Watch Dogs of the Old West

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Immediately after his resignation became public, Brian Grubb was contacted about a new job.

The former planning director for the Town of Jackson had been at the helm of the planning office since early 2005, having come on as a deputy planner a few months prior.

In late June, the day the announcement was made official, a radio station picked up the report and broadcast it over valley airwaves – a fortuitous moment for one valley advocate whose attention was grabbed by the news.

“Louis Wang called me the afternoon after my resignation was announced,” Grubb said. “He said, ‘We’d like to talk,’ and that started a series of talks.”

Wang, who calls himself a “modest developer,” was at that time the newly elected president of the nonprofit development watchdog group Save Historic Jackson Hole. He does not recall whether he contacted Grubb that very day, but said he was one of a handful of candidates the group had been eyeing for some time – unbeknownst to the handful. As it happened, Wang and Grubb had only met in person for the first time earlier that week, Wang said.

However it happened, Grubb, who offered a full three months notice along with his resignation, eventually passed muster with the upstart though influential and somewhat mysterious group. Last week, the decision was made public: The former town planning director has signed on as the group’s first-ever executive director.

It might have come as a surprise to some that Save Historic Jackson Hole – an organization that has been characterized by at least one member of a development team that has been a target of its criticism as a small group of wealthy, xenophobic Jacksonites (“rich, old white men,” the person, who did not consent to be identified, said) – now boasts in Grubb a full-time executive director who lends his credibility as an experienced and well-regarded town planner.

Not-so-ancient history
Save Historic Jackson Hole was co-founded by Ben Clark and Justin Adams. Clark, a fourth-generation Jackson Hole native who grew up immersed in the Western show horse and rodeo traditions, was visiting a friend at her downtown retail business in 2003 when conversation turned to the “Town as Heart” idea Town of Jackson electives were promoting at the time.

The failed Downtown Redevelopment District - which would have allowed for buildings to be taller, by a story or two, in hopes of revitalizing the commercial hub and offering more residential opportunities in a denser area - was overturned by the voter referendum that Clark and a handful of others successfully led a petition drive for.
“The referendum group met on a weekly basis for a while,” Clark said, recalling halcyon days of what would become SHJH.

On the heels of that early success, Clark, Darrell Hoffman and Adams – a Southerner who replanted himself in the valley in the mid-’90s after success in investment banking –began to outline a mission statement and the incorporation articles for the nonprofit that was originally called the Committee to Save Historic Jackson Hole.

Grubb, 44, holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, both from the University of Colorado in Boulder. He spent nearly 20 years in Colorado, where as a municipal planner in Steamboat Springs in the late ’90s he first dealt with the challenges of planning around wildlife and scenic resources within the limitations of a confining valley.

SHJH may have its origins in helping to abrogate the Town as Heart policy, which, to be fair, also drew flak from the usually environmentally focused Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and others for lofty aims that would have, its detractors argued, changed the architectural character of town, and impacted the feel and vistas in Jackson. That it was a unilateral move on the part of the town without any sort of commensurate or conjunctive element at the county level, Clark and others argued, helped spur voters to overturn the Town Council’s motion by a nearly 2-1 margin.

More recently, SHJH went to bat through much of 2004 against the Snake River Associates (SRA) development, a huge proposal adjacent to Teton Village that included a golf course, hundreds of market, employee and affordable housing units, and a big chunk of commercial space. County Commissioners at the time admitted the laws on the books didn’t give them much direction on how to handle such a huge proposal, and the two-and-a-half-year process was a rancorous one for the whole valley.

“I think we definitely had an impact on what [SRA developers, the Resor family] were able to get,” Wang said. “I heard that from a lot of people; at least one county commissioner told me we had some limited success.”

This past May, the group put out a report called “Resort Development: How much is enough?” In the document, SHJH proclaims, “Teton County has reached a breaking point,” and calls for an elimination of the Resort District in the upcoming Comprehensive Plan revisions, as well as density and boundary capping on existing resorts, and a moratorium on new resort district proposals.

Housing and jobs
Beyond the “Not in My Back Yard” opposition likely to gather against a development in a given area, SHJH is really the only force cautioning against most affordable housing developments. “You can’t build your way out of a development problem” is a favored mantra among the board.

Grubb looks at it less in terms of affordable housing, and takes a more formulaic approach to define what is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s an issue in terms of housing as I do in terms of a jobs-housing balance,” he said. “You need a sustainable ratio of jobs to housing. There are communities we can look to that have made mistakes in their jobs-housing balance and have suffered the consequences, and you can see it in traffic in the morning and evening.”

Grubb, who said the balance in Jackson Hole is already off-kilter, looks at traffic as a good indicator in the valley, where second-home ownership muddles the quantitative correlation between jobs and residences.

