based marketing destination agency, indicating the city’s secondary leisure market – people 25 to 35 years old with incomes of up to $75,000 – don’t react positively to words such as “historic” and “quaint.”
But these same people are very much drawn to things that are “natural,” prompting the bureau to change its logo. The new one says St. Charles has “natural charm.”
Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke named Fermilab as one of Batavia’s top visitor destinations.
Visitors include top scientists from around the world and also many from the media – TV and film crews who make news reports and documentaries about the place.
Named after Enrico Fermi, Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Fermilab is world-famous for its 4-mile-long underground atom-smasher.
Schielke said the city of Batavia does not have to do much promoting Fermilab other than by word of mouth, telling people looking for it where it is.
“They stop by City Hall all the time,” Schielke said, adding that he understands why people can’t find it.
“It looks like an office building with a lot of space around it,” he said.
A stroll through the downtown district is all you’ll need figure out what lures people Geneva, Mayor Kevin R. Burns said.
“Geneva is the great escape,” Burns said.
“Walking through town is a chance for you to reflect and rejuvenate. You can unwind and recollect.”
Burns calls State Street [Route 38] and 3rd Street in Geneva “perpendicular spines” and a “paradise for walkers.”
Pottawatomie Park in St. Charles tops Mayor Don DeWitte’s list of destinations in his city.
The park on the Fox River has paddlewheel riverboats, a 9-hole golf course, a miniature golf course and Pavilion rentals and is the destination for many company picnics and organized events that attract many out-of-town visitors.
Top destinations for visitors in each of the Tri-Cities [as picked by their respective mayors]:
BATAVIA
• Fermilab
• Mooseheart Child City & School
• Quarry Park
• Bellevue Place [a sanitarium that was once home to Mary Todd Lincoln]
• Batavia Riverwalk
Source: Mayor Jeff Schielke
GENEVA
• Downtown Geneva
• River Park
• Island Park
• Elfstrom Stadium [home of the Kane County Cougars]
• Fox Valley Ice Arena
Source: Geneva Mayor Kevin R. Burns
ST. CHARLES
• Pottawatomie Park
• Pheasant Run
• Kane County Fleamarket
• Historic downtown [including Hotel Baker]
• Q Center [former Arthur Andersen training facility]
Source: St. Charles Mayor Don DeWitte
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