Conservation in the New West
Region’s natural beauty draws newcomers, bolsters economy, triggers bitter battles
ERIK
PETERSEN/Chronicle A deck on the main lodge at the Sun Ranch overlooks a
sweeping view of the Madison Range. “Henry David Thoreau didn’t build a
trophy home.”
Jim Barrett, Park County Environmental
Council
Thanks to modern four-wheel-drive vehicles, you can live at an
elevation of 7,000 feet and still be a soccer mom.
“It’s as much of a
revolution and a change in the demographics as the horse was for the Plains
Indian,” said archeologist Larry Lahren, who is also a Park County commissioner.
“It’s been a revolution in terms of people moving into this area, particularly
the hinterlands.”
The
arrival of the horse did a lot to alter the lifestyle of the Plains Indians. But
one of the biggest changes was to provide them with a method to gather wealth
and status, then take it where they wanted to go.
Today, owning a
Suburban or Escalade or Hummer has a similar impact. You can build a home on the
steepest of ridges or in the most isolated meadows, and still go shopping in
town every day, if you can afford the gas.
“You see houses where you’d
never expect to see houses,” said Lahren, a Park County native and former
backcountry outfitter.
Having all those new homes in the countryside
creates problems for local governments: road maintenance and plowing, school
buses, firefighting, the list is substantial.
And many of the new houses
stand vacant much of the year.
“You see this huge house out there, and
nobody’s home,” Lahren said.
But it’s not always bad news when nobody’s
home.
In Madison County, 38 percent of property tax revenue is generated
in the Big Sky area, but the county provides few services there, according to
John Lounsbury, vice chairman of the Madison County Planning Board.
Since
most Big Sky landowners are part timers, they don’t demand schools or buses.
Crime is low in the resort area, and many roads are privately owned and
maintained.
“They’re a cash cow for the county, because we don’t provide
many services,” Lounsbury said. “Pretty much all we do is send them a tax
bill.”
Still, the new economy, with its new wealth and new values, can
grate on some people.
“My jaw just drops when I drive around that place,”
Lounsbury said of The Yellowstone Club. “My populist side just says, ‘That’s
obscene.’ But in some ways, if you’re going to have growth, it could be a lot
worse than that. They don’t need services and they still pay taxes all
year.”
STRING OF PEARLS
The Big Sky area isn’t the only place to
find serious money in southwest Montana. Drive up any drainage in the vast area
surrounding Yellowstone National Park, look around, and you’ll find a
millionaire’s house, or at least his gated road.
But if you have to look
hard to find the place, there’s a good chance Harry Howard built it. The company
he co-founded in Bozeman in 1986, Yellowstone Traditions, is a quiet presence in
the local real estate-construction business.
Almost all of his clients
are rich people from someplace else.
He sees his role as a facilitator.
He helps them fit in to the landscape. He likes to work with people who plan to
stick around.
Over the past 20 years, his company has built 150
“projects” -- it’s hard to define them simply as houses -- “and only four of
them have ever sold to other owners,” he said. Often, the projects consist of a
compound: two or three clustered buildings, places that encourage people to go
outside, structures that rest a little easier on the landscape. He steers people
away from ecologically sensitive zones, and if somebody insists on a pond, he
makes sure it’s done right. Yellowstone Traditions helps with everything from
site selection to furnishings.
Howard’s company focuses on high-quality,
low-key construction, often made from recycled barns or other ranch buildings.
Many of these structures look like they’ve been around forever, but they’re
energy efficient, technologically sophisticated and sometimes off the grid. And
they aren’t cheap: $400 to $500 a square foot.
It’s a $25 million-a-year
company, Howard said, and it employs 70 people year round, plus subcontractors,
and more in the summer. The company doesn’t advertise, doesn’t even put its name
on the side of a job truck. Referrals come by word of mouth, what Howard called
“crosspollination.”
Most of his clients, he said, are focused on
“conservation-based land use. They’re here because they adore being here.”
They’ve got the will and the money to do things like restore cow-bombed spring
creeks, tackle weeds, rest their pastures and donate conservation easements.
They patronize art galleries and furniture makers, spend frequently at good
restaurants and wine stores, and hire skilled craftsmen like those at
Yellowstone Traditions. For many of them, it costs $100,000 a year or more just
to own the property, after taxes and caretakers’ wages and other expenses are
tallied.
“We wouldn’t be in business if we didn’t have people who value
artistry and quality,” Howard said.
WEALTH CHANGES A PLACE
Many
new Montanans -- whether full or part time -- place more value on a trout stream
than an alfalfa yield. The elk herd matters more than the price of
beef.
It’s the amenity economy at work, changing landscapes and
communities. It drives an Escalade instead of a pickup. It’s more interested in
art and wine than in diesel fuel and tractor tires.
“The Rockies economy
is shifting away from ‘Old West’ industries of agriculture and extractive uses
and evolving toward ‘New West’ industries of service, supporting clean
environments, natural amenities and renewable nature services,” Colorado College
said in its most recent State of the Rockies Report Card.
“It’s a mobile
world, and Montana is part of it,” Howard said.
For most of Montana’s
history, the “commerce” side of the economy -- stores and services -- existed to
service the “production” side -- mines and ranches and sawmills.
Now, in
many places, the commerce has swallowed the production. Ag in this part of the
state, while still politically powerful, has lost much of its comparative
economic punch. Mining is a shadow of its former self. Sawmills continue to
disappear.
Yet, at least in the western part of the state, wealth has
never been so abundant.
A BAD RAP
The modern service economy often
is derided as “burger flippers and motel maids.”
But it’s not that
simple. Service providers include accountants and groundskeepers, architects and
cabinet makers, hair stylists and fishing guides, lawyers and engineers -
working people, focused on making a living.