“In my mind, to look at it as an affordable housing issue only is a little narrow in focus,” Grubb opined. “As far as housing goes, the thing I’ve learned in the past three years is we’re not going to be able to build our way out of it. It seems that’s the only solution being pursued.”

According to Grubb, the developments that address affordable housing often only perpetuate a deficit and even strain the managing bodies – the Housing Authority and Housing Trust – charged with oversight of those resources. Is the county somehow misguided in its efforts to sustain those without means to buy into the free market; i.e. the working class?

“I wouldn’t say they’re misguided as much as we haven’t done as good a job implementing the Comp Plan.”

Grubb, who is married with children, was able to buy a deed-restricted attainable lot sold to him by a civil employee who won the opportunity in a Housing Authority lottery. The conditions of the transfer state Grubb and his family cannot earn more than 120 percent of the home’s deed-fixed value. He is currently building a house, relying much on his with his own labor, on that Melody Ranches property and said the site is an example of “integrated affordable housing that fits into town.” 

Not anti-growth
With the Town of Jackson and Teton County beginning to focus on updating the 1994 Comprehensive Plan, a major year-long overhaul just getting underway, Grubb said SHJH’s move to bring on an executive director was aligned with the outset of that process. One of the most valuable contributions he left behind at Town Hall, he said, was rallying people ahead of the process, one that will require a wide spectrum of highly involved public and agency input at every level.

“It may not sound like much to the average person,” Grubb said, “but one of my major accomplishments as town planner was getting everyone on board to rework the Comp Plan.”

Now SHJH has in its favor an administrator with a nuanced understanding of the inconsistencies and anachronisms that ailed the ’94 plan, and he has his sights on shifting the revised one to garner more leverage in the development process to favor the public.

“Right now it’s my opinion that developers have much more access to the decision makers than the citizens do,” he said, citing ex parte meetings held outside the public forum.

“By the time these applications go before decision makers, citizens get two weeks notice but developers have already had months with planning staff and officials … It’s our opinion that there’s not a level playing field.”

If SHJH has been occasionally stigmatized as a staid anti-development group, there is hope within the organization that Grubb can help set the record straight. Offering his take on the origins of how SHJH had been characterized as being out of touch with the realities of change, Wang said, “I think we got that way because when you have someone hugely funded like SRA, which has a PR person on their staff full time, and [we] say the development isn’t in keeping with Jackson Hole, they set out to paint you as a weirdo.”

Wang and Grubb both pointed to successful referendums as indicators of broad community support for a group that often warns the valley – as it is already zoned – is estimated to double in population to 40,000 people at build-out.
“They set out to paint us as no-growth,” Wang said. “We couldn’t be more supportive of property rights. What we don’t like is mega up-zones.”

Good Communicator
What the organization needed was a communicator to reach out to the community to provide another public resource.

“I think there’s some common misperception about Save Historic Jackson, the main one being that they are an anti-growth group,” Grubb said.

More so than the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, SHJH has favored polling and surveys to lend the group some leverage, or, they would say, give the community a more potent and cohesive voice.

And in some ways, the small size of Save Historic Jackson Hole – it consists of a five-member board with no other official membership – has allowed the organization to focus itself at issues in a more acute and potent way.

“They have the luxury of picking and choosing the issues they’re going to focus on,” said Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.

Camenzind said his organization, much more established and with a full staff, willfully compels itself to follow a broader spectrum of development and conservation issues.
“We tend to probably have a lot in common with their larger objective, and we’re in strong support on their stand on no more resort designation in the county,” he said.
No stranger to advocacy and the public process, Camenzind offered his take on the way public perceptions can take root.

“Anytime you take a stand on any issue in this community, you risk being seen as polarizing,” he said. “I’m excited to see [SHJH] take on a staff to give them structure. I think we’ll be seeing more of them.”

At the Housing Authority, an agency one might expect to take issue with a group generally against building new affordable housing, director Christine Walker does not see an inherent foe in Save Historic Jackson Hole.

“I actually think hearing their perspective is beneficial,” Walker said. “But right now we’re going to see growth and development without changing a thing … and now we have an opportunity to shape how we grow.” Walker praised the hiring of Grubb and said his presence should give more credibility to SHJH.

For the 2006 fiscal year, SHJH took in just under $35,000, according to the organization’s 990 form on file with the IRS. If there is a notion the group is underwritten by a handful of wealthy benefactors, Grubb said the 501(c)(3) is supported more by community donations from Old Bill’s and other means. And this year should see SHJH step up its fundraising significantly.

“I’d like to see Jackson stay as the last of the Old West,” Wang said.  “People have been quoted as saying we’re redefining the Old West. That’s an oxymoron to me.”

Photo by Derek Dilzuizo
Brian Grubb is the new (and first) executive director for the nonprofit watchdog group Save Historic Jackson Hole.

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Watch Dogs of the Old West | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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