California Welcome Center to put Ridgecrest on map
Ridgecrest Daily Independent
A new California Welcome Center will likely put Ridgecrest on the map. Or more prominently on the map, since the desert area is already a mecca for film productions and tourism. But look for even more exposure when the new California Welcome Center opens sometime in 2021.
That was the word from Kari Crutcher at the Ridgecrest City Council meeting Wednesday.
Crutcher is the new interim Executive Director of the Ridgecrest Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. She was on hand at the council meeting giving the annual RACVB report.
The big news is that the RACVB and Ridgecrest competed against other areas of the state and won a designation as an official California Welcome Center. The Ridgecrest welcome center will join 17 other locations as part of the California Welcome Center network.
When it comes to pandemic damage, Ridgecrest has fared better than many places, according to Mark Schniepp.
Ridgecrest lost far fewer jobs and rebounded more quickly than the rest of Kern County and California and can likely look forward to a good future along with the rest of the Indian Wells Valley assuming recovery from the pandemic continues, he said.
Schniepp, who is Director of the California Economic Forecast in Santa Barbara, was the keynote speaker at the virtual Indian Wells Valley Economic Outlook Conference Feb. 25.
Employment in Ridgecrest only went down around 4% at the worst last April, as compared to nearly 16% for both the state and Kern County at the same time. Job loss was at its greatest shortly after the first statewide shelter-in-place order went into effect last March.