Too many hotel rooms, not enough restaurants

One of the common topics at the golf course is the fact that it's feast or famine a few nights a year in McCook for the hotel industry. This was specifically characterized in a letter to the editor that appeared in the Wednesday edition of the McCook Daily Gazette and was written by the owners of five hotels in McCook. For purposes of full disclosure, one of those owners, Ron Tompkins who recently bought the Cedar Inn, is taking two of my classes at MCC and another, Perry Strombeck, is a personal friend. I have talked to Ron about this situation but have not talked to Perry. The letter cited four events covering a total of eight days where the McCook hotels are full, all the other days of the year they're not. With the addition of 54 rooms at the new Cobblestone Hotel, the occupancy problem should be solved for these eight days in the future.

But the City Council is now considering tax increment financing for an additional hotel that should not be built. Everyone understands the need for economic development but when that development threatens the livelihood of existing businesses in the community, it doesn't make any sense. If the new hotel is supported financially, the general consensus of people I've talked to is that at least one existing hotel will have to close. That's counter-intuitive.

McCook is not a growing community, as the past census indicates. Although the outward migration is not as severe here as it is in many places in western Nebraska, the numbers nevertheless are going down and not up. In addition to that, nothing new has been added that will attract people to McCook in substantial numbers. So if the population is declining and no new events are scheduled, how do we justify two new hotels? Cobblestone already has a motel in Cambridge to our east which negatively affects McCook hotel occupancy for westbound travelers on Highways 6 and 34. In addition to that, they also have a new hotel in Oberlin, which negatively affects McCook hotel occupancy for northbound travelers on Highway 83. When people can stay in a new hotel before they get to McCook, some will.

On the other hand, while available hotel rooms are increasing, places to eat are decreasing! In the past couple of years we've lost Luigi's, the Country Kitchen, the Mexican restaurant behind Old Sarge's Bar, and the restaurant at Overtime. We need more family restaurant locations to accommodate folks across southwest Nebraska and northern Kansas. I've been friends with some of the past leaders of the Chamber of Commerce and I realize that tests have been conducted for the past several years on traffic in and around McCook and it was determined by these tests that a franchised sit-down restaurant would not generate enough customers on a daily basis to be able to keep their doors open. As a social scientist, I realize the value of scientific studies and the accuracy of their predictions but it seems to me that if someone is willing to take a chance on building another hotel in a physical atmosphere that is already oversaturated, someone should be willing to take a chance on another restaurant too. It's not a good thing for the community economically when many people from a town of almost 8,000 people regularly go out of town for lunch and dinner rather than eating in McCook.

So, in my opinion, we now probably have the right number of motel rooms in McCook and another hotel would create problems rather than solving them while we don't have enough family restaurants to feed the people who would rather eat out than cook at home and would prefer not to drive out of town to do it.

It seems to me reasonable solutions could be found for BOTH these problems if the effort is genuinely made!