In Revelstoke's triennial bid to retain more tourism in the city year-round, its new $2.3-million development plan is zeroing in on better accessibility and connectivity for both visitors and locals.
As one of 14 communities under B.C.'s Resort Municipality Initiative, Revelstoke has been required since 2007 to create a Resort Development Strategy (RDS) every three years.
The RDS doesn't target Revelstoke Mountain Resort or the resort lands specifically, contrary to its name, but rather focuses on sustainable tourism, increased community amenity and enhanced visitor experience for the city as a whole.
"While the City can expect to see an increase in the tourism economy as development at the resort continues, the traditional industries that helped shape Revelstoke continue to be important contributors to the local and regional economy," the draft 2025-27 RDS reads.
The 10 individual projects within this latest RDS cover multi-use trails along Airport Way, more wayfinding signage, a fenced off-leash dog park in Industrial Park, public art installations, LUNA Fest, REVY.Live Outside, Revelstoke Ambassador Program training and Woodenhead Park washroom maintenance.
City council unanimously approved the draft Tuesday, May 27, sending it onto the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport for consideration. With the ministry's feedback, the draft will then get approval from another "forum," before returning to Revelstoke for a final thumbs-up by council.
Cat Moffat, the city's community economic development manager, expects it will be back on council's desk by late June or early July.
"There's been lots of consultation on this, lots of outreach, lots of input from many stakeholders on the plan," Coun. Aaron Orlando said at the meeting. "Looking forward to seeing the response the draft gets 鈥� hopefully, success."
For the financials, the City of Revelstoke is working with roughly $2.31 million over three years to carry out the new RDS. As a start for 2025, it's budgeted about $837,000.
A minimum 70 per cent of funding must go toward tourism infrastructure, amenity and capital purchase, meaning tourism services, programs and events can't be allocated more than 30 per cent. Moffat told Black Press Media this has made it more limiting for the city to finance events, compared with past editions of the RDS.
But while infrastructural improvements often end up taking closer to 80 or 85 per cent of funding, she emphasized that $100,000 is dedicated in the 2025-27 RDS to community projects specifically aimed at benefiting locals.
"A lot of our projects are for everybody, so you can have more of the safe recreation as well," Moffat said, referencing plans in the RDS for expanding the city's active transportation network. "We want to be able to connect the north and south part of town through one big network."
Part of that safe and accessible connectivity component means getting a more robust shuttle bus service in place, for which the city has budgeted $140,000 in the RDS to finance new and bigger vehicles, according to Moffat.
"We did allocate a healthy amount, we feel, just to make sure we're thinking forward in case there's any challenges," she explained, saying Revelstoke's shuttle service has been perhaps the biggest hurdle to plan around.
A huge benefit of the RDS as a whole, Moffat added, is that virtually every project that gets carried out will be available to the community at no cost.
"The community gets to use all of this for free, except the bus 鈥� that's $2," she reasoned. "We're taking everyone with us from all levels of the community, so we're not driving out more people instead."
A focus for Moffat, in her first run as project manager for Revelstoke's RDS, is developing a city that makes a stronger impression on visitors 鈥� enough to get them coming back for more than just a meal or bathroom break.
"Tens of thousands of cars go over the bridge every day," she said, adding that the goal is to entice more people to stop by for a night or two in the shoulder seasons, "instead of (Revelstoke) just being a stop on the highway."
The draft RDS is available at .
