Idaho Mountain Express: Let’s not march blindly into the future

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Friday, October 30, 2009

Let’s not march blindly into the future

“The prevailing sentiment is the more tourists, the better.”

Van Gordon Sauter, a freelance writer and retired television news executive, lives south of Ketchum.

By VAN GORDON SAUTER

One almost presumes that several winter months ago a local visionary, caught in Ketchum traffic on a snowy Friday night while trying to fetch a critical dinner party ingredient from Atkinsons', looked to the sky while offering a prayer for a quick parking slot, and heard in response from on high a single, thundering, prophetic word: "Gondolas!"

Yes! Sleek silver tubes, bearing cheerful tourists and their credit cards, dangling from humming wires, linked by gleaming towers, moving above uncluttered streets between ski slopes, grandiose hotels, stylish restaurants, galleries, saloons, T-shirt shops, fortress banks and real estate offices.

This is the summer when relatively clear pictures of the potential Wood River Valley, circa 2025, heaved into view. Though their ramifications are barely discussed, researched or acknowledged, decisions being made by governments and the private sector will shape this valley and its quality of life well into the future.

While one may cheer or retch, the march to the future is well under way, predicated upon the local establishment's belief in a dramatically escalated volume of tourism and its assumed ability to usher forth an exhilarating era of economic nirvana.

Fairly or not, the gondolas and their conjured benefits will become emblematic of a tourism-based future. But there are passionate dissenters to the concept, people who contend there is a more broadly based economic future available to the valley, one less dominated by tourism and its depredation upon the local quality of life.

But for now, the establishment—the political class, the media, the broad business community—see tourism as the valley's economic driver, the one most available and most reliable. At this stage, the prevailing sentiment is the more tourists, the better.

The motivating force behind this vision is made up of three seeming inevitabilities, one public and two private: first, the new airport, capable of aggregating tourists on nonstop, high-volume flights (the airlines willing) from Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver or the major West Coast cities; second and third, the massive (by local standards) hotel, condo and residential developments at River Run and Warm Springs.

A south-of-Highway-20 airport appears inevitable, though it will be thrust well into the future by the scope of the task, the profoundly time-consuming, bureaucratic machinations and no doubt an inevitable spate of lawsuits, some from environmentalists motivated by a myriad of development-related anxieties. The developers of River Run and Warm Springs have the technical and presumed economic capability of moving forward with the advancing edge of any economic recovery, though one suspects they don't want to get that far head of the parallel march to a new airport and its hoped for revenue.

These three forces, and the comparatively minor development endeavors certain to follow in their wake, will dramatically alter the scale and feel of the valley, and the relationships within it. The tangible changes will be obvious:

· A dramatic increase in the use of rivers and streams, trails, streets, municipal facilities, recreational resources, etc. If the vague, off-the-cuff forecasts of an airport-generated tourism explosion are accurate, this will be a crowded little valley. Its growth will be accompanied by a dazzling construction boom, population expansion and burgeoning governments, services and taxes.

· The landscape itself will be altered by the massive accumulation of condos, hotel space and residences at River Run and Warm Springs, the possible addition of condo/hotels at the south entrance to Ketchum, the inevitable warrens of unsightly worker housing (one developer reportedly proposed 40 living units per acre at a large site near the hospital). The elevated tourism visits will also require a perhaps sizeable increase in service employees, the category now paid about $11 an hour. How these employees can sustain themselves in a pricey valley has yet to be discussed.

· The valley communities will experience a sizeable bloat over the years, and state Highway 75, a local version of the Long Island Freeway—clogged, treacherous and loathed—will run, or crawl, from Shoshone to a huge traffic circle south of Ketchum at River Run, and from there into the bottleneck of Ketchum. Living north of Ketchum will be increasingly attractive.

But make no mistake. If the commercial and political class visionaries are correct, large amounts of money and tax revenue will flow into the valley with this tourism-driven growth. Governments and their services/taxes will expand too, though their ability to anticipate, let alone keep pace with, societal and infrastructure change should be a source of concern.

While the new airport and the major developments are accepted as fact by the local establishment, there has been little public discussion about how this will impact our quality of life. Nor is there discussion of how strained community services will be financed, expanded and managed. Indeed, one doesn't even hear the most basic projections as to how increased tourism will change the valley's population. Or the school population. Or housing prices/availability.

