New West Network

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Introducing...

The premiere issue of The New West magazine, a new regional publication focused on covering design, development and community in the Rocky Mountain West is hitting newsstands and mailboxes this week. Click here to complete a survey to get the magazine free or sign up for a paid subscription here.

At 68 pages, this is our first full issue and we think you’ll find it even broader and deeper than our preview edition released earlier this year.

The cover photo at right depicts Mike Horst, a ranch hand who lives and works south of the Bears Paw Mountains in Montana. The story, written and photographed by Anne Medley, tells of calving season on a family ranch and in the backdrop is the story of how even in the face of corporate agriculture, trophy ranches and soaring land prices, two families are holding onto something much bigger than just a family business.

This issue’s “Project Watch” section details the bankruptcies of five posh resorts in the region and the issue is anchored by a profile Bill Foley, the billionaire founder of Fidelity National Financial and new owner of Whitefish Mountain Resort and Mackenzie River Pizza Co. and, well, lots of other stuff. And, he may just be getting started.

The best way to check out our magazine is to subscribe. We want to know who’s interested in The New West, so we have made the magazine available free to qualified subscribers who answer a short questionnaire.

• Click here for the questionnaire for a free subscription.
• You can also subscribe for $9.95 a year by clicking here.

And, watch this page for more stories from the premiere edition. 

Obama, Clinton Vie for Votes

The annual Truman Dinner, organized by the Yellowstone County Democratic Party in Billings, has long been a homegrown affair held in a low-ceilinged conference room in a downtown hotel. Local candidates would mutter for a few moments and then sit to scattered applause. Later, the small, overdressed crowd would browse tables of donated items in a silent auction. A staple of the event was a goofy performance by a retired high school teacher named Jack Johnson, who would dress like Harry Truman and deliver one of the former president's famous speeches.

It was a great forum, in a kitschy sort of way, for Montana's citizen-legislature-in-the-making, but not this year. [more]

In The New West magazine

If you didn't know any better, you might think William Patrick (Bill) Foley II was just another retiring baby boomer looking for golf courses, open spaces and the chance to recapture an idealized childhood of summertimes on the family ranch. A frank man with an almost goofy charm, he speaks of his love for Montana, his concern for the landscape -- and the joy he gets bombing around the backcountry on an ATV or a snowmobile.

But the truth is, Foley isn't very good at leisure. He's got the fancy log home on Whitefish Lake, five West Coast wineries, the huge cattle ranch near Deer Lodge, and the requisite private jets, but he can't seem to help turning everything into a business.

Foley appears to be in a much better spot than most of the Wall Street moguls, Silicon Valley financiers and high-rolling property developers who see the surging "amenity economy" in the Mountain West as the next great capitalist frontier. In some ways, he's representative of the breed: a very rich man who's become enamored with the West, and whose first instinct is to buy it. [more]

Idaho and Washington Feel the Pain

Ask Tom Welch, president of Pioneer Federal Savings and Loan (offices in Dillon and Deer Lodge, Mont.) about his mortgage portfolio: "Great," he says, "As good as it's been. I can't tell you the last time I've had a foreclosure."

Even as risky national lending practices and the collapse of the housing bubble have pulled the national economy into recession, lenders in Montana remain largely unaffected by mortgage losses. Banks in the state haven't been hurt much by the credit crunch, either, because few swing big leveraged financial deals, bankers say.

"Montana has some foreclosure hot spots," said Helena branch president Paul Drake of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "But we haven't seen the kind of issues like Arizona or Nevada, not even close to it." [more]

book review

Reading The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Searing Wall Street and Washington, by David Sirota, is a bit like a cross-country road trip with an insistent guy who talks the whole time.

The thing is, Sirota's saying stuff you should probably hear, and he goes to places you need to go, but he's tough to follow at first. He starts in Helena, Mont., with a barrage of information about the partisan political machinations of the state's most recent biannual legislature, and he tosses other stuff in at a dizzying pace and with a good dose of populist outrage: from vermiculite poisoning in Libby to Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting of his hunting companion to century-old labor wars to an aside about how some Helena locals referred to him (Sirota) as a "city mouse."

