Published July 2001

Granite Falls works
to improve, promote downtown

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

As the “Gateway to the Mountain Loop Highway,” Granite Falls gets its share of out-of-towners passing through on their way to the Cascades. And if the Greater Granite Falls Chamber of Commerce has its way, those tourists — and locals, too — will stop for a while, shop for a while and pump some money into the economy.

To make that happen, the 31-member chamber has focused its energies on revitalizing downtown and promoting the area’s charms.

“We recently just had a lot of the downtown businesses here painted, putting a fresh look on the buildings,” said chamber President Trish Osgood, who also owns The Country Nook gift shop in town. “We’d eventually like to do little sitting areas with park benches and plants and that kind of thing, and hopefully, maybe getting our sidewalks fixed would be a great asset to us.”

Last summer, the community of 2,347 opened its first public rest room with a Toilet Festival and the ceremonial cutting of the toilet paper.

“It was exciting,” said Osgood, adding that the chamber assisted in the community’s efforts, helping to get a grant through the U.S. Forest Service to partially fund the toilet and holding a garage sale as well. “We still get mail from people all over the United States on that.”

Now, the chamber is working on getting a sign ordinance passed.

Written by a chamber member and presented to the city’s Planning Commission, the ordinance “would help create the atmosphere that we’re looking for, which is like a historical logging and mining town,” Osgood said, adding that the proposed ordinance was modeled after ordinances for towns such as the Bavarian-themed Leavenworth.

Along with their work to make Granite Falls visitor friendly, the chamber promotes the town through brochures distributed to information booths around Snohomish County as well as to local businesses and through its Web site, www.granitefallswa.com.

“We’re getting thousands of hits,” Osgood said about the 2-year-old site. “We’ve had hits from other countries, Hawaii, all over. And we put city events on there as well as chamber information and a list of all businesses.

“Chamber businesses get highlighted in blue, and if they have a Web site, they get a link from our Web site to theirs,” she said.

The chamber, which has no paid staff, is funded mainly through membership fees and in small part through their annual car show, Show & Shine, which takes place the first Saturday in August. Most of the proceeds from that event, however, go toward two $500 student scholarships, which are given yearly.

Chamber meetings are held at 8:45 a.m. the third Tuesday of the month at Alfy’s Pizza in Granite Falls. For more information, visit the chamber’s Web site or call 360-691-5244.

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