Leora Wallace, Gunnison Country Chamber of Commerce Executive Director, updated the Gunnison City Council on the Gunnison Visitor Center’s 2026 activities and the Chamber’s plans for a reenvisioning it in 2027 at the council’s Oct. 27 meeting.
“One of our responsibilities at the Chamber is to be good stewards of our local visitor center and kind of make sure that we are using that space and this service to the best of our abilities,” she said.
She said that over 2026, the Chamber board considered how to evaluate and evolve the visitor center, which was built in the mid-1990s and has been minimally changed since then. “So, it’s time to take a look and figure out what we can do,” she said.
Wallace said that the Chamber operated the visitor center in 2026 while performing this reassessment; gathering data on demand and the center’s long-term sustainability.
The Chamber also worked on “developing a practical, lower cost solution with community partners,” by convening a small advisory committee to discuss options for the space, including Wallace, Gunnison County Commissioner Elizabeth Smith, Gunnison Crested Butte Tourism and Prosperity Partnership Executive Director Andrew Sandstrom, Western Colorado University Director of Marketing Karen McLean and Joe Bob Merritt of South Main Studios.
“Out of those conversations, what we kind of landed on was developing a more locally focused visitor center that also has some flexible community use options,” Wallace said.
She said this would include removing the current brochure racks and installing a smaller set of movable racks that would primarily carry brochures about local activities and resources, along with another back section containing a “Gunnison resource library” for guides on subjects like hiking, biking, and fishing.
Wallace said that the reimagination would also involve adding seating to the visitor center by adding movable tables and chairs that could be used for various community events.
“The space is automatically more welcoming with this layout and removing that desk in the back as well so people can come in,” Wallace said. “More welcoming to visitors and then we can also offer community use after hours. I think particularly after the hours of 9 to 5, there is opportunity for things like nonprofits, committees, small civic groups that get together; who are looking for places to meet but they don’t really have a home to do so. There definitely is a great resource at the library to do this during business hours, but we don’t really have anything like this after hours.”
She said that the center would aim to install a movable screen projector to display slides and presentations on boards and to other groups.
The new arrangement would also allow the Chamber to do more programming, she said. She added that the Chamber could workshop various programs and adjust the usage of the space over time in reaction to user demand and feedback.
Wallace said that an aim was to keep the renovations low cost, but that even smaller changes would come with costs, which led to the Chamber looking for potential grant funding.
She said that there are “placemaking grants,” available that would complement the goals of the renovation and that the Chamber was able to “unlock” those funding sources through the creation of the Gunnison Chamber Foundation, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit is eligible for many grants that the Chamber is not.
Wallace said that she applied for several grants over the summer and that the Chamber Foundation obtained grants from the Boettcher Foundation and the Gunnison Homeowners’ Association, which will help support the renovations and the installation of senior-friendly furniture and tables.
She said that the Chamber hopes to implement the renovation in the winter or early spring of 2027 during the center’s “slow time.”
Wallace said the Chamber would also establish a “simple process” for community use of the center along with continuing visitor services that are “right sized for demand.”
She said the center would track the results of these changes going forward.
“We really see this as expanding public value, like just trying to create a public value to that space,” Wallace said. “It’s in a pretty great location; it’s a pretty big building. We do think there is a demand for visitor services and people coming in to town who are looking for that person connection although it may not be at the level that it once was historically as people are consuming information differently, I think there still are folks who that’s a really meaningful experience for them and we wanna continue to offer that. But, if we can kinda couple that with another community so that the space is activated year-round, we really see that as being valuable to our community in a couple different ways.”
She said that the city’s continued investments allow the Chamber to operate the space while it tries to leverage outside funds for the improvements and expand its usefulness.
Mayor Pro Tem Marisela Ballesteros asked if the Chamber was going to do a mural on the outside of the building.
Wallace said that the Chamber board has paused on the mural until it secures additional funding to be conservative on its budgeting for 2027. However, she said that the Chamber does have a vision for a mural and has pursued an artist to create it.
“It’s something we intend on following through on,” Wallace said. “We would like just to maybe try to secure sponsorship or just get into the next year and feel a little bit more comfortable before throwing out… The art is expensive. Not that’s it’s not worth that, I think that it is and I think that it’s very important that we pay artists what they’re worth and not lowball them, so I think that we will be moving forward with that, it just might take a little bit longer.”
Councilor Loren Ahonen said that, in a document Wallace shared, she reported the visitor center had 4,570 visitors, down from “peak history.” However, he said that he was unsure what the prior peaks had been and asked Wallace if she knew.
Wallace said that a peak yearly use was about 13,000 in 2017, adding that visitation to the center peaked before the COVID-19 pandemic and that the people “started using things differently” during the pandemic.
“It’s not like we’re operating a bad visitor center; it’s just people are consuming information differently and I think that not paying attention to that would be foolish,” she said, adding that finding other ways to use the center space while still providing visitor services is “really, really important.”
Ahonen said that he believed the proposed changes to the center were “great,” but wanted more details on the number.
He said that he also wanted to add a comment on the revised staffing model for the center. “There seemed to be some implication that that was due to reduced funding, but it also looks to me like it’s probably a result of also you reduced visitation and use of the space in a different way?” he said.
Wallace said she believed the changes, which involve replacing the current full-time Visitor Center Manager position with a part-time position, were driven by both cuts in funding from the city, which is proposing to slash visitor center funding by 20 percent from $82,225 to $65,780, and from reduced demand.
She said the situation is “heartbreaking, but I don’t know that that position is sustainable.”
“Thanks,” said Ahonen. “I was just looking at the attribution of that and the reality of the totality of the circumstance versus just some of the implications maybe.”
Councilor Audrey Zahradka said that she was “excited” about the plans to add multi-use elements to the visitor center and how this would increase the amount of third spaces in the community.
Third spaces are social environments separate from home or work.
“Having what is already a really valuable community asset becoming even more valuable is super awesome to me,” she said. “I think it’s a really cool plan.”
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