USA: Sherman To Combine Local Tourism

After more than a year under the guidance of the Sherman Chamber of Commerce, the city’s tourism department will return in-house early next year as Sherman plans to combine its responsibilities with those of the returning Main Street Program.

The city learned in October it had been chosen by the Texas Historical Commission as a new entry in the 2016 Texas Main Street Program and recently decided to marry that program with Visit Sherman, the tourism department overseen by the Chamber, to unify management responsibilities.

“There’s a lot of similar responsibilities between the two,” Steve Ayers, Sherman’s director of community and support services, said. “And we already have an approved budget for tourism. That allows us to take on this manager’s position for Main Street also, without having to expand our budget or take on more cost.”

Ayers said the money approved in the budget for tourism programs will also cover the city’s new Main Street Program.

“There’s some synergy there we get from the combined groups that are involved in tourism and they’re also involved in promoting the downtown Main Street area,” Ayers said. “All of it is interconnected. And hopefully, it’ll bring more focus and a clearer direction by bringing them together.”

The Main Street Program offers technical assistance for Texas cities that have made a commitment to revitalize their historic downtowns. Sherman was previously a part of the program from 1993-1998. Visit Sherman oversaw plans for the recent Snowflake Festival and Christmas Parade in Downtown Sherman and headed up events such as Hot Summer Nights, Lights on the Lake and the Autumn and Arts Fest this year.

Lauren Roth, director of tourism for Visit Sherman, helped put together the city’s application for the Main Street Program and said combining it with tourism makes perfect sense.

“With a relatively small town, the downtown area is one of the things tourism promotes the most,” Roth said. “So while we have a limited budget and can only have one full-time employee, it makes sense for those to be together.”

In September, the city extended its tourism contract with the Chamber through the end of the year as it hadn’t yet heard the results of its Main Street application. With the decision to combine the two entities under one manager, Ayers said the city is now on a month-to-month agreement with the Chamber while it looks for the right candidate.

“I think the goal right now is to get the best person (for the job),” Ayers said. “We’d like to do it sooner than later, but we’re not going to take any shortcuts. So we’re going to go until we find that right person, however long it takes.”

Roth said the month-to-month agreement makes long-term planning a little different, but things are still working well.

“Luckily, the relationship the Chamber and the city has makes things really easy,” she said.

Ayers said the city will likely start doing interviews for the position around the first of the year and when a new Main Street/tourism manager is hired, that person may get a brand new office.

“We are currently searching for office space,” Ayers said. “Our intent is to locate office space in the downtown area. But nothing’s been finalized on that.”