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<br />SUMMARY OF RESEARCH AND RECOMMENDED STRATEGIES <br />EDA STRATEGIC PLAN 46 <br />To bring more information and insight to this question, the consultant team reached out <br />to Paul Erickson, the founder and longstanding former Executive Director of the <br />Minnesota Sports Center in Blaine, to get his perspective and insights on the potential of <br />sports tourism in Elk River. (Mr. Erickson has also consulted with other cities in <br />Minnesota concerning about their potential for attracting sports tourism, and worked with <br />them on developing the organizational infrastructure for doing that.) We provided him <br />with our research on the inventory of Elk River sports venues and how that compares <br />with neighboring cities. Mr. Erickson provided the following observations. <br />• Elk River has a good reputation as a quality growing community with many new <br />facilities. <br />• Elk River has an excellent reputation in producing certain quality sports <br />programs, including ice hockey. <br />• Elk River has a limited history of creating and hosting large amateur sports <br />events. <br />• Of the top eight amateur sports, it appears that the Elk River region may only <br />have multiple fields to support major softball and baseball events. (Note that <br />stand-alone 4 field softball complexes and 2-sheet ice arena complexes are <br />fairly commonplace in Minnesota.) <br />• Due to Elk River’s proximity to the Twin Cities region, most sports visitors from <br />the metro area would not stay overnight in a local hotel and may not eat any <br />meals in Elk River restaurants. Economic Impact from sports is derived <br />primarily from overnight stays and restaurants. <br />Given these observations, there doesn’t seem to be a high likelihood of achieving a <br />significantly greater economic impact from sports tourism. Having said that, there is <br />certainly value in a set of activities that may require a lower level of effort. Those <br />include using the events at Elk River’s premier facilities as a marketing focus for the <br />City, and exploring ways of cross-marketing city restaurants, stores and events to the <br />users of the City’s sports venues. <br />Mountain biking tourism. The tourism potential of mountain biking in Elk River is <br />subject to many of the same considerations as sports tourism. There is no disputing <br />that Elk River has high quality trails for mountain biking. But major mountain biking <br />events are limited. The Minnesota Mountain Bike Series, for example, consists of ten <br />events in ten different cities. It would certainly benefit Elk River to be on that circuit as <br />often as possible, but it doesn’t appear that there are many such large-scale events for <br />the state’s mountain bike community. Moreover, the tourism benefit of attracting <br />mountain bike visitors to Elk River is limited by the same expectation as sports <br />tourists—that most visitors will not combine their visit with an overnight stay in Elk River. <br />The economic development opportunity seems to be in marketing the quality of the trails <br />in Elk River, and in publicizing any major events that happen locally. <br />ERX tourism. ERX is a known tourist attraction with a steady stream of events. <br />Undoubtedly some the event attendees are staying overnight in Elk River, although <br />again most will not. There is an economic benefit to capitalizing on ERX events by