Buena Park Finds Search for Tourists Not So Easy

Knott’s Berry Farm is not Disneyland, and Buena Park doesn’t expect to emulate its successful neighbor, Anaheim, with its myriad of hotels, a convention center and a stadium for major league football and baseball.

“In no way do we feel we’re an Anaheim and we’ll never be,” Buena Park Mayor Don R. Griffin said.

Nevertheless, in the centennial year of this north Orange County city--home to Knott’s, Medieval Times and the Movieland Wax Museum--civic leaders have taken controversial steps that they hope will net Buena Park a bigger chunk of the lucrative convention-conference trade.

Many local tourism officials, however, criticize the way the city is going about the task, including the elimination the city-sponsored Visitor and Convention Bureau. Moreover, some also question whether Buena Park has the enough facilities to attract--and accommodate--conferences and conventions, especially with Anaheim, home to Disneyland, next door.

Convention Bureau Disbanded

“They (Anaheim) have as many first-class hotel rooms in one hotel (as) we have in the whole city,” said Louis Rosen, president of the Buena Park Visitor and Convention Bureau, an 85-member agency including representatives of the city’s tourism industry that was summarily disbanded last week.

Last Tuesday the City Council voted to close the Visitor and Convention Bureau and seek either an outside marketing firm or create a new city-run department to attract the conventions and conferences.

The council’s move angered bureau members, whose reaction was described by its director, Jan Dowd, as: “utter surprise, confusion, dismay, upset, anger. . . . We had no voice in this.”

At the same time, the council has imposed a freeze on development along Beach Boulevard while it tries to decide what it wants the so-called “entertainment corridor,” the city’s main artery, to become.

Last month, the council voted to hire The Planning Center, a Newport Beach-based consulting firm, to develop a specific plan for the somewhat blighted strip running from Orangethorpe to La Palma avenues, At present, it is crowded with motels and tourist attractions, some still thriving and some that have gone out of business or left town.

All-American City Finals

As the city celebrates its 100th birthday this year, officials are looking to the day when full-service, first-class hotels will move readily to Buena Park, to a time when their city can win the coveted “All-American City” award.

City officials have sought the award unsuccessfully four times since 1979. But last year, after $10,000 in city money and donations was spent, Buena Park at least made it to the “All-American” finals for the first time.

Civic leaders believe Buena Park has the potential but fails to entice visitors who would want to spend the night, then do more visiting.

“Too many of our people come here for the day, and leave, and what we need to do is fix up the town, so that they’ll want to say,” Rosen said.

“The street (Beach Boulevard) is poorly balanced for tourists. There aren’t enough restaurants. Most of our hotels do not have restaurants. There is no place for tourists to walk at night. There is nothing to do: just to sit in your room and watch TV,” said Rosen, who has a proposal before the city to convert his former Cottage Pottery into a restaurant and shops.

Rosen, Dowd and others in the local tourism industry say they believe they know how the city can be improved, and they strongly disagree with the path the city’s staff and elected officials have taken. They say that the move to disband the Visitors and Convention Bureau essentially blamed it for the city’s failure to devote adequate funds to attract conference and convention business.

But city officials have complained that the bureau did not account adequately for how the city’s contribution--$202,000 last year--was spent. (Dowd said the bureau also received about $20,000 from its members.)

Hadn’t Done Enough

It was not the first time the council and the visitor’s bureau haggled over money. But the council decided it would be the last, particularly since it was felt that the bureau hadn’t done enough to promote Buena Park as a place for small conventions.

“We were desirous of developing convention activity, and we did not receive the cooperation (from the bureau),” Mayor Griffin said.

Dowd responds that her bureau was “not averse” to chasing the conference market, “although in our hearts, we didn’t think that was the way to go” unless the bureau’s operating budget was increased.

At the city’s request, Dowd says, the bureau had just prepared a new marketing approach targeting the conference business. But she says she never got a chance to make her presentation before the council vote to dismantle the bureau.

Friday was Dowd’s last day as director, and she tried to be philosophic. “I cannot, and I will not take any of this personally, because it is foolishness. They’ve dismantled something that was really working,” she said. “They got reports and they got accountability.”

Two people remain in the bureau’s office behind Movieland Wax Museum, and they probably will remain there until the end of next month, Rosen said.

Doesn’t Bode Well

Tourist industry officials say the council’s action does not bode well for the future of Buena Park, a city dependent on tourist dollars.

“I believe any visitor and convention entity needs the city behind them,” said Linda Mongno, vice president of the bureau’s board of directors and an international sales manager for Knott’s.

“For the past several years, the city has not really been behind the bureau the way the bureau needed them,” Mongno said. She attributed that lack of support to city officials misunderstanding “what the bureau was doing” and the difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of a visitor’s bureau.

Tourism is big business for Buena Park--population 64,952.

In 1983, 4,765,000 people visited the city, according to a study by Pannell Kerr Forster, CIC Research, Inc. Those visitors spent $87.7 million and generated an additional $26.3 million in what the study called indirect visitor spending.

