Travelers on Interstate 90 typically recognize Ritzville, Wash., as a great place for a pit stop. While the town does provide a brief reprieve from the road, many motorists dont know it has more to offer than bathrooms and gas stations.


Ritzvilles residents have set out to change that image, while preserving more than a centurys worth of history as a small town with a big wheat industry.


We are a community in decline. Agriculture is suffering, and people are choosing to get out of the small farm business as the big guys get bigger, says Dan Hille, president of Ritzvilles Public Development Authority. We need to diversify our base if we want to draw people back.


Hille says an effort to revive Ritzville is under way, and the strategy for economic growth includes several projects, such as a customer-service call center, college extension campus, historic preservation of the downtown area, and commercial business growth near the freeway.


If that sounds ambitious, consider that some in Ritzville claim the little town was once the No. 1 shipper of wheat in the world.


Ritzville has a population of 1,700 and is located 60 miles west of Spokane. Hille says the city of Ritzville formed the PDA in 2002, in an effort to capitalize on the towns strengths in order to attract new visitors as well as former residents who moved away after high school.


We have a lot we can build upon, but we need a lot of volunteers to do it, Hille says. Our biggest asset is the people in this community. Were all in this together.


The PDAs first big endeavor was buying a two-story, nearly 100-year-old downtown building from the Bank of Whitman for $225,000. The bank has occupied the first floor of the building for decades, and now is leasing the space back from the PDA, he says. An insurance agency also is located on the first floor.


An adjoining space in the building currently is being remodeled for a customer-service center planned by the end of this year, says Joe Tortorelli, a retired economic-development executive for Avista Corp., of Spokane.


Tortorelli has worked on economic-development programs with Ritzville and several other towns in Eastern Washington, including Colville, Colfax, and Cheney. He says the PDA has bought 27 work stations for the planned inbound call center and will hire people from the Ritzville area to staff the facility, which he estimates could bring about $700,000 of additional payroll income to the community.


He says the PDA doesnt have any clients for the call center yet, but is marketing it to providers of technology and product services, and currently is working on a possible agreement with a Seattle-based insurance company.


Another part of the PDAs strategy for economic growth involves re-using the former Ritzville High School building, which is located about halfway between I-90 and the downtown area. The building has stood empty for 10 years and currently is owned by a Spokane developer, says Hille, who graduated from Ritzville High in 1968. He declines to disclose the name of that developer.


As Hille looks at the boarded-up windows and rusty padlock on the doors of the 30,000-square-foot building, he says, My graduating class had 52 students. Now, the entire high school only has about 100 students.


The PDA wants to buy the building, renovate it, and use it for a new historic preservation trade school that would be operated by Moses Lake, Wash.-based Big Bend Community College and Pullman, Wash.-based Washington State University. That school would teach up to 30 students carpentry skills to use in the careful restoration and preservation of old buildings, he says.


Ritzville would be an ideal location for such an institution, because of its well-documented history and century-old buildings, he asserts. The city of Ritzville has submitted an application to the Washington state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development


(CTED) for a $35,000 feasibility study on the idea of opening the historic preservation trade school and also has sought money from CTED to start it, Tortorelli says.


Hille estimates that renovations of the old high school would cost $3 to $5 million, and says grants to fund the work could be available from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) and the Washington state Community Economic Revitalization Board, as well as other government agencies and organizations that concentrate on rural development.


Higher education


Hille says the PDA also is trying to attract a WSU extension campus. He expects that school would have around 30 students, who would take extended-learning classes to earn two-year degrees.


Additionally, the city of Ritzville is working with WSUs Center to Bridge the Digital Divide (CBDD), which runs e-work and other programs. Those programs focus on building the telecommunications capacity of rural communities to help strengthen their economies, says Ann Olson, president of the Ritzville Museum Volunteers.


The CBDD received a $212,605 grant from the EDA, funds from CTED, and contributions from several private-sector firms for its Rural Telework Program, and hopes to create 100 living-wage, information-based jobs in participating rural Inland Northwest communities, such as Ritzville, by the end of next summer, according to its Web site.


Olson says the CBDD selected Ritzville last November to participate in the Rural Telework program, which is helping fund the call center.


The town hosted a CBDD meeting last March, during which representatives from Forks, Wash.; Dayton, Wash.; Okanagan County; and Ferry County, learned about tools such as affinity marketing, which focuses on attracting former residents of rural towns who have moved away.


Several of the walls inside the Bank of Whitman building, where some of the meetings took place, help tell those communities stories. During a team-building activity, leaders painted murals of their towns on the walls along with spray-painted phrases such as imagine the possibilities. They also discussed ways to bring tech jobs back to rural America, rather than sending the jobs out of the country, Olson says.


Technology was both what started Ritzville and what caused its decline, Olson says. Were hoping now that technology will save our town.


She claims that after Northern Pacific Railroad laid tracks through Ritzville in 1901, the town became the worlds largest shipper of wheat. In the early 1960s, however, when the then-new I-90 bypassed the downtown area and the agriculture industry embraced technological advances, many family-owned farms went out of business, and young people were forced to leave the area to find work, she says. Seniors now make up 40 percent of Ritzvilles population, she says.


Yet, Hille says, many of the young people who have left are leading prominent careers elsewhere.


Some notable people with Ritzville roots, he says, include Steve Rogel, president and CEO of Federal Way, Wash.-based Weyerhaeuser Co.; Jerry Jaeger, president and co-owner of Coeur dAlene-based Hagadone Hospitality Corp.; and former Ritzville High football coach Andy Christoff, who now is an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers NFL team.


