Those attending the Snoqualmie Valley Chamber of Commerce’s March luncheon got a full introduction to one of the newest programs working to promote the Valley, Savor Snoqualmie.

Savor Snoqualmie is a grassroots initiative started by the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust to promote farmers, businesses, and tourism in the Snoqualmie Valley. Jennifer McKeown, Snoqualmie program manager at Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, spoke at the chamber luncheon on the history of the program and its work.

In 2014, the initiative was started to create a regional brand to help promote tourism and economic development. People were visiting the Valley in increasing numbers, McKeown said, but that increase was not translating into a similar increase in economic impact.

In order to drive more of the visitors into the Valley communities, McKeown looked to rural tourism development models used in Oregon to see how successful communities there have been at getting their visitors to be more engaged with their cities.

With support from Duvall, Carnation, Fall City, Snoqualmie, North Bend, Preston and Snoqualmie Pass, McKeown followed the Rural Tourism Studio model used in Oregon and surveyed community members to identify what the four important elements of the Valley were to the people living in it.

Outdoor recreation, farms and restaurants, cultural heritage and art, and supporting local businesses were the four categories chosen as important places of focus in a survey. Teams of community members were then selected to manage each one, with a fifth team meeting to manage the other four. Team members included city councilors and city staff members, business owners, museum representatives and individual citizens.

“The way that it works in Oregon is you form action teams and an umbrella action team. Those four areas are the areas we have action teams for,” McKeown said. “We have five action teams since last April and they have met every single month. They are project based and are really moving things forward.”

In the past year, Savor Snoqualmie has received grant funding to get to work on various projects created by the four groups. McKeown said the Port of Seattle has been one of the program’s biggest sources of grant funding and has helped to fund brand development through logos, posters, and other marketing materials.

Using photos taken from promotions of local businesses, farms, and destinations, Savor Snoqualmie is developing promotional posters for each city in the Valley. The effort is also working on a “local’s guide” that will feature places to go and things to see around the area.

“We are really targeting it on Snoqualmie Falls, one of the most-visited destinations,” McKeown said. “To keep people that go to the falls in the Valley for a little while longer.”

Initiative members are also working to connect many of the Valley’s trails into a more cohesive network with way-finding signs that let people know of resources and businesses in nearby towns.

“We identified potential trail connections and we are working through them to figure out how to connect federal, state, regional and local trails using Snoqualmie Valley Trail as the backbone for that,” she said. “The signage would include one sign in each city or trail pointing to the downtown, where to get off (the trail) and the mileage to the other towns. We’ve been working with all of the cities and we’ve gotten the funding, working with the sign company to get the proofs and have to submit the permit application to King County as they are the land manager for the Snoqualmie Valley Trail.”

The group has also started a program to connect local farmers to local restaurants to promote ingredients grown in the Valley. Through that program, Savor Snoqualmie promotes restaurants that have committed to source their ingredients from local farmers, McKeown said.

With more projects in development, Savor Snoqualmie’s goal is to become an organization independent from Mountains to Sound Greenway. Currently McKeown is the only staff member at the organization working on Savor Snoqualmie. Her goal is to see it get to a point where she can hire more people on as staff.

“As we get more funding, it can transition to become a standalone thing,” she said. “Most organizations have multiple staff members. We are starting small but as we grow that would be the natural thing.”

Savor Snoqualmie has begun its second year with many of its projects, including connecting the Snoqualmie Valley Trail to other state and regional trails, already underway. (Courtesy Photo)