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New West Conference, Oct. 12-13

NewWest.Net’s flagship conference, Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies, features a major new element this year: pre-conference tours. And one of those tours promises an entertaining and educational day and night in McCall, Idaho on Oct. 11.

Sponsored by Blackhawk on the River, the McCall program will include a tour of Brundage Mountain with Judd DeBoer, owner of Brundage and developer of several other projects in the area. Then there will be a hiking tour of the Blackhawk nature area with a local herbalist, as well as a horse-drawn carriage tour of the sprawling property. That will be followed by cocktails with Bob Vosskular of the Payette Valley Land Trust and Jim Fronk of Secesh Engineers, and then dinner along the Payette River. Tour participants will overnight at the high-end lodgings at Blackhawk, and then travel to Missoula for the opening of the conference on Monday afternoon, Oct. 12.

Participation in the tour is included with a full conference pass to the NewWest.Net conference, with a modest transportation surcharge for those traveling by bus to Missoula. Check out the conference website at www.newwest.net/realestate for all the details on the event, or call 406-829-1725.

Bankruptcy Aftermath

Nearly $6 million in checks were distributed this week by the Yellowstone Club, satisfying almost all the claims of more than 140 vendors and contractors who have been waiting almost a year for their money.

The payments came as a result of an unusual bankruptcy court settlement in which trade creditors are getting their money before the consortium of lenders led by Credit Suisse gets theirs. It is very rare in a bankruptcy case for unsecured creditors to get paid in full ahead of secured lenders.

In a letter accompanying the checks, Sam Byrne, managing partner of CrossHarbor Capital and the new owner of the club, said: “Yellowstone Club, its new owners, members and employees all recognize the delay in payment of these monies has caused significant financial hardship for many who provided goods and services to Yellowstone Club. We hope that full payment on your approved claims will provide some relief to his financial burden, and that this will be the beginning of a rebuilding of the reputation of the Yellowstone Club with vendors and service providers in the Big Sky and greater Bozeman communities and beyond.”

While most of the club’s trade debt has now been paid, considerable friction has emerged between the so-called Liquidating Trust - the entity charged with collecting money and paying it to those who are owed - and the committee representing unsecured creditors. The trust, which is being managed by New York-based attorney Mark S. Kirschner, has sought to disallow even some small claims on the grounds that they are the responsibility not of the club but of former club owners Tim and Edra Blixseth.

Oct. 12-13 in Missoula

We cover a lot of ground at the NewWest.Net Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference. This year, for our fourth annual conference, we have three tracks of break-out sessions on the morning of Tuesday, October 13th. We’ll cover topics including energy conservation; neighborhood design and the evolution of small Western cities; sustainable design in the rural West; creative approaches to project financing; resort market trends; the latest in land use policy in Montana; and much more. As always we have worked hard to find the best experts from around the region, and the morning sessions includes more than 20 speakers from Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and California.

You also won’t want to miss the plenary sessions: following the new pre-conference tours, economist Christopher Thornberg will kick things off at 4:30 on Monday, Oct. 12 at the MCT Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Missoula. Then we’ll have the opening reception at the MCT, sponsored by First Security Bank. Tuesday afternoon’s session features Luther Propst of the Sonoran Insitute, Sam Byrne of the Yellowstone Club, Roger Lang of the Sun Ranch, and several special guests that we will announce in the coming days. Then we wrap up with a special reception and musical performance by Shane Clouse and Tom Catmull, sponsored by WGM Group.

Flooding the Airwaves in Montana

I’m not sure when it became the norm for lobbying groups to flood the airwaves with campaign-style advertising relating to specific pieces of legislation, but the battles over healthcare and climate change legislation are playing out in a way that I’ve never seen before. It’s probably more intensive here in Montana, where TV ads are cheap and our two conservative Democratic Senators, Sen. Baucus and Sen. Tester, represent very important votes. But it’s discouraging to see the debate taken over by interest groups whose ads are, by nature, purposefully misleading.

Climate change legislation is denounced as an energy tax, without any acknowledgment of the actual purpose of the legislation. I certainly understand why oil and gas interests, fertilizer manufacturers, coal companies, and agribusinesses would oppose legislation that could raise their costs, but of course the TV ads urging me to call Sen. Tester and tell him to vote no are not honest about who is financing all this lobbying. Environmental groups are funding some ads in favor of the cap-and-trade climate change bill, but it’s not really a fair fight.

Special Project

For a couple of decades after Chet Huntley opened Big Sky Resort in 1973, the Southwest Montana ski destination was an odd anomaly – not quite developed enough to compete with the Vails and Aspens of the world, not quite big enough and charming enough to have a strong sense of place, and not quite close enough to anything to be a likely spot for intensive real estate development.

But over the past ten years, all that has changed. The opening of Lone Mountain Tram in 1995 put Big Sky on the map as a must-visit for serious Rocky Mountain skiers. The development of Moonlight Basin added diversity and critical mass to the skiing and other recreation opportunities – and a lot of nice property to the second-home market. The launch of the Yellowstone Club in 1999 brought cachet, rich people, and lots of attention (some good, and some not so good).

