Tourism dollars are clean dollars. Most of Oregon (except Cannon Beach; see yesterday's post) wants more tourists and the dollars they bring to local businesses. How best to attract them?
Portlanders don't perceive our city as a tourist town. Our first response to tourism efforts is to say that our climate keeps tourists away.
Hogwash. The weather in Seattle, New York, and Boston isn't any better than ours. (I'll concede that San Francisco's climate is better.)
Seattle and San Francisco each have something that Portland doesn't: an unusual tourist attraction and an unusual means of transport to get to it. In Seattle's case, it's the Monorail that runs to the Space Needle and Paul Allen's music museum. San Francisco has the cable car that runs from downtown over the hills to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square.
Portland has a tram that runs between Portland State University and Good Samaritan Hospital, two useful civic institutions not commonly thought of as tourist destinations.
For the next extension of the tram (if there is one), let's add tourist destinations. Three suggestions: OMSI and Hawthorne Boulevard on the east side, and the Japanese Garden (one of the best in the world outside Japan) on the west side.
Running MAX to the airport was a good start. Let's use our transportation planning to make Portland more attractive to tourists.