New West Network

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Monday Business Roundup

With the national equity markets slumping and Fed chief Ben Bernanke predicting an economic slowdown, the question becomes, how long can states in the Mountain West defy the national trends?

Booming energy production, strong tourism results, a resilient construction sector buoyed by the continuing influx of new arrivals, a resurgent technology industry – all of these are contributing to making the Mountain West the nation's strongest economic region. Now, some snow for the skiing industry would help.

In other business news: Colorado legislators seek a new method of distributing exploding revenues from energy production; Crocs' magical stock-market ride ends with a thud; and Colorado's State Fair faces a roller-coaster future. [more]

skiing and dollars

The proposed Bitterroot Resort, which some have said could become North America’s largest ski area, would have a major economic impact on Ravalli and Missoula counties, according to an independent report released this morning.

The Bitterroot Resort Economic Impact Analysis, conducted by the Portland-based group ECONorthwest, concludes that under the larger of the two resort proposals, the amount of additional economic activity to the study area “is large both relatively and absolutely.”

Bitterroot landowner and developer Tom Maclay has proposed to build a major resort on former ranchland that would include residential housing, lodging, commercial development, a convention center and two golf course on nearly 3,000 acres of private property. Under the larger proposal, the ski area would extend on to Forest Service land on Lolo Peak, though Maclay has yet to be granted such a permit for the highly controversial plan. [more]

Maintain the Old, Develop the New the right way

The purchase of Red Lodge Mountain Resort, a small seven-lift ski area and golf course in Southwest Montana, was finalized last week to JMA Ventures, a California-based development firm.

Red Lodge Mountain, first named Grizzly Mountain, was originally financed and opened by the townspeople in 1960 to attract winter-season tourist for a town that sits near Yellowstone National Park's Northeast entrance and the Beartooth Highway — both closed in the winter.

JMA entered the ski resort industry in 2006 with the purchase of Lake Tahoe’s Alpine Meadows and Homewood ski resorts. This is their first project outside of California.

"Now, it's really important, I think, for the owners to come down and be seen and talk to all different kinds of people here, so that they establish themselves as a really partnering presence, not absentee landowners with a distant sense of what Red Lodge is," Beth Hutchinson, executive director of the Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce, told The Billings Gazette. [more]

FROM STUMPTOWN TO SKI TOWN TO....?

When people come to Whitefish for the first time, they expect to find another resort town. After all, the northwestern Montana community of 7,500 people is nestled in the shadow of mighty Big Mountain, with the strikingly visible ski runs of world-renowned Whitefish Mountain Ski Resort serving as the town's unofficial icon. And there's more than a ski hill.

Whitefish also sits on the doorstep of Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, and Flathead Lake, the West's largest body of fresh water, all surrounded by national forests, large lakes, wild rivers, and mountain scenery. The town even has its own lake, Whitefish Lake, a natural beauty.

But Whitefish is hardly your typical resort town. [more]

REal estate & development in the northern rockies

As more and more of the rural West is consumed by development what are the biggest challenges to maintaining traditional uses and providing opportunities for the next generation of farmers and ranchers?

This was the difficult question posed to a panel of farmers, ranchers and land managers Friday at the second annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference in Missoula.

“I see the biggest challenge as trying to maintain the working landscapes in the valley,” said Hank Goetz of the pioneering land management cooperative the Blackfoot Challenge. “The other factor that we really haven’t begun to deal with is the affordable housing part of it -- for the young people and the young families in the valley.” [more]

Monday Business Roundup

This weekend saw the first significant snowfall of the winter, with Vail getting eight inches overnight on Saturday-Sunday and Beaver Creek nine. In an effort to set a third consecutive record for total skier visits this season, Colorado's ski resorts are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to ski slopes and to base-village amenities this year.

Last season 12.5 million people skied or boarded at Colorado's snowsports resort, setting a new record for the second year in a row. Officials are hoping to near the 13 million mark for 2007-08. They could be helped by early snow during TV broadcasts of the Colorado Rockies in the World Series, which begins Wednesday.

In other business news: venture funding in Colorado hits new highs; new Nordstrom opens at Cherry Creek; and Colorado's casino revenue climbs. [more]

Tourism Boom

Editor's note: The delicate balance a community has to strike when it becomes a tourism hot spot is a plight Rocky Mountain communities know well and we've all seen what happens when the scales tip, in either direction. In this piece from Crosscut.com, Knute Berger shows us what our neighbors in Washington's Willamette Valley are struggling with as the region begins to boom, or as he puts it: As Walla Wall begins to bing bang.

Much has already been written about the Walla Walla miracle, how an old, insular small town in the farm country of southeastern Washington emerged as a major wine center with all the accoutrements that go with it: tourism, fine food, and lots of newcomers looking for all-American livability.

Call it the new Willamette Valley, the new Napa, or simply the new Walla Walla — for anyone who remembers the old city, it's an amazing transformation to behold. [more]

Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat

The Rocky Mountain West’s tourism industry is worth billions of dollars. In 2006, Montana raked in $3 billion from non-resident vacationers, Wyoming $2 billion and Utah $5 billion. An increasing number of these visitors are leaving behind their jobs and worries for a few days not only to fish blue ribbon streams or ski the perfect powder. They are coming West to don a pair of spurs, rustle some livestock and sleep in a farmhouse on working farms and ranches.

From 2000 to 2001, 62 million adults visited farms and ranches across America according to the United States Department of Agriculture. This agricultural tourism, better known as agritourism, includes farm tours, you-pick operations or country stores as well as farms that provide accommodations. From New Mexico's El Rancho Nido de las Golondrinas to Brush Creek Ranch in Wyoming, places of work are becoming places of play and respite. [more]

Weekend Feature From DailyYonder

At the first National Rural Assembly, held in July, members honored six “rural heroes,” including Elouise Cobell, the former treasurer of Montana-based Blackfeet tribe, a founder of the first Native American Bank, director of a Native American community development corporation, and a member of the board of trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian.

The Assembly especially highlighted Elouise Cobell’s role as the lead plaintiff in the nation’s largest class action law suit, Cobell v. Kempthorne, which asks the government to account for billions of dollars owed to 500,000 Indians and tribes. For her role in the litigation, Cobell may be a hero to rural America and the recipient, in 1997, of one of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius awards,” but she does not appear to be quite so admired by the Smithsonian Institution, which recently hired Kevin Gover as the new director of the National Museum of the American Indian without consulting Cobell or most of the museum board’s other trustees.

Kevin Gover, a member of the Pawnee tribe, just so happens to be the federal official who fought Cobell for years in court, earning a contempt citation in the process. [more]

Guest Column

Recently the Gallatin Wildlife Association was allowed to present our bison management suggestions to the Montana Board of Livestock, an opportunity for which we are immensely grateful.

We’ve long felt we have a unique opportunity for a true win-win when it comes to wild bison in Montana. Our suggestions completely support private property rights, protect our brucellosis-free status, embrace the situation as an asset, harvest a whole lot more buffalo, and require very little to no change in current livestock practices in areas adjacent to Yellowstone.

The adjacent map of the Montana portion of the Greater Yellowstone area demonstrates yet again how lucky we are to live in Montana! We have a landscape that lends itself perfectly to a common-sense solution. Although, after reading Bob Jackson's viewpoints on social structures in bison herds, I’m going to have a harder time using the word “management,” and may try to avoid it. All we really have to do is get out of the way. [more]

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