By Jennie Dickinson, Manager, Port of Columbia.
A frequent question I hear from local residents is, “Will Blue Mountain Station hurt Dayton’s Main Street businesses?”
Answer: Absolutely not! In fact, one of the goals of Blue Mountain Station is to help downtown Dayton.
Here’s how:
- Dayton’s downtown is zoned central commercial. Like most downtowns, the zoning is purposefully written to encourage retail and service businesses to locate there. The primary purpose of Blue Mountain Station’s tenants will be wholesale specialty food processing. Dayton’s downtown buildings aren’t made to accommodate food processing. Food processors need floor drains, loading docks, coolers, and food-grade wall coverings. Downtown is not meant for, zoned for, nor has the buildings for this type of business use. So if we want new manufacturing jobs in the community, appropriately zoned land with the necessary infrastructure is needed. That is what Blue Mountain Station will provide.
- The dollars residents spend in local retail and service businesses tend to circulate over and over again within the community. Wholesale products that are shipped and sold outside of the community, like those that will be produced at Blue Mountain Station, bring NEW dollars from outside the community into Dayton. These dollars can then be spent at downtown businesses.
- In addition to wholesale production, Blue Mountain Station will also offer tours of the processing facilities, culinary events, and on-site sales of specialty foods products as a way to attract new tourists to Dayton. Besides helping the processing businesses, the goal for increasing tourism traffic is for those tourists to spend money in Dayton’s hotels, retail stores, and restaurants, which will help downtown businesses.
It would be contrary to the Port’s mission to undertake activities that hurt our downtown retail sector. Dayton’s beautiful, vibrant Main Street is one of the primary attractions to businesses interested in locating here. We’re all in this together!
