— from Laura Saccio, Earthbox Inn & Spa —
More than 20 years ago, my grandfather, a New Mexican farmer, rescued me from a life of impersonal work in the financial industry. I had been hired to work at an investment firm in Portland, and would see my family, including our two little girls, for only a couple of hours at the end of each day.
Grandad sold his cotton farm and was looking for an investment. He helped me finance the purchase of a wonderful little hotel (just 15 room and now known as the Bird Rock Hotel), in a small town in Washington almost 20 years ago. It was far away from where I had been heading, and offered the warmth and reality of small towns everywhere.
That change in the course of my career, meant that I could live a real life, among caring, real people.
Later, several other family members and I bought the Earthbox Inn & Spa, and Friday Harbor became my forever home.
We are not backed by big business, just our own commitment to this community and to the dozens of island families we employ.
There is no pile of money to see us through each winter, when our rooms are mostly unoccupied. There is just enough to keep us going until the next season.
We recognize the risks of “opening up” too early, but we imagine a very different Friday Harbor if we cannot do so. Our shops, restaurants, and cultural events depend upon a healthy summer season. We will already have a very late season opening, if we have much of one at all, and that will heavily affect our ability as a community to get through this coming winter.
We absolutely believe in being very careful. Our new rules for the hotels are basically “hands off.” Visitors will check in with an automated system into their sparkling clean rooms and be supplied with everything they need in order to ensure minimal risk of viral transmission. We see other local businesses taking incredible safety precautions, and we, too, will follow and provide our guests with the most up to date health and safety protocols.
Unless we commit to reopening safely, then I fear for a loss in the spirit of this place. Our island oasis is economically dependent on the tourism industry. Without visitors, our locals will suffer. As we begin the process of reopening lodging, I encourage you to see this as a symbiotic relationship. As visitors come to our island to enjoy some of the things we are lucky to be surrounded by every day, I encourage you to welcome them with open, appropriately distanced/masked, arms.
Our island visitors are not unwelcome intruders, but rather valued guests, an important part of what keeps our community alive and well.
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A good letter, Laura.I hear you.
Your installation of an EV charger is to be commended as a valuable Island resource. Thank you for allowing islanders, for a small charge, to use it (I have) when other facilities are down or in use. Courtesies like this help to lead us all toward a better future.
Laura, I find your story compelling, and not disimilar to other’s we know who chose the tourist industry as a means of their livelyhood. As Americans we’re inured to the “little ol’ me” stories of those who’ve worked hard all their lives for their money, (even though in reality most of us do), and how they’ve pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, (although in your case the investment money was inter-generational family wealth resulting from the sale of the farm).
I was immediately taken by your choice of titles, “”Reopening is a symbiotic relationship,” and I’m often surprised to hear people speak in such limited terms about something that so greatly both positively & negatively affects us all.
Though it’s true that tourism is here, it’s always been here, and it’s always going to be here, and that we need it, etc., etc., etc. (can we get beyond that?), there’s another side to the issue that (like in your story) that is often overlooked… it’s all in the framing.
When you say that “We are not backed by big business” you overlook the fact that the very inception of your business was funded by family money created by selling a big business that was part of a mega-industry (fully backed by government money), and you’ve since chosen to be a part of the biggest industry (tourism) that there is… one that’s fully backed & promoted by local, state, and national politics and money. This is where we get into, “The rest of the story”.
When you say, “Our island oasis is economically dependent on the tourism industry”, there are many who are quick to say that “therein lies the problem”. Tourism when done correctly enables community’s to have a viable source of income. When following the tourism model as perpetuated by SJC (in other words, “done incorrectly”) it, in the long-term, leads to over-tourism resulting in economic over-dependence, ecological decline, and a loss of most of the attributes that most of us moved here for in the first place… over-tourism results in the very loss of the very “spirit of this place” that you speak of.
“Without visitors, our locals will suffer.” I speak for many when I say, “with too many visitors our locals suffer.” Normal isn’t normal anymore– Airbnb isn’t any longer the small, laid-back “mom & pop” couch-surfing entity it once was, and SJC is no longer the small, quaint, unknown, quiet, laid-back, pristine island communities that they were just a few short years ago.
We’ve all had the opportunity to take this quiet time, and reflect upon what “normal” has become. For those of us who have lived here for a long time the past few months have been a trip down memory lane… the slow-down has been a reminder of times past, and in a world where normal isn’t normal anymore… there are many of us that don’t want things to go back to normal.
Though there’s truth in your story, there’s also another side to it. There’s something wrong with the picture when you have to keep reminding the population that, “Our island visitors are not unwelcome intruders, but rather valued guests, an important part of what keeps our community alive and well.” There’s two sides to this story, and though lucky we may have been to have found this paradise it will only remain so if the people remain vigilant, continue looking at the bigger picture, and are willing to take the steps needed to keep it that way. It’s time we start telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.
I’m glad that your folks were there to “rescue you” from what otherwise sounds like a good job, and I hope that your tourist business survives the current medical emergency. Not all will, of course. Tourism, not being perhaps the best economic model to follow as the tourism engine tends to fall hard and recover slowly during times of economic distress. There are lessons to be learned.
“If a medically-informed response to a pandemic creates economic hardship so serious that the economic impacts are more deadly than the virus, you change your economic system not your response to the disease. Condemning some to die of a preventable illness so that other’s don’t die of engineered poverty is disgusting.”
Positivity, Michael – you can do it!
You’re right Michael, we need to change the economy though tourism to some degree will always be with us because of where we live- it is indeed paradise. But in terms of a well-balanced economy, San Juan County is Moon Base 1. Everything we need for our standard of living is imported as local agriculture (itself a capital-intensive occupation) is inadequate for our population.
We’ve sought for years to change our economic system, something nearly everyone agrees on. But that changes nothing. The issue is how, using what talents and with whose money? We know what we want, but we haven’t figured out how to get there. Meanwhile, we will have tourism because it is necessary.
There is a great unfairness here: us older people on fixed (but in some cases high) incomes who are primarily susceptible to COVID-19, and younger people less susceptible who are still trying to support families, many relying on tourist income. What is aimed for is a fair middle ground, which I think, barring unforeseen events, the county has found.
“We’ve sought for years to change our economic system”
When you use the word “we’ve” are you wearing your SJC government hat, or your SJ Visitors Bureau hat? You can throw that out there if it makes you feel good. Myself and others just don’t see, or hear evidence of that. The recent introduction of the Visitors Bureau on the scene, and a quick look at the tourism based charts & graphs on the Comp Plan is evidence enough of the intentions of the local government, the mind-set of those that are steering the ship (yourself included), and the continued direction that SJC is heading.
In order for effective change to take place there has to be the political will to do so… there isn’t. You’ll not find anybody in SJC local government talking about the ill-health effects of over-tourism. Not a one of them will admit there’s a problem. “If you don’t see a problem… there’s no problem.”
Nobody said transition to a better future was going to be easy, but efforts to date to do so have been inept, at best. “Complicity” might actually be a more fitting term. Creating a balance might actually have to start with caps and limits on tourism… but we couldn’t do that now could we? Might piss off the industry.
No political wand will straighten out the dire situation we had before the virus made it direr. Right now, we’re manning the pumps and still taking water.
Anyone who has access to capital and is prepared to employ unemployed islanders is welcome to step up and fill the breach. It’s not the saying what needs to be done that will resolve the dilemma, it’s the doing of it. Right now there’s a lot of noise from the stands but few on the field, and like them or not, they’re the only team we’ve got, and they’re struggling.
Step up to the plate or find someone who will.