Bastard Son of Alpine, Wyo
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
By Jake Nichols
Located at the northern end of the long-standing Mormon stronghold of
Star Valley, the town of Alpine has had its headaches. Tethered to
Jackson Hole’s growth explosion, the sleepy bedroom burg is being
dragged, kicking and screaming, from Mayberry to metropolis faster than
local government can keep up. Its population has quadrupled in the past
decade, and that’s nothing compared to what may happen in the next 10
years.
And then there’s Jim Blittersdorf, the 56-year-old owner of the controversial Bull Moose Saloon.
“It’s been a curious ride,” Blittersdorf says, stretching out on the
back deck of the bar that has divided the town of Alpine, Wyo. He
claims he’s been the victim of a puritanical witchhunt.
He says Dave Lloyd, the former mayor of Alpine, waged an all-out unholy
war against him, secretly plotting the demise of the Bull Moose with
council members and instituting a police force for the sole purpose of
harassing him.
“The town was clicking along and then Lloyd took over [in 2002] and
just wrecked this place,” Blittersdorf says. “He was a complete failure
as a mayor. He accomplished nothing.”
Blittersdorf’s detractors, however, call him “delusional,” “paranoid” and “self-serving.”
Lloyd moved to Thayne after his resignation and is in the process of
opening a fly fishing shop in Alpine. Named as a defendant in a lawsuit
filed by Blittersdorf, he chooses his words carefully: “I really don’t
care what he has to say. I really don’t think I should comment because
of the lawsuit. I don’t have anything to hide. I’m proud of what I did.
The administration that’s in there now will reap benefits from what we
were able to accomplish.”
Blittersdorf doesn’t see it that way. “Lloyd paints this rosy picture
that everything was working good, but the fact is nothing is working
good,” he insists. “The town is broke. The town is a mess, with a
crumbling infrastructure, and it was all his doing. In 2002, when Dave
Lloyd got elected, they had a $600,000 CD in the bank and a program for
fixing the sewer and roads, and now it’s all gone. The town’s broke.
They don’t even have the money to run a grader down the side streets.”
Blittersdorf said Lloyd and his fellow town councilmen were focused on
putting the Bull Moose out of business and neglected town business such
as infrastructure. “And it’s all catching up with them now,” he says.
“Lloyd was so convinced [Mike] Halpin [and his Alpine Meadows
development] was gonna bail him out. They’ve wasted all their money and
they’ve run a shoddy operation.”
Lloyd calls such criticism “nitpicking,” Blittersdorf says Lloyd sold
out and left town. “To me, that’s even more chicken sh**, to just
leave,” he said.
But Blittersdorf has been butting heads with nearly everyone in town
since he arrived in Star Valley in 1998. The Vermont native moved to
Wyoming in 1973, building log homes and dreaming of a day he would own
one himself.
When he bought the Bull Moose Saloon, it had not been open for two
years and was in need of repairs. Blittersdorf fixed up the property
and was shocked to hear the complaints.
“We tried to make the building look nice, with a cedar shake roof and
nice siding, and we were criticized by some local people who said it
looked too much like a Jackson Hole-type building,” Blittersdorf says.
“They said it has a look that’s not Alpine. Sure, Alpine’s look has
been tin roofs, vinyl siding and ticky-tack junk – cheap and
cheesy-looking little buildings.
“We changed the whole image of Jeep’s” – the legendary bar that
once stood on the site of the current Bull Moose Saloon – “the druggies
and the fighting crowd are not welcome here. If you’re looking for
trouble, don’t come to this bar.”
But trouble found the Bull Moose just the same. When the fledgling bar
owner tried new things, his competitors scorned him. When he pushed the
envelope and hired Boise’s “Bare Necessities” strippers to shuck their
unmentionables, turning the saloon into a Saturday night go-go club,
the religious community rained down brimstone.
“The Baptists in this town do not like me or this place,” Blittersdorf
acknowledges. “And we have this one woman on the town council, Shirley
Brown, she absolutely hates alcohol, period. She votes ‘no’ on anything
that has to do with alcohol.
I guess that’s her own personal belief, but with these kinds of people
you have to remind them there’s a separation of church and state. I
mean, she would sit in a town meeting with her Bible open saying before
she could answer a question as a councilwoman she might have to refer
to the Bible first. I have a real problem with that. And her husband,
Bryant, goes to all our liquor license renewals with the Bible and
prays out loud that God not renew our license. It’s bizarre.”
Pastor Warren Jones, of the Morning Star Baptist Church says, “The
exotic dancing isn’t good for families and it degrades women. Some of
the things that go on in the Bull Moose are just not conducive to the
community.”
