In the blink of an eye Natchez’s 300th birthday celebration is over. It has been an impressive year filled with noteworthy events.

So what does Natchez do for our 301st year of existence as a city?

Today, as we start off a new year and make all sorts of promises to ourselves, what should we learn from the Natchez Tricentennial?

First and foremost, Natchez is filled with enormous piles of interesting history. Most of us who have lived here a bit knew that already. But if you have any doubts, check out the Natchez History Minutes created by the National Park Service’s staff and summer interns.

The project was one of the most arduous to produce, yet most impressive and lasting of all the tricentennial projects. Natchez National Historical Park Historian Jeff Mansell oversaw the project and, I’m quite sure, devoted much blood, sweat, tears and worry over creating the short video detailing our history for each day of the year.

Mansell is indicative of the second most obvious thing to come out of the tricentennial for me: a reminder of just how impressive Natchez’s people are, particularly when under fire.

The dedication of Mansell, Tricentennial Executive Director Jennifer Ogden Combs and others is astounding. Without them, the tricentennial would have passed with the pomp and circumstance of your average Columbus Day, which is to say virtually unnoticed.

Sadly, Natchez’s tourism leadership came utterly unraveled near the beginning of the tricentennial year.

Like so many of Natchez’s problems the self-destruction of the CVB appears to have been mostly caused — or at best severely worsened — by an utter lack of communication between all the various parts of the CVB engine.

The Natchez Convention Promotion Commission was doing one thing. The executive director was doing his own things, and the city’s former administration tried to levy control over both.

Gas meet fire.

Boom. Within a couple of months, the executive director was fired. The entire NCPC was asked to resign, and, at the city’s most public time in the spotlight, Natchez operated without tourism leadership until the city convinced Combs to take over in an interim role.

Thankfully for Natchez’s sake, she did. Otherwise, the tricentennial would have been a complete disaster.

As we start off the New Year, hopefully, Natchez’s leaders — elected and civic — realize our biggest challenges are often those we create for ourselves.

The complicated structure of the Natchez Convention Promotion Commission and its various fundraising sources needs to be simplified.

The lack of clear lines of responsibility and the communication such lines require led to the implosion in early 2016. Tourism is too important, too all-reaching to allow that to happen again.

We must get serious about how best to focus resources — both personnel and dollars — to build more tourism jobs and attract more visitors.

“Because we’ve always done it that way,” will not work going forward. My hope for 2017 is that Natchez learns from the mistakes and miscues made during 2016 and makes a serious, concerted and all-encompassing effort to transform the city’s tourism from the status quo to state-of-the-art.

Few places in America have the tremendous combination of historic sites we have, sites that tell much of the story of America’s first 100 years.

We must capitalize on the opportunities we have been provided.

If we work them wisely, Natchez’s tourist economy could be booming soon.

 
Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.