Q&A: Sally Cavanaugh, Cavanagh takes tourists on high-tech highway to Vermont

Vermont Business Magazine, Mar 01, 2002 by Smith, Robert

Let me give you an example. About five years ago the federal government allocated funds specifically for scenic byways. I was just down in Bellows Falls, and they're on a scenic byway and are building a way-point interpretive center. Vermont, in coordination with New Hampshire, is using that federal money to develop the process on the state level so that these local communities along Route 5 could come to the state, be designated a state scenic byway, and by virtue of that designation apply to the federal government for some of that scenic byways money.

That money is becoming intensely more competitive now, with only S25 million or $26 million allocated for the whole country and more states becoming aware of it. Here, more energy is going toward interpreting the thoroughfares and interpreting the significant cultural heritage regions of our state. The federal government has been soliciting more and more applications for this kind of work, and stimulating more interest in it.

So in the future for Vermont, in the next 10 to 15 years, I think that we have to continue to intensively develop programs like the block grants, so that local decisions govern where you want this type of byway development, where you want to have interpretive pulloffs, where you want to have particular signs, and what you want to say and don't want said about a particular region.

These are important decisions, and the framework that we've now got in place with the block grants, statewide relationships, coordinated marketing, well, I think it's our best shot at making sure that how we promote this state to the world is how we want it to be promoted. It's our own way of telling our story. That's what the future holds for us.

People often think that the state is going to do such a good job marketing us that we're going to be overrun and it's just going to wreck Vermont. There are people who feel that.

VBM: What's your answer to them?

Cavanagh: I feel that you have to be smart about how you utilize your resources, and smart about recognizing the assets that you have and that you want to both promote and protect. You have to be smart about partnering up to access the resources available to do the work. Then, if you do the work in such a way that it not only is creative, but actually protects and enhances the r- urces you have, you can't miss.

For instance, the scenic byway on Route 5. We've got downtowns all along that byway that have now been named officially as designated downtowns by the state. Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Windsor. So you've got a designated downtown within a byway, surrounded by a region where coordinated messaging is taking place for lodging, marketing, and tourist opportunities. If you do it well, you're able to stimulate traveler's interest in those downtowns. You'll be able to integrate into those downtowns craft businesses, cultural opportunities and other things that will keep them flourishing by virtue of having all this visitation to that area.

VBM: I see that where I five. Downtown Bellows Falls was a lot of empty store fronts 10 or 15 years ago, but not now.