Some dissidents, and there are many, believe this tourism-driven concept for the future is toxic—bad for the residents, bad for the environment. They envision a smaller net growth predicated upon higher-wage businesses that theoretically can be induced to relocate into this valley. They basically doubt the ability of the valley to absorb expanded tourism without a deteriorating quality of life. On the other hand, they are far from identifying with any credibility a feasible alternative to a tourism surge.

That forces now under way will inevitably change this valley is beyond doubt. The challenge will be setting realistic standards for growth and social accommodation, mediating the process and ending up with something resembling the original aspiration. But both sides in this struggle for the soul of the Wood River Valley must share a fundamental belief: The primary task of the government and the community must be protecting the area's traditional beauty, environment and personality, while rejecting, however lucrative, an Aspenization of the Wood River Valley that tangibly devalues the joy of living here.

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The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing Inc.

Theodore Dreiser – Winesburg, Ohio by way of Mesa, AZ

11/10/09 - 12:11

Mr. Sauter offers atypical comments for a staunch Republican.

The Ketchum area, with its alpinist's vistas and Hemingway heritage, has to think long and hard about growth. But then again, so do most of the cities in the mountain west.

Free market economists have never accounted accurately for externalities. Hence, there is no real quantitative method nor theory with which to frame the debate on growth. Portland, Oregon had a harmonious philosophy of growth for a while. But that has been disparaged and dismantled in good measure by conservative politics and an underemployed electorate.

The enormous issue of growth requires heroic leadership, a man or woman who can translate a reticulum of issues into something easily apprehended by citizens. The abstruse ideas of Joseph Stiglitz are not going to play in a region where whooping cough vaccination is debated.

Yeah, Van, tough, gritty places like Elko, NV may be interesting or quaint in the way of a John Ford movie. But areas untouched by industrialization are naive about the downside of commerce, and usually have a bad case of the dumb*ss.

from the 90's, the 80's, the70's, and...

11/02/09 - 20:29

The poster here named "Hope" is killing me.

Comparing Ketchum of today to the Ketchum of yesteryear, Hope informs us that we have now become "a virtual ghost town, save a few months of the year."

Gee, Hope, I hate to bring this fact to your attention, but in the heyday of the 80's that you so fondly refer to, Ketchum literally had tumbleweeds blowing down Main Street during spring slack, and during fall slack too, and during... well, almost all the time, save a few months of the year.

It was not a virtual ghost town; it was a ghost town. Town was empty save for the locals for those many long months of the year. And many of us liked it that way!

Yes, those days are gone, and they're not coming back, but please: it's ridiculous for you to look at a few tables of skier count data and then to infer from that sliver of information a living, vibrant, year-round economy.

That's simply not the way it was.

And yes, we were skiers then, as we still are now; and yes, we were dependent upon the tourist dollar then, just as we are now. But the difference between your vision of this valley and ours is simply this: we were, and still are, happy just to live here and ski.

You want more money in the deal.

Van Gordon Sauter's article is right on the money, even if he does state the matter too politely and too cautiously for my tastes. The valley is being sold, plain and simple, and when valley's like this one are sold off to development, as will happen here, the talk is always about an increased level of economic well being for all concerned... but come on, man; it doesn't ever really play out that way.

A few will make a truckload of money; a few more will eke out a hard living in the restaurant ownership trade, and related endeavors, but the rest of us, the vast majority, will work part time at two or three jobs, as always, with no health insurance, live far down valley (or farther than that) and share none of the wealth that development will bring to those whose interests are so keenly served by the anticipated wave of increased tourist dollars.

Don't try to sell us a trickle down theory of ski resort economics. We know better.

The quality of life will suffer in absolute terms, and suffer markedly, and if my suspicions are correct, and if my hopes are correct (at least we share the idea of hope, even though we clearly hope for completely antithetical objectives) eventually the town will die a slow, slow, post-tourism-boom death.

The draw of this valley has always been the quality of life here, not the quantity of condos. Change that balance, and the dollars will eventually die.

Once the character of town alters dramatically, as Gordon and others so eloquently note that it will, potential tourists will come to see this area not as someplace special, but as just another Aspen, or just another Vail, or just another Tahoe- and not a Sun Valley.

And gee whiz, why fly all the way to Idaho just to visit a place that's every bit as developed and just as glitzy as a place that's much closer to home?

