Business alliance hopes to expand on outdoor opportunities

A New Mexico outdoor recreation business alliance seeks to educate Clovis’ business owners, county and city government members about the outdoor recreational opportunities that are being provided in New Mexico at the Curry County Chamber of Commerce’s Tuesday meeting.

The meeting was put together by Chamber Executive Director Ernie Kos, she said the goal was to educate locals of the possible opportunities in how the economy within the community can expand.

Kos said that the meeting gave the community the idea to expand on outdoor opportunities that the city already possesses, such as hunting and Ned Houk Park, while also exploring other possibilities like gravel bicycling paths. She said that even if Clovis doesn’t naturally have outdoor recreation such as mountains or rivers, that will not stop the town from seeking new economic opportunities.

James Glover and Marianne Tenenbaum, co-directors of EndeavOR, the outdoor recreation business alliance, presented their program at Tuesday’s chamber meeting to help show how much the outdoor recreation economy is growing within the state and how it can be utilized within Curry ounty.

Clovis Chamber President Marli Raney said, “You want to have multiple strings of industry in your community. It helps with the survival of your community. This is just something we never capitalized on before or even worked towards having a really great system in.”

She added, “I feel like this is an opportunity for us to really look into adding this to something Clovis offers.”

EndeavOR, founded in 2020, it the state’s first outdoor recreation business alliance, Glover said. New Mexico has many outdoor businesses throughout the state but no unified voice to advocate for the outdoor industry until the alliance was created.

“We’re endeavoring to expand the outdoor economy… What we’re really trying to do is make people understand that the outdoor recreation economy is its own sector,” Glover said.

Glover said that outdoor recreation has become a much larger priority for the state in recent years. He said the outdoor recreation economy, nationally, is the fourth largest economy in the United States and is “three times larger than the oil and gas economy.”

“What’s interesting about the national outdoor recreation economy is that it’s the number one employer of all jobs, more so than any other sector,” Glover said.

According to a 2021 study by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the outdoor recreation economy in New Mexico generated $2.3 billion and it was 2.1% of the gross domestic product of the state. Glover said there are nearly 29,000 people employed within that economy.

He said while there is a huge presence for the outdoor recreation economy nationally, it is slowly coming together as a formal sector within New Mexico. Glover and Tenenbaum have been traveling across the state, advocating for New Mexicans to make this sector a priority.

“Our neighboring states, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona outdo us. So that’s why we have beautiful amenities and opportunities, we just have to be a little more proactive in advancing this economy so that we can be on par with those other four corner states,” Glover said.

Glover said that outdoor recreation is more than the outdoor activities. It creates a variety of labor jobs, and the business encompasses things such as design, wildlife preservation and many other specialties that support the sector.

Kos added, “Why can’t we elevate it (the outdoor recreation economy) like other communities have?”

Raney said that the meeting was an introduction to new possibilities for the city and got the community to start considering other ways to bolster the city’s economy. She said that there are plans to have further discussion like Tuesday’s meeting.

“We would like to look into all the different possibilities of having some outdoor recreation that draws people to this area,” Raney said.