According to the nonprofit
Headwaters Economics, construction companies outnumber all other commercial
categories in Gallatin County, though most of them have four or fewer employees.
The second biggest category is “professional, scientific and technical
services.” Then comes retail trade, followed by accommodation and food
services.
That last category includes motel maids and burger flippers,
but it also includes master chefs and motel managers.
And it’s all part
of what caused Gallatin County’s population to swell by 19 percent between 2000
and 2006.
“The transition from an extractive economy to a service economy
is inevitable,” said Leon Royer, president of American Bank. “And it’s going to
be a lot better than the old economy.”
He cited the nation’s increasing
mobility and wealth, its improved communications and the allure of places like
Southwest Montana, with stunning views and recreation that’s still, by national
standards, easy to reach.
People want to be here, he said, and the robust
economy already has brought large numbers of highly skilled tradespeople to the
region.
While the Bozeman area remains stable -- Gallatin County
unemployment was at 2.9 percent at the end of March -- the national economy is
queasy, with falling real estate prices, record levels of foreclosures in some
states and a stock market in disarray.
That will have an impact here,
Royer said.
Much of this region’s population growth has been based on
wealthy people coming here to relax. But another slice of it has been based on
people who may bring a certain amount of wealth, but still need to work and were
counting on the equity in their homes in even pricier markets to finance a
Montana retirement, or maybe just a Montana lifestyle.
Those are the
people that have been helping to fill the new subdivisions around Gallatin
Valley. They aren’t building mountain mansions; they’re making
neighborhoods.
But many who might want to come here are finding it
impossible to retrieve full value for their homes. Some are finding it difficult
to sell at any price. “Hence the problem,” Royer said. “You can’t sell your
house in California.”
If construction slows, there will be layoffs,
particularly among the less skilled, he predicted. Banks will feel the pinch,
too.
“We’re not going to suffer like everybody else,” he said. “But we
are going to suffer.”
Over the long term, people will continue to come,
he said, and the economy will continue to evolve into one that provides fewer
raw materials and more services, ranging from legal work to concrete finishing
to flipping burgers.
“The long-term future of Montana is terrific,” Royer
said
MONEY AND MOBILITY
Southwest Montana isn’t alone. The entire
Rockies region is booming. It’s the fastest-growing region in the nation,
leading some demographers to call it “the Third Coast.”
A big part of the
attraction comes from the national parks and the spectacular wildlands that
surround them.
“Why did these places become national parks in the first
place?” asked Larry Swanson, an economist for the O’Connor Center for the Rocky
Mountain West at the University of Montana. “Because they’re
gorgeous.”
However, as the population grows, the public lands become more
crowded. Between 1999 and 2006, the number of public land acres for each person
in the Rockies declined by 18 percent, according to Colorado College. That’s not
because the public estate has shriveled. It’s because more people are coming
here.
And that can lead to rancor when it’s time to decide things like
where to snowmobile, where and how to log, and recreational access to both
private and public land. People who work on those issues find the bitterest
arguments in the places that are growing the fastest.
“The most
contentious places to work are the Gallatin Valley, the Flathead and the
Bitterroot,” said Bob Ekey, Northern Rockies director for the Wilderness
Society. “And those are the places with the most growth, where people are the
most threatened by the growth and the people coming in. The divide is not so
much urban-rural as it is the haves and have-nots.”
But the region is
likely to get more crowded and more exclusive, some economists
say.
“Certain places in Montana will be the exclusive purview of the very
rich,” Swanson predicted.
Big Sky has become a magnet for wealth, he
said. So have riverside properties, with prices climbing ever
skyward.
And that spills out into surrounding areas.
“The bar is
being raised,” Swanson said. “It’s still viewed by a lot of folks with a lot of
wealth as an attractive place to be, an attractive place to own
property.”
And there’s a lot of money in the country, despite its current
problems. The largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in human history is
just now getting started, as aging baby boomers and their parents die off and
leave estates. A Boston College study estimated the transfer at $41 trillion,
and said it will take 40 years to complete.
“There’s just never been this
much wealth, period,” said Jerry Johnson, head of the Montana State University
political science department.
Douglas Young, an economist at MSU, said
the Gallatin Valley has room for 3 percent annual population growth for the
foreseeable future.
“Do we want this much growth?” he asked.
At
that rate, the county’s population will double in 20 years.
“What is
Gallatin County going to look like in 20 years?” asked Randy Carpenter, a land
planner with The Sonoran Institute. “Not only in landscape, but in its
culture.”
If people want to keep communities like Bozeman and Ennis and
Livingston livable and affordable, if they want to keep streams and forests
healthy and accessible, if they want both Main Street and wildlife to thrive,
they will have to face a plethora of difficult decisions in the future. They’ll
concern zoning, wildlife, public lands and waters, schools, poverty, public
safety, health care and more.
“There are a lot of moving parts to this
one,” Swanson said. “Once you start protecting a place, you push property values
up even more. But it’s better than pushing them down with bad
development.”
A flood of retirees is looming in the nation’s demographic
future; many of them are fit, affluent and mobile. People inheriting that
projected $41 trillion in future decades will also be looking for places to
invest and enjoy that money. Some will find Montana. Maybe just a small
fraction.
“But even 1 percent is just so damn big,” Johnson
said.
Montana is on the map. Modern travel and communications have made
it accessible. It still has what so much of the country has lost: safety,
beauty, friendliness, even if many people can no longer afford the cost of
entry.
The pace may fluctuate in future years, but one thing seems
clear.
“They’re going to keep coming in here,” Gallatin County
Commissioner Bill Murdock said. “This isn’t going to stop.”
They’ll bring
money.
It changes everything.