When the global real estate bubble began to inflate in 2003, Big Sky exploded. Home values tripled over the following four years, and contractors and tradesmen – some 5,000 a day at the peak – flooded in from Bozeman and elsewhere to build condos, commercial centers, and ultra-fancy houses for the ultra-rich.  The Meadow Village and the Town Center and the Mountain Village – the three separate commercial complexes in the valley – remained modest by big-time resort standards, but with more jobs, more people and more money, Big Sky was growing up.

Save the Dates: Oct. 12-13

For the 4th edition of the NewWest.Net Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference, we’ve added a new feature: four separate pre-conference tours on Monday, Oct. 12. We’ve done tours like this at our Bozeman and Boise conferences and they were a huge hit, so we thought we’d bring the concept to our flagship event in Missoula.

Two the tours are focused on Missoula. One, a walking tour led by Missoula Mayor John Engen, will look at downtown, the new downtown masterplan, and redevelopment projects past and future. Mayor Engen is both deeply knowledgeable and very entertaining, and this tour promises even downtown denizens a new look at the heart of Missoula.

The second Missoula tour will look at great examples of green building, infill development and other forms of sustainable development around town. Check out the new LEED bank buildings, hear about the plans for the Sustainable Business Center, and much more.

We’re also very pleased to offer two fascinating tours outside of Missoula. A tour in Butte will look at the incredible historic architecture of that city, and discuss how it can be sustained and enhanced in the context of redevelopment. We’ll be offering van service from Missoula, or if you’re coming to the conference from points east it’s a convenient stop on the way.

Finally we have the Idaho conservation development tour, which features an overnight stay at the spectacular Blackhawk on the River conservation development in McCall. This tour begins on Sunday, Oct. 10, and if you’re coming from Boise or points south it’s a great way to make your trip to Missoula. Van transportation is also available.

The full conference program, which kicks off at 4:30 on Monday with Chris Thornberg, is also shaping up extremely well. Check out all the details at www.newwest.net/realestate, or call 406-829-1725 if you have questions. 

Bankruptcy Payout

Hundreds of employees, tradesmen and vendors who are owed money by Yellowstone Club will be getting paid this week in accordance with the private ski resort’s emergence from bankruptcy protection. A spokeswoman said 800 checks have gone out this week - a welcome cash infusion not only for the individuals and businesses involved, but for the slumping economies of Bozeman and Big Sky.

The payments this week cover back wages owed to current and former employees as well as so-called “convenience claims” - amounts of $5,000 dollars or less.

Obama in Montana

When the news broke a couple of weeks ago that President Obama would visit Bozeman for a town hall meeting and then travel with his family to Yellowstone Park, there was a frenzy of rumor about where, exactly, the First Family would go and where they would stay. Some reports had him fishing at the Sun Ranch and staying at the elite Yellowstone Club. Others suggested they'd overnight in the Park.

In the end, though, the Presidential entourage ended up at the Summit Hotel at Big Sky Resort, a modern, 10-story hotel at the base of Lone Mountain that's high-end but casual. Michelle and Sasha and Malia went whitewater rafting on the Gallatin River Friday afternoon while the President went fly fishing, and they then had a quiet dinner at the hotel and toasted some marshmallows over a bonfire. The next morning they left by car for Yellowstone - all in all, an itinerary not too different from what any upper-middle-class family might have done with one day of vacation in Southwest Montana.

For the staff of Big Sky Resort, though, and for public safety and law enforcement agencies and various lucky merchants in Big Sky, Friday and Saturday were about as far from routine as could be. Taylor Middleton, general manager of Big Sky Resort, recounted in an interview Sunday that the experience was both exhilarating and a bit surreal. [more]

The President in Montana

President Barack Obama, appearing genuinely pleased to be back in the Big Sky state, talked health care Friday with an enthusiastic crowd at a Bozeman airport hanger, fielding a variety of questions from local residents and stressing the importance of creating a system that protects consumers from insurance company abuses.

"TV loves a ruckus," Obama said, in reference to the combative town hall meetings that have played out on cable news in recent weeks. "But what you haven't seen are the many constructive meetings going on across the country, people coming together to have a constructive discussion and asks questions. That reflects a lot more than what we're seeing on TV."

There were no confrontations or disruptions among the crowd of about 1,500, with the great majority appearing to be strong supporters of the president.

[more]

The President in Montana

When candidate Obama made the rounds in Montana last year, he promised to come back sometime and maybe do some fly-fishing. He's keeping that pledge, but even assuming he gets a few casts in during the First Family's visit to Yellowstone Park late Friday and Saturday, the main event - a town hall meeting on health care reform Friday at the airport in Belgrade - promises to be the highlight of the trip, at least from the public's perspective.

Presidential visits are always a big deal, especially in places where they hardly ever happen, like Montana. And this trip, coming in the midst of a raucus national debate on health care reform, is shaping up to be more important than most from a policy perspective. In part because of the central role being played by Senator Max Baucus in creating the health-care legislation, Montana is emerging as an important bellwether of public attitudes on the issue. [more]

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