The Door County Historical Museum received a $50,000 grant from dollars raised from the county's hotel room tax. It will help them build a new exhibit. PC: Fox 11 Online
DOOR COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Every year, millions of tourists visit Door County, and some of the millions of dollars spent go into a stash called the Community Investment Fund.
That fund does exactly what the name implies.
“It uses dollars generated from our overnight visitors to Door County at paid accommodations and reinvests those dollars into local projects,” says Jon Jarosh, Chief Communications Officer at Destination Door County.
In 2007, Door County implemented a 5.5% room tax. In 2022, that tax jumped to 8%, and it was then that Destination Door County and the Door County Community Foundation could use that extra funding to reinvest in the community.
In 2023, the Community Investment Fund began and the aforementioned organizations have been awarding grants from the room tax funds ranging from $5,000 to over $100,000.
“It’s number one, a way to help invest in our future as a destination,” Jarosh adds. “We’ve been able to invest in 37 different projects and just under $2 million in the last two years. It’s a way to show our residents how tourism is benefitting them.”
The projects are wide-ranging; everything from adding miles of pedestrian and biking trails to installing ADA bathrooms at sporting facilities to repairing docks and buying shuttles for transporting visitors, residents and workers.
Last summer, the funds were awarded to help restore the iconic Eagle Bluff Lighthouse.
And soon, at the Door County museum, the room tax dollars will help educate visitors about the area’s earliest days.
“We realized we had a void in the story we wanted to tell, we needed to talk about the foundational industries that really drastically changed Door County, the timber industry, the stone industry, and commercial fishing,” says Joe Taylor, the Manager of the Door County Museum and Archives.
A new exhibit focusing on just that will be possible thanks to a $50,000 grant from the fund.
“This space right here is going to be actually a giant stone quarry all the way up to the ceiling, we’re going to have a lime kiln in here working so people will get a tactile feel, we’re going to bring the quarry into the museum,” Taylor adds.
State law says room tax must be allocated for projects that benefit both visitors and locals alike.
A project like Sunrise Elementary School’s new ADA-accessible playground.
“It’s really a community playground, it’s nestled into a neighborhood with lots of families who come and visit and tourists and visitors in addition to our kids at sunrise who love it so much,” says Katie Smullen, Principal of Sunrise School.
As part of the application process, the school had to get letters of recommendation from local hotels and motels to prove that the park would be beneficial to those who don’t live in the community. Smullen says they got three letters of support.
So, after years of fundraising, the park finally became a reality last fall.
“It was a big price tag so we’d written a lot of grants, students had done lemonade stands and Destination Door County, this community investment fund grant put us over the top, it made it possible.”
The school received an $80,000 grant. The playground’s total cost was $567,000.
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