Study: Valley an undiscovered gem

PALMER — A study conducted on behalf of the Mat-Su Borough shows the Valley is a hidden gem for tourism, with lots of things do, but few outlets to turn to find out where to do them.

The Valley, said Dave Hanson, the Borough’s economic development director, has long been faced with one major problem — how to get people to stop and get out of their cars as they whiz by on the Parks Highway on their way from Anchorage to Denali.

According to the study by the McDowell Group consulting firm, the Borough needs to put information where motorists stop anyway, like highway pullouts, and preferably those areas with bathrooms.

“What the study came out and recognized was that we can attract many more tourists to stay overnight in the Borough if we provide more places for them to learn about what is available for them in the Borough to do,” Hanson said.

The study recommends creating highway pullouts and upgrading others along the Glenn and Parks highways. Ideally, these would be areas with bathrooms, information kiosks and a good view.

By making them “pleasant places to stop,” Hanson said potential visitors could be enticed to spend more time locally.

The Mat-Su Borough Assembly is set to discuss and perhaps consider the recommendations at a special meeting Tuesday.

In addition to pullouts, Hanson said the study also recommends large visitor centers marking the main gateway corridors through the Valley, like on the Glenn Highway toward Sutton and at the Borough’s north end near Denali National Park. The study also suggests the Mat-Su Convention and Visitors Bureau consider moving its current center along the Parks highway near Trunk Road to a spot along the highway before the Glenn and Parks highways split.

“We could become a major destination in Alaska if you want to hike,” Hanson said. “We have over 2,000 miles of trails that aren’t over-used. We have all these lakes that are good fishing lakes.”

This is also a good place to come in the colder months, he said.

“We also have a very big niche that we can do much more with in winter tourism,” Hanson said, listing things the Valley has in spades, like trails for dog mushing, skiing and snowmachining.

The trick, he said, appears to be getting the word out.

The study, for which the borough paid $75,000, is likely the first of its kind done for the area, Hanson said. Other studies he’s seen have taken a broader view dealing, for instance, with all of Southcentral Alaska. The McDowell Group study examined areas he hadn’t seen before in other reports, like cataloging campgrounds and listing every bed available for overnight stay in the Borough.

It also contains some interesting data about tourism in the Valley, like that 60 percent of all visitors to the Borough come from other parts of Alaska. That’s interesting, if not surprising, Hanson said, considering that a lot of the major tour companies tend to cross the Valley on their way north.

Another thing the study did was provide an opinion on whether or not the Borough needs to build a convention center.

“At this point they said sure, a convention center can help things, but they said, if you have limited funds you can get more out of these other things,” like kiosks and pullouts, Hanson said.