Wisconsin Dells Convention Hosting Stage II Business Development or Unfair Competition

The Village of Lake Delton has given the Kalahari Resort 10 million publicly collected dollars to build a convention center ( 212 thousand square feet) capable of serving large regional - national groups.  The Village of Lake Delton is giving financial incentives to franchise hotel operators who locate in the Wisconsin Dells area.  The Village of Lake Delton is giving financial incentives to property owners who build housing for temporary work staff on their land.  These efforts are being called stage II of the convention hosting industry in the Wisconsin Dells area.

This is a top down approach to attract business development the Wisconsin Dells area so desperately needs to demonstrate any economic growth.  The Wisconsin Dells area is a small rural community where summer tourism is the primary industry.   The community lacks the population to staff these larger enterprises.

The Village of Lake Delton giving these large sums of money and area resources to these smaller individual business operators can seem unfair to the existing business community.  Business and property owners question how giving all these assets gained through their effort to a small number of privately operated enterprises will benefit them.  Is this being practical or just short term thinking?

Investing this huge amount of public resources has to include ongoing place making efforts aimed at attracting business development.  Communicating how the Wisconsin Dells area makes the perfect out door lover's destination and offers the right local administrative approach to policy for a business owner's family to live, work, play, and profit.

An essential piece of Stage II of the Convention Hosting Industry in the Wisconsin Dells area will be to track and record the ongoing function of the services made available through these hefty investments.  This helps the community align the utilization of their publicly collected money and resources with processes that are proven to benefit the community.   It has to be ok to say the Wisconsin Dells area is in a growth building stage and some of this activity may not seem practical.