The Importance of Local Pride

Spend enough time on social media in Front Royal and Warren County, and you might start wondering why anyone would ever want to live here.

According to some comment sections, everything is terrible.

Downtown is terrible. Traffic is terrible. The Town is terrible. The County is terrible. New businesses are terrible. Old businesses are terrible. Tourism is terrible. Growth is terrible. Lack of growth is terrible.

If a new business opens, someone predicts it will fail.

If an event is announced, someone complains about the traffic.

If visitors fill our sidewalks, someone complains about tourists.

If the sidewalks are empty, someone complains that there is nothing downtown.

If someone tries something new, there always seems to be somebody waiting to explain why it won’t work.

And eventually I think we have to ask a fairly simple question:

Do we actually like where we live?

Because local pride matters more than we sometimes realize.

Pride Doesn’t Mean Pretending

Before somebody takes this the wrong way, local pride does not mean blindly cheering everything that happens in Front Royal.

We have problems.

We should talk about them.

We should question our elected officials. We should debate development. We should talk about taxes, infrastructure, housing, tourism, schools, public safety, vacant buildings and the direction of our community.

I’ve certainly done my share of that.

Wanting something to be better isn’t negativity. In many cases, criticism comes from caring deeply about a place.

But there is a difference between saying, “We can do better,” and saying, “This place is awful.”

There is a difference between constructive criticism and seemingly rooting for your own community to fail.

And sometimes I think we have crossed that line.

What Do Visitors See?

Imagine you are considering visiting Front Royal for the first time.

Maybe you’re planning a weekend in the Shenandoah Valley. You search for Front Royal on Facebook. You find a post about something happening downtown and start reading the comments.

What impression would you get from us?

Now imagine you’re considering opening a business here.

You have some money saved. You have an idea. Maybe you’ve dreamed for years about owning a restaurant, shop or service business.

You start researching Front Royal.

What do our own residents tell you about this place?

Would you invest here after reading what we sometimes say about ourselves?

Would you bring your family here?

Would you open a business here?

Would you even visit?

We spend money marketing Front Royal and Warren County to people outside our community. We create websites, advertisements, events and tourism campaigns telling people why they should come here.

Then sometimes our own residents get online and tell them why they shouldn’t.

Think about that.

Communities Have Reputations

Every community has a reputation.

Some places are known as welcoming.

Some are known as innovative.

Some are known for their downtowns, outdoor recreation, arts, restaurants, history or quality of life.

And those reputations aren’t created entirely by tourism offices or marketing campaigns.

They’re created by the people who live there.

They’re created when someone stops a visitor on Main Street and asks if they need directions.

They’re created when residents recommend a local restaurant.

They’re created when people attend community events.

They’re created when we congratulate someone for opening a new business instead of immediately taking bets on how long it will survive.

They’re created when we tell people, with some pride, “You should come see our town.”

The opposite is also true.

A community can develop a reputation for negativity.

And once that happens, it becomes a problem much bigger than Facebook comments.

Why Would Someone Take the Risk?

Think about what we’re asking entrepreneurs to do when they open a business in Front Royal.

We’re asking them to invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We’re asking them to sign leases, hire employees, purchase inventory and take enormous personal financial risks.

Then they open their doors.

What should their community do?

Give them a chance.

That doesn’t mean you have to shop there. It doesn’t mean every business deserves to survive. The marketplace will ultimately decide that.

But why would we root against someone who is willing to invest in our community?

Why is our first reaction sometimes to find the flaw?

Why do we sometimes seem more comfortable predicting failure than celebrating someone willing to try?

Every successful business makes Front Royal stronger.

It creates jobs.

It fills buildings.

It generates taxes.

It gives residents another reason to shop locally.

It gives visitors another reason to stay longer.

And it makes the next entrepreneur a little more likely to take the same chance.

Success builds success.

Unfortunately, failure can build failure too.

The Same Is True of Tourism

I sometimes hear people complain about tourists.

I understand some of those frustrations.

Traffic can be annoying. Parking can get tight. Events can inconvenience people who are simply trying to get through town.

But consider the alternative.

Would we rather have nobody coming?

Would we rather have empty restaurants?

Empty stores?

Empty hotel rooms?

Empty sidewalks?

Visitors bring outside dollars into our economy. Those dollars support businesses and jobs that would be much harder to sustain using local spending alone.

We are the northern gateway to Shenandoah National Park.

We sit beside the Shenandoah River.

We are surrounded by mountains people travel hundreds of miles to see.

People intentionally vacation in the place we get to call home.

Maybe occasionally we should stop and appreciate that.

Look Around

I’ve traveled enough to know that Front Royal isn’t perfect.

I’ve also traveled enough to know that we have something pretty special here.

Stand downtown and look toward the mountains.

Drive Skyline Drive on a fall afternoon.

Spend a summer day on the Shenandoah River.

Walk through downtown during an event when the sidewalks are filled with people.

Drive five minutes outside of town and look at the landscape surrounding us.

People pay money and use their vacation days to experience those things.

We wake up with them in our backyard.

That doesn’t mean we ignore our problems.

It means we keep those problems in perspective.

So Let Me Ask a Different Question

If everything about Front Royal is terrible, why do you live here?

I don’t mean that sarcastically.

I think it’s a legitimate question.

What keeps you here?

Family?

The mountains?

The river?

The cost of living?

Your job?

Your friends?

Your church?

The slower pace?

The history?

The location?

There must be something.

And maybe instead of constantly talking about everything we dislike, we should occasionally talk about the things that make us stay.

If you truly believe there is nothing redeeming about Front Royal or Warren County, nothing worth defending, nothing worth improving and nothing worth celebrating, then perhaps there really is another community somewhere that would make you happier.

But if you’re staying — if this is your home — then don’t you have some interest in helping make it successful?

Pride Is Not Political

Local pride shouldn’t be Republican or Democrat.

It shouldn’t depend on whether your preferred candidate won the last election.

It shouldn’t depend on whether you agree with the Town Council, Board of Supervisors or the person commenting underneath you on Facebook.

We’re neighbors before we’re political opponents.

We use the same roads.

Our kids attend the same schools.

We shop in the same stores.

We depend on the same emergency services.

And when Front Royal succeeds, all of us benefit.

That doesn’t require agreement.

It requires investment in the outcome.

What If We Changed the Conversation?

What would happen if, for one month, we made a conscious effort to talk differently about Front Royal?

Not dishonestly.

Not pretending problems don’t exist.

Just differently.

What if someone announces a new business and our first response is, “Welcome. I hope you succeed.”

What if someone organizes an event and we say, “Thanks for trying to bring people downtown.”

What if a visitor asks what there is to do and, instead of making a joke about leaving town, we actually tell them?

What if we shared the good things happening here as aggressively as we share the bad?

What if we recommended a local business once a week?

What if we stopped treating optimism as naïveté?

Would it solve every problem?

Of course not.

But it might change something important.

It might change how we see ourselves.

It Takes All of Us

Government can’t manufacture local pride.

The Chamber can’t create it.

Tourism can’t buy it.

Businesses can’t demand it.

It has to come from the people who call this place home.

And that includes the critics.

It includes the skeptics.

It even includes the people who seem to have nothing nice to say.

Because ultimately we’re all living in the same community, and we all have something invested in what happens to it.

Front Royal has challenges.

We should confront them.

Front Royal has opportunities.

We should pursue them.

And Front Royal and Warren County has plenty worth being proud of.

We should probably say that a little more often.

Because if we don’t believe in our own community, why should we expect anyone else to?

And maybe that’s the question we should ask ourselves the next time we’re about to tell the world everything that’s wrong with the place we call home.