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You are here: Home / Top Features / The Rural Business Show / Episode 16: A Rural Economy Organically Comes Together

Episode 16: A Rural Economy Organically Comes Together

November 7, 2017 By Ben Rowley

https://www.ruralbusiness.com/podcast/rbs16_mixdown.mp3

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Night photo of the outside of the Bouthouse Cantina. In this episode, we talk with a Rural Business owner in Salida, Colorado on how the Arkansas River ties the community together.Since the 1980s, Ray Kitson has been running businesses in Salida, Colorado, including rafting, retail, and lodging businesses. In 2004, he sold all of those and started a restaurant called the Boathouse Cantina.

Kitson worked with others to form the Arkansas River Trust, which helped the community see the value of having a river corridor for recreation. Organizers teamed with the city, state and federal government on a series of grants, loans and self-initiated projects to clean things up and create a vibrant waterway that gave rise to sixty miles of gold medal water for fishing, rafting and kayaking.

When the Kitsons created the Bouthouse Cantina, support from their family as well as patience by employees and contractors contributed to surviving the first few years. Eventually, other improvements downtown drew more traffic to the restaurant, which today is thriving.

“We all saw the same vision,” Kitson said. “We knew that we could make it here. And then little things started happening.”

In this episode, we talk with Kitson about how the Arkansas River ties the community together and the work he and others did to improve the riverfront through town. (2:00)

He reminisces on how the economy was in the early 1980s after the mine in Leadville, about 60 miles away closed down (spoiler: it wasn’t good) (4:20), and he shares the key moments over the last 35 years that made Salida what it is today (7:00).

He talks about some of the most challenging experiences he had getting the restaurant off the ground and those that helped him along the way (9:15).

He shares how the community was able to have success, with various groups working on their own piece of the puzzle and how it organically came together (13:44).

He goes over how local government can help or hinder business growth (15:53).

And he talks about the benefits of providing above-standard pay to employees (21:43).

Show Notes

Episode 15: Wendell Pryor on Rural Resilience

Episode 13: Resiliency Study

Filed Under: The Rural Business Show Tagged With: resiliency

Trackbacks

  1. Episode 17: Building and Maintaining Success - Rural Business HQ says:
    November 8, 2017 at 5:18 pm

    […] Episode 16: A Rural Economy Organically Comes Together […]

  2. Building a resilient rural economy - Rural Business HQ says:
    November 10, 2017 at 3:06 pm

    […] Links Episode 17: Building and Maintaining Success Episode 16: A Rural Economy Organically Comes Together Episode 15: Wendell Pryor on Rural Resilience Episode 13: Resiliency […]

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