After years spent occupying space on a few different websites, including the city of Chehalis’ platform, the Chehalis Community Renaissance Team has a webpage to call its own.
The nonprofit’s homepage is now experiencechehalis.com, a one-stop hub for people to find all sorts of information about the Mint City. Itineraries for first-time visitors, guides for wedding planners and resources for new and established businesses populate the site designed by Spry Digital Marketing.
“It’s a tourism-facing website,” said CCRT Executive Director Annalee Tobey. “We’ve been happy to have a page on the city website, which was great, but it’s really nice now to have a home online for our programs that we can keep updating. We have lots of ideas on how to expand and refine the website.”
Since its inception about a decade ago, the CCRT has evolved from an organization working behind the scenes to promote Chehalis to one with numerous front-facing opportunities for local businesses and community groups to promote themselves and Chehalis.
Between its involvement in the Washington State Main Street Program, its role in the Chehalis Coworks workspace that opened last year and various programs designed to beautify the downtown corridor, such as the facade improvement grants offered to local businesses, there are many paths that could lead someone researching Chehalis to the CCRT database.
The four bolded tabs at the top of the page — Eat, Stay, Shop and Play — send browsers to a directory of local venues to fit their fancy. The shopping tab is sorted by neighborhood, while the food menu can be sorted by cuisine.
“For a long time, the CCRT has always been nose to the ground, just getting our projects accomplished,” Tobey said. “It’s never been about who we are, but about what we do. It wasn’t first on anyone’s list to necessarily have our own website, but as we’ve grown and become more sophisticated, the need has grown for us to have a place for people to access all of those resources in one spot.”
Chehalis City Manager Jill Anderson said the city remains an enthusiastic and active supporter of the CCRT. It not only provides funding via lodging tax and business and occupation tax dollars, but helps facilitate projects such as the installation of new bicycle racks and banners downtown.
The nonprofit plans to continue furthering its enhancement of downtown streets this year by way of more artistic benches and several large murals created by local artists. There are also plans to add color to some high-traffic crosswalks and potentially a sculpture or two on the horizon.
