Mitch Forgie has been a force for growing the tourism industry in Kamloops and he’s been celebrating the city for more than a decade.

He’s widely known for helping to build the culinary scene as the owner of Red Beard Café and Nigel’s Speakeasy, a partner with Bright Eye Brewing and the founder of the Brewloops Beer Festival.

Earlier this month, he became the Destination Development Manager for Tourism Kamloops, opening the possibility of making his long-time vision of adding a gondola to the Tournament Capital.

“Basically, Tourism Kamloops said if you want to build a gondola, this is how you’re going to do it, so I applied for the job and got it,” he said. “I’ve been working away on it for three weeks and there is already momentum behind it.

“What started as a hairbrained scheme is starting to sound pretty realistic.”

Forgie first wrote about his gondola vision in 2011 on his Stronger Kamloops blog.

He said British Columbians have the knowledge base for building ropeways, pointing to the Jasper Tramway and the Peak to Peak gondola in Whistler as examples.

“From lift companies to operators there are lots of people that do these,” he said. “Whether it’s the people who run the Squamish gondola or those building one in Vernon, there are lots of people in this space from the private sector that are very interested in this vision.”

The four-kilometre gondola would run between three stations located at Mac Island, the west end of the Thompson Rivers University campus and Aberdeen Mall, which are all mixed-use locations well-connected to the city.

The vision would improve parking at TRU and traffic congestion in the city, and be a far faster commute than using transit. Gondolas are more energy efficient and create less pollution than gas or electric vehicles, and they don’t have stops or empty time between starting points and destinations like busses do.

The ropeways would allow people to travel quickly between the large sports facilities at the university and MacArthur Island where big sporting events are often happening at the same time, and connect the main hotel area in Aberdeen to the facilities.

Forgie estimates the cost of the gondola would top out at 60 million and breaks down the economic costs and benefits on his Stronger Kamloops blog post, along with ideas for using surface parking property sales and development opportunities to fund capital costs.

“In the current climate of the performing arts centre and Build Kamloops I think people are pretty skeptical of any large vision projects, but we’re putting this together with a private sector proponent and potentially partnering with TRU,” he said. “There are various ways we’re looking at funding the project, we’re not asking taxpayers for anything.”

Forgie has other ideas in the works for the future of Kamloops, including reducing two wide, lesser used roads to make parks and setting up pop up pubs on private land or city park land.

“We’re talking about setting up bistros for the weekends in different parts of the city to see if people enjoy stopping for a muffin, drink or coffee,” he said. “If it works really well, we can pitch the idea to the City.

“A great example would be the bike ranch out in Juniper and Valleyview we have this huge tourism and local draw at the ranch and we don’t have services there for people to grab a snack or a drink.”

An avid gravel and mountain biker, Forgie plans to better manage biking for locals and tourists. Last week he worked with Tourism Kamloops on a safe bike parking campaign.

“Kamloops is the birth place of free ride where professional mountain bikers spend a significant amount of their year and yet we do so little servicing both for visitors and locals to help people understand where the trails are and how to get there.”

Kamloops is one of the busiest hotel markets in the province but visitors typically stay for one night on their route to destinations, he said.

“The big push is not so much to bring in more tourists but to get them to stay a second night,” he said. “They do visitor surveys at the hotels and find out people didn’t know there are things to do here.

“We obviously have a lot to do. One of the best hikes in town is the Hoodoo Hike at Cinnamon Ridge yet there isn’t even a sign to tell you how to get there and where to park. It’s about growing what we already have, all of that comes under my role.”

Forgie is looking forward to putting some of his ideas into action in his ongoing pursuit of supporting the city he loves.

“The thing that excites me about Tourism Kamloops is that they’re focussed on the fact our best marketing for Kamloops is us as Kamloopsians talking about Kamloops,” he said.

“If the story we tell is that we love our city and all the great opportunity here, people will hear and want to come here.”