The Gunnison Valley’s short summer months are filled with pulses of visitors who travel to the valley to attend events like the Growler mountain bike race, the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival and the Cattlemen's Days Rodeo. During this time of year, sales tax collections spike and business booms downtown.
School's out for college students attending Western Colorado University, but its campus stays lively, and its dorms full, in June and July. Gunnison lacks a conference center that can cater to thousands of visitors, so Western has become a high-demand venue for summer athletic camps and other events. In the coming months, the university will attract close to 16,000 people on top of the valley’s regular flow of summertime tourists.
In 2023, Western crested $1 million in revenue from its summer camp programming for the first time. This year is expected to be even busier. While the department could squeeze in another event or two, campus is nearly booked up for the summer, said Deputy Director of Athletics Greg Hinze. Western’s athletic department started managing the event schedule three years ago. Roughly 80% of the schedule caters to athletic camps.
“The goal when we took over was to fill every bed for every day it's available during the summer,” Hinze said. “We are not quite there but we're close.”
Each summer, outside organizations use the university as a home base for a variety of camps and events. Participants are put up in on-campus dorms and eat meals at the cafeteria. Sports groups utilize field and gym space, while academic programs, such as teaching, music and art workshops, gather in classrooms and auditoriums. Some group counts may be as small as 15, while Western’s annual football camp attracts 1,600 athletes.
In addition to generating extra revenue during a time of year that would otherwise be quiet on campus, Western’s summer conferences also act as a recruitment tool. The Rocky Mountain Wrestling camp alone brings in 2,000 athletes from 12 states. Wrestlers return home with merchandise and T-shirts branded with Western’s signature red “W.” And even if athletes don’t sign on to sports teams with Western, there’s a chance they attend just because they enjoyed their time at camp, Hinze said. Their summertime visits are also linked to a boost in social media posts about Western.
“This is advertising we couldn’t pay for … They're going back to their communities and they're spreading the Western message by word of mouth,” Hinze said.
Since Western’s athletic department took over the program, the number of participants has almost doubled as the summer schedule grew. This year, the department expects to bring in just over 8,000 people from when the university’s first campers arrive on June 2, and the last checks-out on July 27. Large athletic camps are all-hands-on-deck. Hinze pulls from a pool of student athletes that stay in the valley for practice and training. A team of 25-30 student workers help manage things like meals, laundry and check-ins.
Western officials are working on a study with CU Boulder’s School of Business that will show the economic impact the university’s conference schedule has on the wider Gunnison Valley community. While participants usually stay, and often eat, on campus, their parents and family members fill hotels, dine in town and enjoy the valley’s trails and campgrounds. If they haven’t visited or heard of the Gunnison Valley before, they are likely to come back, Hinze said.
And it’s rare that campers spend all of their time on campus. Some go whitewater rafting and rent mountain bikes. Hoards of campers will walk to nearby McDonald’s and Arby’s for lunch, stock up on snacks at City Market and order pizza. And when more than 200 campers are in town for the weekend, the financial boost they bring into the valley adds up.
The closure of the middle bridge over Blue Mesa Reservoir has already resulted in a slew of vacation cancellations and reduced traffic from the western side of the state. It’s too early to fully understand how the bridge shutdown will affect summer tourism, but the campers will come to the valley regardless, said Gunnison Country Chamber of Commerce Director Celeste Helminski.
“It’s all a piece of what we see as normal summer traffic … From the Chamber and business community’s perspective, we're grateful that Western does all this hard work to bring all these different camps and people to our part of the world,” Helminski said.
(Bella Biondini can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or bella@gunnisontimes.com.)
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here