COVID-19 dealt a “devastating blow” to Centre County’s tourism and hospitality industry in 2020, with hotels seeing a nearly $50 million drop in revenue from a year earlier and the resulting local hotel occupancy tax falling by $2.7 million, Happy Valley Adventure Bureau President and CEO Fritz Smith said.
But Smith and others are hopeful that they are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and that optimism was on display Thursday as the Adventure Bureau awarded the second round of 2020 tourism grants to six events and projects planned for 2021.
“It was great to see the Palmer Museum of Art opening yesterday,” Smith said. “It’s great to see the students returning to campus. It’s great that we’ve held a couple of basketball tournaments over the last couple of weeks and that has helped elevate the hotel occupancy in the area. We were almost halfway full in our hotels this past weekend. After a very dismal December and January, it’s great to see some progress in that arena.”
The first round of grants was awarded last June, with $387,300 going to 44 applicants. HVAB received 61 requests from 56 organizations totaling more than $1.4 million in 2020. Because of the decline in hotel tax revenue that funds the grants, the bureau and commissioners decided to award them in two phases, with the second for activities likely to take place in 2021.
Grants awarded on Thursday totaled $79,000 and included:
- Provisions Magazine/Maggie Anderson, $10,000 to help revitalize, manage and promote Happy Valley Restaurant Week, formerly Culinary Week.
- Columbus Chapel & Boal Mansion Museum, $5,000 for the first phase of a three-phase project to enhance the museum property. The first phase involves dismantling the historic greenhouse at Rockview state prison and assembling it on the grounds of the mansion. The greenhouse will feature a year-round tropical rainforest and butterfly vivarium.
- Wildlife for Everyone Foundation, $9,000 for its Great Outdoor Picnic at Penn’s Cave and Wildlife Park that will raise funds for the ADA-complaint Soaring Eagle Wetlands project in Julian.
- Philipsburg Revitalization Corp., $5,000 for its Antique Appraisal Day and Wine Walk.
- Tempest Productions, $20,000 for the Central PA Theatre and Dance Fest in downtown State College.
- Lucky Dog Management, $30,000 to organize and promote Happy Valley Music Fest.
“I think there is … a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said. “As these events grow and our ability to fund more events increases through tourism we create the synergy and momentum. I believe many things we took for granted will be new again. Sometimes you really don’t realize all the diamonds and gems you have among you until they’re gone. Now that we have the opportunity to bring so many of these back this year, I’m just so excited for tourism in Centre County.”
Kevin Murphy, owner of Shindig Alley and a Philipsburg Revitalization Corporation board member, said the Wine Walk had become PRC’s biggest fundraiser, selling 1,500 tickets and drawing 14 vendors, but it was canceled last year. The Appraisal Day, meanwhile, is put on by Shindig Alley to benefit PRC and is “kind of a mini ‘Antiques Road Show,’” where for a $5 fee attendees can have items evaluated by a professional appraiser.
Organizers are looking at holding both events in August or September, Murphy said.
“This money that we received is going to help out a lot with some of the fundraisers that we do,” he said. “… We love our little town. It takes a village, and we’ve gotten an awful lot of support from the county commissioners and [HVAB] and it shows down here. Things are really starting to happen in our great little town of Philipsburg.”
Wildlife for Everyone’s Great Outdoor Picnic is in its sixth year and is the organization’s main fundraiser. Barb Schroeder, public relations coordinator, said the event, scheduled for June 26, introduces youth to outdoor sports through a variety of interactive opportunities and attracts outdoor sports enthusiasts with a huge raffle for high-end outdoor equipment.
This year, Wildlife for Everyone is planning to expand activities with more interactive opportunities for kids. The grant money, she said, will be used to help extend the advertising reach for the event and promote other activities and offerings around the area to those visiting from outside the county.
The Central PA Theatre and Dance Fest went virtual for its third year in 2020 because of the pandemic, but organizers Elaine Meder-Wilgus and Cynthia Mazzant have tentatively scheduled to bring the three-day event back to downtown State College June 11-13.
“The vibrant Centre County performing arts community is capable of amazing feats, including many outdoor performances,” Commissioner Mark Higgins said. “Communities smaller than Centre County put on performing arts festivals which bring in hundreds of thousands of visitors. With the concentration of performing arts spaces in State College, the Central PA Theater and Dance Fest can grow substantially benefiting the community without large capital expenditures.”
No date has been set for Happy Valley Music Fest, which is held in downtown State College, but Lucky Dog Management’s Todd Wagner said it will likely be later in the summer than the usual mid-June date.
While many artists haven’t planned tours, Wagner said he believes there are some “unique opportunities,” to land an act that might have been out of reach before.
“I think there’s some diamonds in the rough that maybe we weren’t able to get previously that are out there,” he said, adding that the concert could be scaled back and built more around the headliner.
Maggie Anderson, of Provisions Magazine, said Happy Valley Restaurant Week is being scheduled for June 21-27, about the same time frame as its predecessor, Culinary Week, was held.
Anderson is working with Matt Fern and Brad Groznik, and plans for the event will be unveiled in the coming weeks.
“We’re excited to bring a really strong, professional marketing push for these restaurants who have been hurt really badly by the pandemic,” Anderson said.
The relocation of the Rockview greenhouse to the Boal Mansion property is the first step in what director Bob Cameron envisions as a “Longwood Gardens-type experience,” Smith said.
Applications for the 2021 tourism grants will be made available at HappyValley.com starting next week with a deadline of April 30.
“We are pleased that despite the hardships presented by COVID-19, the grant program has and will continue to provide some level of funding assistance to events and projects that make Happy Valley inviting to visitors, and that create a highly desirable quality of life for residents,” Smith said.
Commissioner Michael Pipe said he believes the local tourism and hospitality industry will be in a good position to rebound as it emerges from the pandemic.
“We, myself and the rest of the Board of Commissioners, continue to be in awe of the sacrifices that you as local organizations in our hospitality and restaurant industry made in order to combat the COVID-19 pandemic,” Pipe said.
“As we begin to rebound … we are very much prepared to be back in the center for tourism here in Pennsylvania. We want to make sure that these grants are able to begin that rebirth as we come into what we know is going to be a very bright future for Centre County and our tourism economy. We think we’re going to be very much well-positioned coming out of the pandemic to make sure that we are continuing to attract people to visit here and spend some time with family and loved ones. It’s going to be really an amazing rebirth that we’re seeing here in our community as we go forward throughout the next several months and years ahead.”