Although attractions such as Buena Park’s Alligator Farm and the Kindgom of the Dancing Stallions are gone, others that have survived hard times in the amusement park and tourist industry are expanding.

Knott’s has planned a five-year $50-million improvement package, which includes investing $13 million in new rides this year. The wax museum is spending $600,000 to open a new restaurant, museum officials have said. And Medieval Times, where guests are served dinner by “servants and wenches,” while they cheer their favorite stunt-performing knights, opened only last year.

Continue to Stagnate

But even as some of the remaining tourist draws expand and improve, Beach Boulevard--the city’s main entertainment strip--and most of its approximate 2,000 hotel and motel rooms continue to stagnate.

And despite protests by some area businesses that a moratorium would only hurt them, the council last October slapped a temporary freeze on development along the strip. The following month, the council extended the moratorium through October of this year.

The entertainment corridor which leads to Knott’s from the freeway does not present “a positive image,” explained Rick Sowder, acting director of the city Planning and Building Department.

Many of the motels have been there for at least 30 years and are in need of a face lift, and the signs are “a mishmash,” Sowder said. In addition, some businesses, such as an X-rated movie theater established prior to the city zoning the area for commercial entertainment, have been allowed to continue in an area not meant to house them, he said.

But Rosen pointed out that it isn’t the fault of the visitors’ bureau that the Beach Boulevard strip has stagnated. It wasn’t until two years ago, he said, that the city changed parts of sidewalks and medians along the mile-long strip from dirt to cement.

But even though tourism has brought money to city coffers, council members have decided that it is time to broaden their approach to attract the convention and conference business, much as Anaheim has done.

2 Separate Markets

Whether it can be done and how to approach it is another matter.

Tourism and conference-conventions are two separate markets, say industry experts. It is more difficult to calculate how much the tourism business brings to a city compared to the conference and convention business, said Steve Clark, president of Tustin-based Management Resources, a consulting firm on amusement attractions.

Although Buena Park officials have not decided which conference market--such as associations or corporations--they would like to pursue, they say that with the opening of two hotels and a large health club during the past year, they are ready to take on conferences.

But critics point out that only two hotels in the city have adequate conference space.

The Buena Park Hotel, which has 350 rooms and suites and is the city’s largest, can accommodate up to 1,100 people in its ballroom, according to Carol Davinroy, director of sales. The hotel specializes in the local corporate market and hosts banquets and business meetings for Buena Park and area companies, she said. The hotel plans to next target the association market and bring statewide meetings to town, she said.

The Holiday Inn, a 246-room hotel, can accommodate up to 400 people, said general manager John Durham, a bureau board member. The hotel specializes in group businesses, banquets and weddings, he said.

Durham said the different hotels pooling their resources could attract more conferences to town, but he acknowledged that they would more likely go to Anaheim.

Seat Less Than 50

A third hotel, Marriott’s newly opened Courtyard, has two rooms that seat less than 50 people each.

But somehow, the city has not been able to attract major hotels of the size and caliber found in neighboring Anaheim.

Mayor Pro Tem Rhonda McCune lamented during a November council meeting that of three hotels then in the planning process, not one provided the amenities of a larger hotel.

But city officials are counting on the Sequoia Health Club, which opened in November, to bring more business to town. The health club can seat up to 750 people and plans to expand its conference, banquet and meeting facilities, marketing manager Marjorie Fleming said.

Asked if the city’s move to abolish the bureau, which opened in 1974, and the concentration on conferences would help her business, Fleming said: “I would have to wait on that and see. Certainly, the tour and travel business helped. It will depend on whether (Buena Park) can compete--especially when we’re right next door to Anaheim.”

Mongno said that while bureau members were “saddened by the discontinuation of the funding,” they would have to try to work with the council and city staff to solve the problems facing them.

“I think we all understand that the city has to get behind it. And if that’s the way to get the city behind it, then that’s the way it’s going to be,” Mongno said. “We have to go along with that. They’re the ones with the money to spend.”

Local Outcry

During the past week, city staff and tourism representatives have met to discuss who will now do the bureau’s job. The city originally had proposed hiring a public relations firm. But that plan was put on a back burner after an outcry from the local tourism industry.

“A strictly (public relations) firm is not the way to go to increase convention business,” said Movieland Wax Museum marketing director Terry Thrift, the bureau’s former treasurer.

Among the other alternatives now being considered are hiring a general sales agent and establishing an advisory board of tourism officials.

Meanwhile, Al Bell, the project manager hired to do the specific plan for the Beach Boulevard strip and neighboring parcels, said the study is in its initial stages and should be completed by this summer.

By then, tourism and city officials say, they hope the rift that has opened between the two sides will have healed.

Now that “cooler heads prevailed” and the city is no longer considering a public relations firm to replace the bureau, Rosen said he hopes both sides will be able to work better together.

“It’s too bad that it happened,” Mongno said of the bureau’s demise. “But the person who holds the purse strings plays the tune. The city is the one that has the funding. This happened. Let’s go on.”

Added Rosen: “We don’t have the facilities to do it first class. (But) we’re going to try to make it work because it’s for the betterment of the city. We’ll try to make it work.”