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.

Property Tax Brouhaha

“Oh my God.” That was all artist Lela Autio could think to say when she opened her 2009 assessment notice for a bare-bones Flathead Lake summer cabin—sans an inside toilet or central heating—that’s been in her family for more than 40 years.

In 2002, the Montana Department of Revenue (DOR) calculated that the property was worth $363,000. Now, Autio’s notice said it was worth $1.9 million—more than a five-fold increase.

Welcome to the 2009 Montana property assessment imbroglio, in which shocked property owners in growth areas like Flathead, Lake, Gallatin and Madison counties are receiving assessment letters saying the value of their land and homes has increased by as much as 300 percent or more, meaning their property taxes will skyrocket as well. This, despite the fact that shortly after the reappraisals were completed—in July 2008—the nation’s real estate market went belly up, buyers disappeared and home prices dipped or plummeted.

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!

As Goes Johnson County So Goes ...

Buffalo – Few places evoke the Wild West of range wars and land feuds more than Johnson County, Wyoming.

The memory of the cattle war of 1892, the so-called “War on Powder River,” remains vivid today, although some in Johnson County wish it would fade.

Now, 118 years after that famous massacre, the county again finds itself in the middle of a fight. It’s a quieter battle this time, waged in courts and county offices, not on Nate Champion’s ranch, the center of the War on Powder River, which was a battle between homesteaders and open-range cattlemen.

As in the old conflict, the issue today is land use: who gets to do what with the land, and what is the public’s stake in the fight? A transition from large to small ranching was the root cause of the Johnson County War. The shift marked a decline in power for bigger cattlemen trying to stem the rise of the small rancher and settler.

Missoula Notebook

I was curious about the potential effects of Sen. Tester’s act on businesses like Sun Mountain, so—after touring the sawmill—I interviewed Tony Colter, the company’s plant manager and vice president. He told me that Sun Mountain’s mill and logging operations combined could potentially employ up to 300 people, but times have been tough lately. Today, only 120 people work in the mill and finger-joint plant, and about 50 people work in logging. Sun Mountain hopes Tester’s bill could help turn things around.

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.

Missoula Notebook

If passed, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would designate the first new Wilderness Areas in Montana since 1983, and I’m up here, in a plane provided by the non-profit Ecoflight, to get a first-hand look at what the bill would actually mean to miles of backcountry in some of the most cherished wilderness in the state. Down below me is the battle zone: forests and landscapes treasured by hikers, loggers, snowmobilers, mountain bikers, horse packers, anglers, hunters, and oil and gas firms, among others. The Tester bill aims to protect wild land while satisfying as many of these groups as possible. But can it succeed?

Big Sky, Past and Future

Creating a major new ski-and-golf resort is no easy trick - there have only been two in the United States in the last 20 years - and for a while it seemed that Moonlight Basin, opened in 2003, had made it over the proverbial hump.

Moonlight’s vision of building a comparatively eco-conscious resort, one where wildlife could roam unencumbered and construction was concentrated in a few core areas while leaving lots of open space, seemed to be right for the times. The real estate sales that would fund much of the development looked solid at the outset. The settlement of a bitter conflict with Big Sky Resort, it's neighbor on the other side of Lone Peak, appeared to create a great opportunity in jointly marketing the two resorts as the "Biggest Skiing in America."

But Moonlight, like so many big development projects across the West, was not equipped to handle a sudden collapse of the real estate business, and the radical shift in the credit markets that went along with it. When lot and home sales stalled last year, Moonlight stopped making payments on more than $100 million in loans while it frantically sought a buyer. The resort's long financial emergency culminated earlier this month in a foreclosure lawsuit by its primary lender, the now-bankrupt Lehman Bros.

Lee Poole, Moonlight's owner, says Lehman has assured him that it will provide the money to keep the resort open while the long-term financing and ownership issues are resolved - a process that could take a year or more. One way or another, Moonlight will almost certainly survive in some form - and its fate will have a big impact on how Big Sky evolves as a resort community. [more]

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.

Scandal prompts Congressional action

For more than a decade, West Virginia Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall watched powerlessly as the Bush administration and a Republican Congressional majority made Royalty in Kind the main method of collecting oil and gas royalties on federal lands.

Huge sums were at stake. For the federal government, oil and gas royalties are one of the biggest sources of revenue, second only to income taxes.  Energy producing states like Wyoming, with vast tracts of federal land, get 49 percent of federal royalties, which annually account for hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds.

As ranking minority member of the House Resources Committee, Rahall repeatedly called for audits of the controversial RIK program and ordered Government Accountability Office oversight reports, only to be frustrated by incomplete information from the Interior Department agency, Minerals Management Service, that administered the program.  He was still on the sidelines in 2008 when an investigation by the Department of Interior Inspector General uncovered widespread corruption and unethical behavior in the Minerals Management Royalty- in-Kind office in Lakewood, Colorado.

On September 8, Rahall’s turn finally came. Now chairman of the powerful House Resources committee, Rahall authored HB 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy and Aquatic Resources—or CLEAR—Act of 2009. The bill is intended “to provide greater efficiencies, transparency, returns and accountability in the administration of federal mineral and energy resources.”