Visit Lodi set to celebrate 25 years of growing with and promoting the city

Apr. 23—A quarter century ago, members of the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission approached city leaders with a proposal aimed at revolutionizing tourism in the area.

The proposal was to create a department that would be responsible for attracting visitors and conferences to Lodi, promoting the latter at established sites such as the Grape Festival grounds, Hutchins Street Square or Micke Grove Regional Park.

City of Lodi leaders and staff liked the proposal, but said they did not want to implement another department at city hall.

As a result, the city agreed to fund the new department, but gave the winegrape commission the authority to oversee it.

That department was implemented in 1998, christened the Lodi Conference & Visitors Bureau with funding from the city and in-kind support from the commission and others in the community. Now known as Visit Lodi, the organization will be celebrating 25 years on May 7 with its "Spirit of Tourism" event at Hutchins Street Square.

"It's pretty exciting," Visit Lodi president and CEO Nancy Beckman said. "It's just been an amazing time to watch how Lodi has grown as a tourist destination over the years."

Beckman was named the bureau's executive director in 2001, taking over for Sharon Dais.

At the time of her appointment to the role, Beckman said there were only eight winery tasting rooms in the Lodi area.

Today, that number has grown to more than 80, of which some 65 have opened tasting rooms with regular business hours, she said.

By 2004, Tourism Business Improvement Assessment Districts managed by lodging properties, with assessments being passed onto overnight guests, became the standard for funding destination marketing organizations across the country, Beckman said, and local lodging partners stepped up to the plate.

At the time, there were 16 lodging properties in Lodi, and today there are more than 90, including hotels, motels, bed & breakfast inns, and short-term rentals. Beckman said that number continues to increase on an annual basis.

The bureau moved from its space in Wine & Roses to Downtown Lodi in 2004, and eight years later, would open the Downtown Visitor Center, at 25 N. School St., which is open 7 days a week.

Beckman said tourism benefits every aspect of the city, as more than 1 million visitors spent more than $302 million at Lodi businesses, and raising more than $5.2 million in taxes.

Those tax dollars help fund Lodi parks, roads and emergency services, among other amenities, she said.

In 2008, the bureau changed its name to Visit Lodi, as its original name was difficult for visitors to remember, Beckman wrote in a piece for the News-Sentinel at the time.

In addition, she said the bureau was often confused with the Wine Grape Commission and the Lodi Chamber of Commerce, so the name change was to help people understand what the organization was and its purpose.

"We not only want to celebrate all that we accomplished over that time," she said. "We also want to honor those people that made these significant contributions and made this happen."

That includes former Lodi City Council member Mark Chandler, who was the executive director of the winegrape commission in the late '90s and proposed the bureau's creation to city leaders, and Russ Munson and Wine & Roses, who donated office space for the new department.

A the time, the bureau had just one employee, and it has since grown to six with more in-kind support from the winegrape commission, Beckman said.

"It was a really small group of people that came together to make this vision happen," Beckman said. "You have to appreciate that the winegrape growers had (this vision) back then, when there were just a handful of wineries here. They could really see the potential."

The Spirit of Tourism event is 3-5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7, at Hutchins Street Square, 125 S. Hutchins St.

Tickets can be purchased by calling the Downtown Visitor Center at 209-365-1195 or online at visitlodi.com.