“To tell you how crazy it got,” Blittersdorf says, ‘there’s a gal
around here who used to drive a school bus for the Lincoln County
School. It is a Mormon-controlled school board. Well, her school bus
route came through Alpine and if the sign out front said, ‘Exotic
Dancers Saturday Night,’ she was not allowed to drive the school bus by
it on the main road. She had to turn and come down the side streets and
bypass behind the Bull Moose to come back out on the main drag. This is
the mentality we’re up against.”
The flak got heavier when the town hired Jim Lubing as its attorney.
“Frank Hess, who was the town attorney [in 2002] – and Frank doesn’t
particularly like me – told the town the Bull Moose is not doing
anything wrong or illegal. So they get another town attorney, John
Bowers, and he tells the town the same thing. Then they get another
town attorney, Jim Lubing, who used to be my attorney. That’s where the
trouble really began.”
Lubing said Blittersdorf “has a way of wanting to confront issues and
people and entities head on, without trying to work things out. He’s
thumbed his nose at authority, continually.”
Blittersdorf, however, contends that Lubing just hates him. He said he
hired Lubing to represent him in a case but never settled his $6,000
attorney’s bill because he was dissatisfied with his legal work. “So
he’s hated me ever since,” he said. “Then he becomes the town attorney
and I immediately raise the question of conflict of interest. ‘This guy
was my attorney and he does not like me,’ I told them. He’s on the
record, officially, saying, ‘Jim Blittersdorf is a sonofabitch. I don’t
like him.’ And he tells the town, ‘We’re gonna close down the Bull
Moose.’ He would love that, because he can’t stand that I’ve done well.”
“That’s delusional,” Lubing answers. “It’s paranoid. If that were the
case, my involvement would not have been so minimal. If we were out to
bring him down, I would have given them a full-on frontal assault. We
had plenty of stuff to do that with. There was incontrovertible
evidence of minors in there drinking while they were doing these lap
dances, which could probably be qualified as prostitution. He’s not a
guy to feel sorry for. It’s not like I sit around and obsess about it.
He sits around and obsesses about it. I’ve moved on.”
Blittersdorf, however, says he isn’t moving. His business was listed
for a while, but he says he has since taken it off the market. “We’re
not gonna sell,” he says. “We’re here to stay. We’re not gonna turn
tail and run. If I stay here for the rest of my life that’s fine,
because it is a gorgeous place. To me, it’s a prettier town than
Jackson. Jackson, as a town, is an ugly little town.”
For now, things have quieted in the Star Valley community that once
toyed with the idea of seceding from Lincoln County to join Teton
County. The town is poised to absorb mega-development Alpine Meadows
with a thin bottom line, potholed streets and a rickety sewer system
currently under fire. But Mayor Victoria DeCora, who took office in
January, feels she has things headed in the right direction.
“It’s only been three months, but I feel we are turning things around,”
DeCora says. “We have problems as a town and we are focusing on them
and looking forward to a brighter future.”
“Probably the dirty little secret that’ll never be revealed is how much
money the town’s spent on screwing with us,” Blittersdorf says. “I’ve
seen attorney bills for the last two years adding up to about $200,000.
And they’re talking about raising taxes to pay for this. Vickie DeCora
and the new council have to go in there and fix it.”
Town Attorney Elizabeth Koekeritz says, “We’re always trying to work
with Jim. We might not agree, but we’re not up in each other’s face.
This current council, I truly believe, does not have any vendetta
against Jim Blittersdorf.”
“I’m pretty much ignoring [Blittersdrof],” DeCora says. “He has his own
agenda. It is not the town’s agenda. I don’t particularly like the fact
that he has exotic dancers, but what can I do about it? Nothing. It is
not illegal. His business brings a lot of people to the community which
brings a lot of money and I’m all for that.”
Says Blittersdorf, “We took a building that was paying $1,900 in
property tax. This year, we paid $16,000 in property tax. And we’ve
kicked up the business here so that the sales tax revenue is many times
what it used to be. We’ve become an economic machine. Over the last 20
years the Bull Moose has been more responsible for filling the motels
than any other single business in this valley.”
Blittersdorf and his lawyer, Don Miller, have been carefully watching
the lawsuit filed against the City of Jackson by former City Attorney
Dan Hesse. In that case, as in the suit brought against the Town of
Alpine, the municipality is represented by State Liability Pool
Attorney Richard Rideout. Blittersdorf is betting that if Hesse wins
his suit, Rideout and Alpine will want to settle.
“They don’t want to get beat two or three times,” he said, “and they won’t want it in the hands of a federal jury.”
“People here don’t want any growth,” he says. “But the town is growing.
The big money from Jackson is already flowing down here with Halpin
[Alpine Meadows] and Clarene Law has bought in down here. You got all
the big players, the deep pockets guys, who can change the face of the
area. Whether people like it or not.”
Photo by John Slaughter/
jhimagery@yahoo.com
Jim Blittersdorf, owner of the Bull Moose Saloon in AlpinePERMALINK:
Bastard Son of Alpine, Wyo | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories
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