The success of our former residents has a lot to do with the strong work ethic that is true of any small rural community, Hille says, with notable pride.


Ritzville does celebrate its own.


A replica of a covered wagon with a metal sculpture of a horse sits to the right of the museum. Olson says local artist Lamar Thiel designed the artwork. A metal sculpture, named Mr. Ritz, greets visitorswith a sheaf of wheat held firmly in his handin front of the Bank of Whitman building. Local artists Vince and Sheryl Evans named that figure, nicely dressed in a business suit of metal, after the towns founder, Philip Ritz.


Last Memorial Day, Ritzville Highs alumni association hosted a 100-year anniversary celebration, Tortorelli says. The town keeps one of the best databases anywhere of its high school graduates, thanks to a resident who profiled every graduate from 1908 to 1985, he says.


Preserving the past


Obviously, Ritzville is trying to find at least part of the future in its past.


Ritzville residents have been carefully documenting the towns history back more than 100 years, which helped earn the two-block downtown area a designation as a National Historical District in 1982, and a designation as a Preserve America community in August 2004, Olson says.


Preserve America, a federal initiative, recognizes communities that protect their heritage and use their historical assets to foster economic development.


Ritzville has a Northern Pacific Railroad Depot museum and the Dr. Frank R. Burroughs Home, which was built by a pioneer doctor in 1890, Olson says. Both the Burroughs Home and the Ritzville Public Library building, located within a block of one another on Main Avenue, were built in 1907 and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, she says.


The Railroad Depot features a recently remodeled 60-year-old green and yellow caboose, as well as a functioning telegraph machine that volunteer L.R. Keith operates efficiently as he informs visitors about the history of the town and its railroad. Currently, about 60 to 80 trains still rumble loudly past the depot each day as a living testament to the grain shipping centers legacy.


The landscape of the downtown area hasnt changed much since 1920, Olson says. A study conducted in 2004 to determine how to revitalize the economy found that whats called heritage tourism rated as one of the top strategies for growth, and Ritzville had 25 tourism-related businesses in 2004, she says.


Were never going to be another Silverwood, she says, referring to the theme park near Athol, Idaho. So we need to capitalize on our strengths.


She says the town plans to target history-minded visitors over the age of 50, who have the discretionary income to afford leisure travel, and would take the time to explore the downtown. Theyll have plenty to read. The Ritzville Historic Commission has placed brass plaques on several of the downtown buildings that tell curious passers what year the structures were built and a little about the history of the businesses that occupied them, she says.


In addition to the museums, Ritzville also has a nine-hole golf course and a water parkand has hosted an annual blues festival each July for the past 12 years that Olson says packs the downtown with visitors, many from out of town.


The challenge is getting drivers who stop at the main exit from I-90which carries 20,000 cars a dayto cross the railroad tracks and visit downtown Ritzville, Olson says.


She says downtown businesses are asking commercial businesses near the freeway to promote the downtown area to travelers.


There has always been an us versus them relationship between the freeway businesses and the people working downtown, she says, but its a numbers game, and if we can get even a 1 percent increase in the number of people who stay for the day, we can make a difference.


Commercial growth


The towns commercial business and warehouse district, located where I-90 intersects with U.S. 395, has been growing steadily, Tortorelli says. Vandervert Construction Inc., of Spokane, recently built a Best Western hotel there, and Shell and Chevron gas stations have also gone up nearby. Eateries such as a Zips Drive-In and a Perkins Family Restaurant attract passing motorists as well, he says.


The Galbreaths, a local family that owns 300 acres of land where the commercial district is located, are considering a proposal for another motel there, he says.


Three years ago, Ritzville Warehouse Co., a farmer-owned cooperative that has been in business since 1893 and has more than 1,400 members, built a wheat-loading facility named Templin Terminal, Hille says.


Farmers from the surrounding area store their wheat in the structure, which can hold up to 700,000 bushels, until it is loaded onto 110-car trains during a 14-hour process and shipped across the country, he says.


Although agriculture makes up the largest portion of Ritzvilles economy, wheat farmers arent the only noteworthy economic contributors there. For instance, John Marshall, owner of Landcraft Repair, says he does the body and paint work for United Parcel Service trucks in Eastern Washington, excluding Colville and Spokane.


Marshall supports bringing in other types of businesses through projects such as the call center. He says that if such an endeavor succeeded it would be like a shot in the arm of our economy and help get us going.


One of the obstacles to reviving the area is the lack of jobs with attractive wages and benefits for the spouses or partners of people who find employment there, he says.


Additions such as the call center could provide those much-needed second jobs and help increase the population, which he says has stagnated since 1950, according to economic data compiled by the city.


Ritzville is the seat of Adams County, which in 2003 had an estimated population of 16,602, according to the U.S. Census Bureaus Web site. That number was up 1.1 percent from the countys population of 16,428 in 2000.


The population growth charts for Ritzville show a flat line, Marshall says. Anyone who watches medical TV shows knows that to flatline is bad news, he says.


The heart of the town, located along Main Avenue, still beats with activity, but the surrounding streets are dotted with vacant buildings and show few signs of life.


Steven McFadden, who moved to town last year from the Yakima Valley and publishes The Ritzville-Adams County Journal, says Ritzvilles residents need to learn how to cater more to visitors before the town can grow in size.


The downtown area has potential for development, but needs significant investment, especially from property owners there, to survive, McFadden says. He also says the town appeals to people who desire a particular type of lifestyle, and should market more pointedly to that group.


The key is you have to want the pace here, he says. If youre looking for a place to get away from the chaos and traffic and you want a stable community, this is a great place to live.