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- Meg Spurrier
Smith Mountain Lake Vacation Rentals
Smith Mountain Lake Vacation Rentals
Poplar Forest is undergoing extensive
works in progress as Nanci Drake and we discovered in
Jefferson’s granddaughters’ room.
They realized that with the opening of the
D-Day Memorial, and with Thomas Jefferson’s retreat home
Poplar Forest, as well as the Peaks of Otter Park, and wineries
that they needed a plan. They had the potential to capture an
international as well as statewide and national audience. Once
they got them there, tourists and other visitors would create
essentially “clean” revenues. They would come,
stay, eat, make purchases, then leave, without extraordinary
demands on the local infrastructure. And the result would be
sweet to the county and city coffers: new revenues. So they put
their collective talents together and decided to collaborate in
the area of tourism. Eventually they decided they needed a full
time
community park that once again brought
people downtown and together. She’d never done that
before either, but that didn’t stop her. The Franklin
experiences were about to benefit the two Bedfords in dramatic
ways.
She explained that before the two Bedfords
decided on hiring a tourism director, “the tourism
efforts had been done through the chamber of commerce. The city
and county decided to join forces and form a tourism department
to focus on tourism, and not to have to focus on other chamber
related matters. [They] didn’t want to give it to another
department within the city or county.
“The appeal of it for me was that it
was a brand new, getting off the ground floor opportunity to
build something where there really was nothing before. That was
the appeal to me.”
BUILDING A BASE
So, how did officials from the two
Bedfords come up with the idea of a visitors center, rather
than just an office downtown, that they started with, or a
double wide trailer, that preceded the present structure? Once
the D-Day Memorial was dedicated, people started traveling
there. And when they got there they wanted places to spend
their money on food, lodging and other items. Business owners
and government officials alike decided it would be in their
best interests to help them spend their money. But they needed
to attract
Nanci is a wonderful person and a real
asset to both Bedford City and Bedford County. She is a delight
to work with and a great representative for tourism in this
area.
- Harry Leist
Olde Liberty Station
Olde Liberty Station
person to take care of marketing and
publicizing the area’s rich cultural and natural
amenities.
About that time, Nanci Drake was about to
move due to her husband’s work, and when she heard about
the Bedford job, she applied, even though, technically
speaking, she had never been a tourism director before. But
then she’d never been a Main Street Program Director
before her job in Franklin. And remember that when the
devastation of the flood finally was cleared from downtown, she
helped plan, fund, and build a
