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- [S142] Newspaper Article, The Mountain Press, 25 Apr 2000.
Rader retiring, but she enjoyed the ride
Apr 25 2000 12:00AM By ANNA GARBER Staff Writer
SEVIERVILLE - When Jane Davis Rader was a child, she lived on Main Street over her parents' automobile salesroom. She knew all the families along the street, and just before dinner her mother would look up and down the street to see at whose house her daughter had parked her tricycle. That's where she would find her and bring her home.
Rader's father, Cliff Davis, and grandfather, John Sevier Ballard, were both mayors of Sevierville. And she has followed a family tradition of working for the good of her home town.
On April 30 she steps down from her job as executive director of Sevierville Chamber of Commerce, having led it through 13 years of rapid growth. She looks forward to spending time with her four grandchildren and on Douglas Lake - but her commitment to Sevierville won't disappear.
She's already on one steering committee and there are a couple of other organizations she'll probably volunteer for after she's taken this summer off.
"I've enjoyed watching the community that I love grow," she said. The chamber's efforts to market that community have also increased.
When former Executive Director Ruby Fox retired in 1987, the chamber was a two-person operation in one room of the community center. Rader went to work in January 1988. The budget - for operations and for marketing - was a little over $30,000, of which $15,000 came from the city.
This year, the chamber budget is $819,000, of which $600,000 came from the city. The staff includes seven full-time and two part-time personnel, and the welcome center on Highway 66 is bursting at the seams.
"We could probably use twice as many people," Rader said, including people just to answer the phone.
Back in the early days, Rader and Nancy Clabo, who is still on the staff, were limited in what they could do. "We didn't do any traveling," Rader said. "We did produce a brochure." The chamber started advertising in Southern Living around 1989.
Shortly after that, the city started collecting hotel-motel tax, with two-thirds of the tax to go to the chamber to market the city. There were 40-odd hotel rooms in the city then; the tax raised about $20,000 the first year.
"Then it started building," Rader said. The number of rooms has increased 400 percent. Nowadays the chamber asks the city for its budget and the two-thirds provision has been dropped. The city now gives the chamber more than the whole of annual hotel-motel tax collections.
This year, the chamber will ask the city for $1 million, Rader said. While that seems like a lot, it's the same amount Pigeon Forge spends on Winterfest alone. The city also gets money from the state for cooperative advertising, though like all state expenditures its future is in limbo.
The budget is not the only thing that's increased; so have Sevierville's attractions. "The biggest change is we have something to market," Rader said.
In the late '80s, "we had motels, and that was about it," she said. Marketing the city as "Your hometown in the Smokies" wasn't easy.
But then along came the golf course, shopping malls and theaters, and Sevierville was on the tourism map. The new slogan is "Where Smoky Mountain fun begins," trading on Sevierville's proximity to the Smokies and to Pigeon Forge's "fun" image.
Research shows almost as many people come to shop as to visit the mountains, Rader said.
She's seen name recognition change for the city. At travel shows, "people used to talk about Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg but never, ever Sevierville," she said. Now, people may not know much about the city but at least they've heard of it.
Travel shows are an important way to market the city, and the chamber has joined several state bus associations and the American Bus Association. "We probably do about 15 motor coach tour association shows a year," Rader said.
She sees motor coach tours as an increasingly important market for Sevierville. The chamber started training local businesses how to deal with coach tours. Although coach tour operators expect a discount, they provide steady sources of income for hotels and motels in off-peak months.
Now, more than half the city's hotels and attractions actively court the motor coach trade, she said. Rader said Brenda McCroskey, her successor, has expertise on coach tours she will put to use on Sevierville's behalf.
Rader has also seen more intra-county cooperation in the past 13 years. The Smoky Mountain Tourism Development Council had just begun in 1988.
"The number one accomplishment has been Winterfest," and the Harvest Festival began a couple of years ago. The next focus will probably be on an event for April and May, Rader said.
The stadium welcome center, due to open in June, will represent another milestone in cooperation among the cities. Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are working together on mass transportation, and Rader says she hopes Sevierville can soon join in.
Sevier County and its cities are "closer than we've ever been," Rader said. "We've got to learn we're a community together."
Rader and her husband, Ron, have three children: Jeff, a judge; Mitch, who runs an insurance agency, and John, a dentist. All live locally.
ŠThe Mountain Press 2000
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1939 - (85 years)
, d. 26 Jun 2001, Sevier Medical Center