The silver lining for Flathead

Inter Lake editorial

It's encouraging to hear that, despite all the national economic doom and gloom, the Flathead Valley and most of Montana have a sunny outlook for tourism and other economic activity this summer.

That's right. While there's hand-wringing on Wall Street, largely due to a weakening dollar, people in Montana's tourism industry are shrugging off high gas prices and boldly predicting that the state will see more visitors this year than it did last year.

And ironically, the weak dollar is fueling the tourism forecast by virtue of Montana's proximity to Canada. In 2006, Canadians made more than 513,000 visits and spent $112 million in Montana.

Well, the Loonie is much stronger against the dollar now, so those numbers are expected to be considerably higher in 2008. Canadians are not visiting purely for vacation purposes either - they are coming to shop, invest, do business or live here seasonally.

The weak dollar is also expected to spur an increase in visitors from other countries, adding to confidence in forecasts from the University of Montana's Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research.

The Institute is predicting an increase in visitation of at least 2 percent this year. That may prove to be a conservative estimate, too, considering that last year Glacier National Park had a 6 percent increase among visitors who were already coping with unprecedented gas prices.

The Flathead Valley's economy will get another boost this summer, with Wolford Development starting construction of the 600,000-square-foot shopping center known as the Glacier Town Center. The project will go forward, whether there's a national recession or not, pronounced Chad Wolford, vice president of the company.

Wolford went on to project that the project will involve at least 1,500 construction jobs as it is developed over an 18-month period. And once it's open, he estimates the shopping center will involve 1,200 ongoing jobs.

Those are some big numbers, representing some robust economic activity at a time when it's not happening in a lot of other places. One more reason why we are all fortunate to live in the Flathead.