New West Network

My Page: Jonathan Weber

<< Newer articles <<    Author Home     >> Older articles >>

Tickets Now Available

Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics in Los Angeles is one of the few economists to have predicted the housing bust, and we’re delighted to have him once again as a keynote speaker for NewWest.Net’s Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference, Oct. 12-13 in Missoula.

Chris is a fantastic presenter, and this year he’ll be opening the conference at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 12, with a special session at the MCT Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Missoula. We have a limited number of tickets available for Chris’s talk and the opening reception only: these are priced at $39. (Visit www.NewWest.Net/realestate or call 406-829-1725 to register).

I chatted with Chris this morning about his current assessment of the national real estate market and the economy as a whole.

4th Annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve added yet a few more top-notch speakers Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies (Oct. 12-13 in Missoula), rounding out what promises to be our best program yet.

Michelle Sullivan, a veteran non-profit executive and all-around mover-and-shaker in Wyoming, will join us to discuss community in the New West, and how it evolves in an age of sharp ideological difference. Also from Wyoming, we’re pleased to welcome Jonathan Schechter of the Charture Institute, who will join the Tuesday panel discussion about conservation development.

And for our developer panel on Tuesday afternoon, which will offer a broad look at what’s getting built these days, and how, we’re featuring an exceptionally diverse line-up. The session includes Keith Simon, a San Francisco-based developer and investor and partner in a controversial project on the north end of Flathead Lake; Andy Erstad, a renowned Boise-based architect; Mark Woolley, a developer and consultant based in Salt Lake who has several active projects in Wyoming; and Eric Ossorio, a highly knowledgeable Big Sky real estate broker.

All of this of course is in addition to our three keynote speakers, four pre-conference tours, six break-out sessions, two receptions and much more. You can see all the details at www.newwest.net/realestate, or call 406-829-1725. We look forward to seeing you there!

AIA Architecture Credits Available

NewWest.Net’s Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference, Oct. 12-13 in Missoula, has many dimensions, and one of them is great architecture and community design. We’re delighted this year to welcome a number of leading regional designers to Missoula, including Lori Ryker, author and architect and founder of the Livingston-based Artemis Institute, who will give a talk entitled “The Case for Civic Architecture in Rural Environments”; Stefan Pellegrini of Berkeley-based Opiticos Design, who will discuss design and the evolution of small towns; and Andy Erstad of Boise-based Erstad Architects, who will be part of a wide-ranging conversation on design and development trends in the region. Among our local architectural luminaries, Jeff Crouch of Kibo will discuss new directions in sustainable design and building, and Marty Noyd of Oz Architects will talk about the new Garlington Lohn and Robinson building that’s now under construction in downtown Missoula.

Other design-related sessions will include a presentation on resort communities by Rebecca Zimmermann, President of Design Workshop, one of the nation’s leading landscape architecture and urban design firms. And don’t forget the Butte architectural heritage tour, an opportunity to see up close some of the most magnificent buildings in the Mountain West. NewWest.Net is a qualified provider for the prestigious American Institute of Architects continuing education program, and AIA credits are available. Visit www.newwest.net/realestate for all the details, or call 406-829-1725.

Blaming the Messenger

The University of Montana student newspaper, the Montana Kaimin, on Friday reported that two football players were involved in an assault on another student last March, and that Coach Bobby Hauck swept the incident under the rug. The alleged assault is the latest in a long series of incidents involving violent off-the-field behavior by members of the UM football team.

The Kaimin also reported that when a reporter asked for comment about the incident, Hauck said: “You’re done for the day, and you’ll be done for the season if you keep bugging me about this thing that I’ve answered four fucking times.” The two players allegedly knocked a student unconscious and kicked him in the face following an altercation at a party; they were held out of one game this season, but otherwise apparently faced no sanctions.

In a furious editorial, Kaimin sports editor Roman Stubbs called the allegations involving the two players “disturbing, sickening, alarming,” and denounced Hauck for building a “wall of silence” around the incident and refusing to take responsibility or hold anyone accountable. “A college football coach should never be blamed for isolated incidents,” Stubbs wrote. “But when accusations form a pattern, then not only do the upstanding Griz players become stigmatized, but so does this school, this city and this state. It becomes embarassing. And it falls on the commander in chief.”

UM football spokesman Dave Guffey said in an email to NewWest.Net: “We have no comment on this matter.”

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. 

<< Newer articles <<    Author Home     >> Older articles >>