As the end of the year approaches, Tobias Colvin, manager of the downtown SCP Redmond Hotel and an outgoing Redmond City Councilor, talks about his accomplishments on the Council, plans following his term and growth in Redmond.
Source Weekly: What are some of your biggest accomplishments as a member of the City Council?
Tobias Colvin: It was a very productive two years. I think we got the right people on the Council, and we were able to collaborate to do some really big stuff. We could talk about the infrastructure that we’ve approved with the public safety facility. The airport continues to get renovated, so we should be breaking ground on that this next year. Water was another big thing that happened this year, trying to get to some certainty in our water rights moving forward.
I think Redmond is going to be a force to be reckoned with, with the relationships and the amount of money we can get from the legislature. We are batting above our weight, basically, because we have a really strong Council that all are aligned with making sure that we do the best we can with a fast-growing city. It was an honor to serve with all those councilors. They’re all very sharp and bright people that care very much about what we do. We have an amazing staff at the City of Redmond, and I foresee the City really pushing us forward in the next two to four years.
SW: What’s next for you?
TC: Take a break. I have a couple kids and a wife…so spending some time with them is going to be great. [The City] already put me back on two different committees, the Planning Commission and the Tourism Committee. So, I’ll be working really closely with the Council, not in an official capacity, but through the committees and commissions to do some work that we already started, but on the ground floor.
SW: Speaking of tourism, is the tourism industry in Redmond changing?
TC: With the fairgrounds getting the big festival in the summer, things are just coming. There are more and more people coming. It’s the off seasons that we really need that help. Redmond doesn’t have a mountain like Bachelor right down the street from us, but we are about equal distance from Hoodoo, Bachelor and Mount Hood – all about an hour to an hour and a half away. So, trying to say, ‘Hey, there’s some advantages to staying in Redmond, with Smith Rock close by, the Dry Canyon, all the restaurants that have come up, the venues.’ We just want to be a player in that tourism market in Central Oregon.
SW: Being a downtown business owner, how has downtown Redmond grown or changed in recent years?
TC: It’s been amazing how much growth there has been. I think we were somewhere around 70% occupancy for all downtown businesses in 2019, when I first came here and we opened the hotel. Now… it’s like 95-97% occupancy. It’s really a place that people want to kind of meander, grab some ice cream, go to a shop, buy some clothes, then go down to the hotel and have a cocktail or two before heading home. It’s really grown over the last five years. And I think it’s really telling [with] the project that we have here with the hotel.
This article appears in Source Weekly December 26, 2024.
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