His story gains traction when it becomes clear that he's not finding a uniform populist movement in America where there isn't any. Sirota reports on the outrage felt by working people, whether it is channeled toward big business or misdirected at Mexican immigrants. [more]

Largest Gift in History of UM

Billionaire couple Dennis and Phyllis Washington announced the largest gift in the 115-year history of the University of Montana at the campus Friday: $10 million for a new education building.

Education is important, Phyllis said. "We can't afford to let it fall off the chart." She delivered her comments at a glass podium before a 40-foot sign with a rendering of the structure. Phyllis graduated with a degree in education from UM and supported her family for the first years of her husband's construction business. He eventually took one company public and owns others, including Washington Corp., a Missoula-based holding company that owns the copper mine at Butte, a railroad and shipping interests, as well as other businesses. Forbes estimated the Washington net worth at $2.5 billion.

UM President George Dennison lavished praise on the couple and on the building's designers, OZ Architects, for its environmentally friendly aspects. The building, promotional materials say, will be the first of its kind, replete with all the latest technological gadgetry for distance-learning, math and science. [more]

From The New West magazine

For years now, talk in the Mountain West has been about the "amenity" economy displacing natural resources as the key to prosperity. But as the housing downturn marches across the region and commodity prices soar, the old standbys have returned as key economic pillars.

Clearly, the industry powering much of the growth in the Mountain West over the past decade -- growth itself -- is limping. Residential real estate, while healthier than much of the country, continues to weaken, especially in larger cities like Boise and Salt Lake and in resort markets like Big Sky. The luxury second-home sector is also taking a hit, with high-profile projects like Tamarack Resort in Idaho and Promontory in Utah seeking refuge in bankruptcy.

Yet still-tight labor markets, continued job growth and commercial construction -- all of which are at least partly related to the natural resource boom -- have kept the overall economy in positive territory. [more]

Steadier Work in Northern Rockies

Residential work may be slowing, but commercial construction seems to be taking up the slack for design, engineering and construction companies in the northern Mountain West.

It's no secret that the construction industry nationally has been in a free fall, with home foreclosures at record levels and median prices dropping (or at least dipping). The collapse of major real estate markets has helped toss national and international financial markets into turmoil, though national trends can almost never be applied, exactly, to a local area or region.

So, in all this noise, what are the patterns that apply to this region? [more]

In The New West magazine

Last summer massive gravel trucks rumbled and thundered away the peaceful early morning, every morning, on Paul Matteuci's picturesque riverfront acreage in Montana's Gallatin Valley.

"A county road bisects my property," Matteuci said. "A gravel truck came by about every five minutes from 5 a.m. to dark."

The noise sucked, sure, but the traffic hazard was downright dangerous. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur had found the place appealing, in part, because of the romantic notion that his 4-year-old could run out the front door without being supervised every second.

Gravel is the foundation, literally, of growth. Beds of gravel lie beneath every building, roadway and sidewalk. It's also a main ingredient in concrete. And almost everyone hates proposed gravel pits, as well as the massive trucks that haul the loads. It's one of those wonderful ironies of the West these days. Economics pull growth and gravel together with inexorable force. If hauled more than a few miles, the cartage can easily top the cost of the gravel itself.

Geology plays an important role, too. Glacial moraines and pebbly former riverbeds produce top-notch gravel. We're talking about meadows and valley floors – the closer to a river the better. Just the kind of place guys like Matteuci adore. [more]

From The New West magazine

Ralph Johnson is a Bozeman architect, professor and author of Building from the Best of the Northern Rockies.

NW: What will it take for meaningful green designs to get the benefit of large-scale production? You've studied and profiled some innovative projects in the book Building from the Best of the Northern Rockies, but many of them seem, well, pretty similar. Why, for instance, have we never seen anything fundamentally different, like a 200-home straw bale subdivision, popping up on the outskirts of Bozeman?

RALPH: There are a couple reasons why subdivisions look the way they do. Builders want to build what they've built before and sold before. Zoning ordinances where they exist are written to promote the normal. If you're atypical – good or bad – you jump through far more hoops. That takes longer, and time is money. There's also the – 'I don't like the look of that.' And if the banker doesn't like the looks of it, the bank isn't going to give you a loan. That's what it takes – some crazy builder willing to take this up.
[more]