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in Door County complain that we don’t have enough tourists.

our visitor industry with a series of choices. It could have spent all that new money buying more advertising in Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis in an e ort to dramatically add to our annual visitor count. Yet most local business owners I know would say that they are already at or near their capacity to give our guests a good experience. Furthermore, I have yet to hear a single person

Another option would be to create a tourist-development grant program similar to what our friends in the Fox Cities do. They dedicate a portion of their room-tax revenue to grants that foster the “development or expansion of visitor attractions and amenities.” Although that’s certainly worthwhile, their focus is bene ting the tourists, not the residents of the Fox Cities. Instead, the leaders of Door County’s tourist industry essentially returned to the fundamental idea that tourism is a tool to build a better community for the year-round and seasonal residents who call this place home. The new Community Investment Fund is perhaps the most visible manifestation of that idea. You can learn more about it at CommunityInvestmentFund.org.

Wisconsin state statutes require that room-tax dollars be used in a way that attracts tourists, so that’s a necessary requirement of every application to this new fund, but it’s not su cient to earn a grant. The applicants must also demonstrate that their project will have a meaningful impact on the people who live and work in Door County.

Using the dollars in this way seems so obvious in retrospect, but Door County is actually the rst community in Wisconsin to take this approach. It’s so new that we at the Door County Community Foundation spent a lot of time with our attorneys to make sure that the new Community Investment Fund complies with state statutes.

Thankfully, it does, and now the leaders of our visitor industry have created an innovative way of living into the idea that the primary bene ciaries of tourism are our local residents. Although I may still get a bit grumpy about tra c and the crowds every now and then, I’m OK with them because I know these visitors help make my beloved Door County better for us all.

Contact Bret Bicoy at bret@givedoorcounty.org.

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