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Source: Journal Star, Peoria, Ill.迷你倉新蒲崗July 13--Travelers to Peoria who come off the Interstate may be surprised to find an ice cream store where signs told them to expect a visitors center.If they like good ice cream, they might be appreciative, but right now there's nothing at that location, the old Powell Press Building, to help a curious tourist.Emack & Bolio owners Tim Hennessey and Jim Maxwell, the pair who took over the 159-year-old building to provide a riverfront ice cream outlet, are all for providing visitor information.There's a little alcove on the north side of the building made to order for an information rack. There's already a riverfront map posted on the wall there.Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau director Don Welch said the visitors program is "in transition" and points to information now available at the Peoria Civic Center.But road signs lead people to a riverfront visitors center that closed in May.Larry Curless was less than thrilled with the way the visitors center was treated. While several other locations were considered for the center, nothing was decided on, he said.A Pekin resident who spent 35 years working at Caterpillar Inc. before a seven-year stint with the PACVB, Curless managed the center and the 12 volunteers that gave their time to assisting visitors.He wrote a letter to the Journal Star earlier this year defending the role the center and the volunteers played. "I have to commend the volunteers we had. There was nothing they liked better than telling people abo迷你倉出租t their city," said Curless."The bureau treated me very well, but a city the size of Peoria needs a visitors center. Galesburg has one, and it's a lot smaller town," he said.So here we are in mid-July, smack dab in the heart of the summer traveling season with riverfront events at their peak but little to help visitors who come our way.Let's offer a few suggestions:- Introduce a tourist information robot to the riverfront. Not only would it offer help but be something of an attraction of its own. Rather than actually building a machine to start clanking around, I'd go the easy route: hire a teenager in a costume with pamphlets.- Set up a lemonade stand in front of the ice cream shop. There's plenty of room on the platform. Only this stand wouldn't be manned by kids but senior volunteers to dispense advice (and cold drinks) at select times.- Work a deal with Hooters. That's the chain restaurant that reader Bill Kauzlarich calls "Peoria's most successful riverfront business ... yet never mentioned by the media." I'll mention it. Line up Hooters representatives as weekend tour guides at the ice cream outpost. I know Tim and Jim won't mind.Steve Tarter is Journal Star business editor. Tarter's phone number is 686-3260, and his email address is starter@pjstar.com. Follow his blog, Minding Business, on pjstar.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveTarterCopyright: ___ (c)2013 the Journal Star (Peoria, Ill.) Visit the Journal Star (Peoria, Ill.) at www.PJStar.com Distributed by MCT Information Services儲存倉