Businesses want more help capitalizing on golf tourney
April 7, 2010
By J.B. Wogan
New: April 7, 3:04 p.m.
If the United States Golf Association’s projections hold true, Sammamish will see as many as 140,000 spectators flow into the city to watch the U.S. Senior Open at Sahalee Country Club July 26-Aug. 1.
Too bad most of those spectators won’t give business to the local retailers and restaurants in Sammamish.
Scott Moore, co-owner of Moore Bros. Music, is disappointed with how little the city is doing to make the event an economic boon to local businesses.
“When we approached the city, we basically got no assistance whatsoever. They were very proud that they had moved everything from the city core,” Moore said.
The city and tournament have planned a way to minimize traffic impacts in Sammamish during the event. This has, in turn, meant a likely drop in the amount of foot and car traffic passing by Sammamish stores.
Spectators would park at Marymoor Park in Redmond and board buses, heading east on state Route 202, south on Sahalee Way Northeast and park within the club itself.
The city has plans to impose permitted parking in residential neighborhoods near Sahalee Country Club, discouraging non-residents from driving into the city and parking close to the club.
There is a no walk-in entrance, so anyone who tries to park in Sammamish and walk to the tournament will have an unwelcome surprise upon arriving at its gates. This, too, should discourage traffic impacts in Sammamish, or so the city hopes.
“The previous input we’ve received from the community is that we don’t want to see, hear and feel any impact from this event,” Deputy City Manager Pete Butkus said.
He added that it would be difficult to encourage spectators to visit the Sammamish shopping centers since the tournament already provides food and other amenities on site.
Such logic doesn’t convince Moore, who said he would like a shuttle to pick up some spectators down in Sammamish.
“The restaurants would be packed if you had parking down here,” he observed. Moore admits that his own business — located in the Saffron Shopping Center — might not have a direct business connection with golf, but he would have planned an outdoor concert to increase his store’s visibility. Plus, golf fans might be a consumer of higher-end instruments, he said.
Jason Schaefer, owner of Golf USA, said he echoed Moore’s disappointment.
“I feel the exact same way,” he said.
Schaefer opened his golf retail store in the Sammamish Highlands Shopping Center in 2008; aside from the golf shops in the city’s two private country clubs, his is the only golf-related store in Sammamish.
Deb Sogge, executive director at the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce, said she had heard complaints from other business owners as well.
“They were discouraged that the city wanted to have little traffic impact because, of course, from their perspective, they would like to see some traffic going by them. Now they won’t,” she said.
Sogge said the city is working with the tournament to erect some street signage that will let spectators know there are local businesses in Sammamish.
She said the tournament has also offered to donate four free tickets to a citywide raffle. Residents will be able to fill out a form and drop it off at participating local Sammamish businesses.
Sogge said she hoped the city would push the tournament to reference the city of Sammamish on its Web site. On the tournament’s tickets page, it has a link to the city of Redmond’s tourism Web site, but nothing for the city of Sammamish or the Sammamish Chamber of Commerce.
Mike Zinga, the tournament director, said the tournament links to Redmond because that city had hotels that offered discounted rates. Sammamish doesn’t have hotels.
“There’s not a lot of business in Sammamish, to be quite frank. It’s not like a Seattle or a Bellevue, but we’re trying,” he said.
He added that the tournament will do its best to showcase Sammamish during filming, giving the city some nice national publicity.
Two members of the Sammamish City Council, John James and Tom Odell, are encouraging the city and tournament to have a shuttle pick up volunteers at the Eastlake High School parking lot.
James said that one instance of extra car and foot traffic near the shopping centers might help a bit.
“I’m not sure how else we can plug the businesses,” James said.
Don’t walk to the U.S. Senior Open
Sammamish residents who bought tickets to the U.S. Senior Open, scheduled to take place in their backyard, would have to drive to Redmond for entrance into the event.
Beth Knapick was planning to attend the tournament, but now she’s reconsidering. She lives about 1.5 miles from Sahalee Country Club, where the open is taking place July 26-Aug. 1. According to the tournament’s current plans, she would have to drive 6.8 miles to Redmond and bus back to Sammamish to get in.
“It doesn’t seem very friendly to the consumer,” Knapick said at a March 30 meeting at City Hall.
Knapick was one of about a handful of residents who showed up to hear the city talk about the tournament’s impacts on nearby neighborhoods.
Deputy City Manager Pete Butkus assured residents that there would be almost no city traffic from out-of-town spectators.
The outlined purpose of the meeting was to get feedback from residents about which neighborhoods would need temporary parking permits to discourage out-of-town spectators from parking on residential streets.
But the meeting quickly took a swan dive into the policy decision by the tournament and Sahalee’s homeowners association to keep people from walking into the event. The no walk-in policy dovetailed with the city’s efforts to limit traffic impacts in Sammamish during the weeklong event.
Even after some persistent complaints from Knapick and others at the meeting, tournament officials did not budge on the no-walk-in entrance.
David Kampp, manager of the Sahalee’s homeowners association, said Sahalee residents have opposed a walk-in entrance thus far.
He pointed out that only about a quarter of the roughly 525 homes in Sahalee have memberships to the golf club. The rest aren’t as invested in golf or the tournament.
“They’re just interested in having their lives run as they do every other week,” Kampp said.
Kampp emphasized that the association doesn’t make money off of hosting the event and could run into liability issues if throngs of fans are running through the neighborhood.
City Councilmen Tom Odell and John James tried to hammer out a sliver of a compromise. They asked that the tournament and city work to set up a separate parking location at Eastlake High School for volunteers, many of whom would be local.
In that scenario, volunteers would need credentials to board the bus. Butkus said he would investigate that option, but made no promises.
Reporter J.B. Wogan can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 247, or jbwogan@isspress.com.
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