Having sold it's soul, having lost it's identity, and having knowingly sold these qualities away, for more tourist dollars, Ketchum and Sun Valley will eventually find that it also traded away the very thing that brought tourists here in the first place.

But by then the profits will have been made, the profiteers will have moved away, and Hope, and others like Hope, will be back to square one, wondering how in the world it all happened so fast.

(And we'll still be skiing, you loser.)

bert –

11/01/09 - 08:12

Mr. Sauter: Bull's-eye! Brings to mind an analogy in Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time": the lower wheat prices dropped the more land was planted to wheat, the more wheat prices dropped, and the worse times got....

As the number of tourists drops, the more tourists and beds we need....

What Sun Valley needs in my opinion is to realize what they have and what they are and what it will take to maintain sustainability and the livability in your valley so that the character and quality of life of your fine community doesn't slowly ebb away.

Putting all your eggs in the tourist basket---risky business.

Just as Sun Valley holds Aspen up as the example to avoid, how many towns already hold Sun Valley up as a similar example?

Reply to bert

11/03/09 - 09:39

Excellent points! It just seems that the need for more tourists arises out of the need for many to support a lifestyle from easily earned tourist dollars. Remember, also in Worst Hard Times more plowing for wheat was to result in more rain-"rain follows the plow"- which would bring more wheat and more easy profits. However, it brought speculators, many non-farmers, in wheat and land prices.

The analogy and the lesson here being bringing in more tourists results in more permanent residents and others hoping to profit from even more tourists. Eventually, livability is ruined as the land was by wind and over plowing in the Dust Bowl.

People should just realize that the key to preserving the area is attracting more retirees and others (Dare I say wealthy) who need no local job and wage support for their lifestyle. In addition even these groups must realize that willingness to shop and get services in Twin Falls and Boise is critical to maintaining the current livability. This may not be a popular approach with the local populous, but it is reality as were new more realistic and less harmful farming methods that came out of the Dust Bowl period.

Unfortunately, as long as people think it is a God given right to live in this area and have a lifestyle sustained by it little will stop the march towards Aspenization. Maybe a wind like the current downturn in the economy and real estate markets will stop it as it did the speculators and profiteers in farmland after the 1920's. Hopefully, people will realize that this area brings a lifestyle with it, but not much in the way of opportunity to emulate your and well to do neighbors or City living cousins which the farmers and newly arrived speculators of the Dust Bowl became painfully aware.

lol

10/30/09 - 12:06

We blindly got this far, what the hell, lets go all the way into the sustainable Environmental-ism I repeat ism, once again ism hole.

Sustain Blaine, The KCDC, WREP, Citizens for Smart Growth, etc all work towards economic vitality and long term sustainability while protecting, and even enhancing, our quality of life. BS

Reply to lol

mpc

10/30/09 - 22:23

I just wish I could have done more for the planet, today.

Reply to lol

London

10/31/09 - 09:30

MPC, you can, advise all these scientism followers to get a swine flu vaccination..
www.youtube.com

Hope

10/30/09 - 09:14

Gordon, the joy of life has been deteriorated here because we have lost hotel beds, our skier days are significantly lower than the peak of the early 80's and that has led to us becoming a virtual ghost town, save a few months of the year. While I understand your concerns, I wish you had done some more in-depth research. The impacts of new developments have indeed been analyzed. The hotel projects do not base their projections on an airport expansion or hundreds of people arriving on bigger jets. Need I remind you that our flight service has been dramatically reduced over the years? We definitely need alternative transportation to minimize congestion and the deleterious effects to the environment of more vehicles on the road.
I disagree that there's a chorus singing that tourism alone will help us. We do need to increase our tourism, the decline has led to empty storefronts, people moving away, lower LOT tax and all the implications that has. Tourism will help attract location neutral businesses here as well as a larger year-round population. Now, tourism alone won't help us diversify and organizations like Sustain Blaine are focused on long term regional planning that will help our valley diversify and to grow responsibly and sustainably.
Sustain Blaine, The KCDC, WREP, Citizens for Smart Growth, etc all work towards economic vitality and long term sustainability while protecting, and even enhancing, our quality of life. I urge you to learn more about them, work with them. You are a bright and passionate man, our valley needs people like you to get involved and help ensure we have a balanced future.