Newsmaker of the Year: Save Historic Jackson Hole

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Save Historic Jackson Hole emerges as important voice in debate over the valley’s fate

Jackson Hole, Wyoming - If there is anything that could be called the most dynamic aspect of Jackson Hole at this moment in time, it probably is beyond the valley’s population of progressive and successful residents – the self-started business owners, the citizen athletes, the jet setters (though “Jackson Hole sensibilities” do tether that set to Earth infinitely more than, say, Aspen does). It probably is beyond the venerated wildlife and performing arts and the rising set of contemporary artists and galleries. It probably is beyond the overall quality of life unrivaled in 99.9 percent of small communities anywhere. If anything is most dynamic about Jackson Hole right now, it probably is the battle to preserve it.

Enter Save Historic Jackson Hole, Planet Jackson Hole’s Newsmaker of the Year. In the course of only a few years since its founding, the group has gone from a relatively obscure organization, one that mainly bought newspaper ads to help sway voter opinion, to an organization on the verge of becoming one of the most influential advocacy bodies in the valley. At the moment, Save Historic Jackson Hole arguably is already among the most influential nonprofit political action groups, with the decades-old, multi-faceted Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance continuing to occupy prime real estate on the public awareness radar.

There are, of course, other advocacy groups and, needless to say, many individuals that contribute intrinsically to the valley culture of conservationism and preservationism. But it is the emergence over the last year of SHJH – a group that was and, in some circles, continues to be disparaged  (though in the whispered tones of this socially civil valley) as “no-growthers” already in possession of their little slices of heaven – that points to a pervasive sense of what should or should not happen to the face and soul of Jackson Hole. That SHJH in October brought on former town planner Brian Grubb as its inaugural executive director has already helped to dispel suspicions, with Grubb helping to develop and articulate the group’s mission while bringing more transparency to the cause and mission.

In fact, some who before felt themselves at odds with SHJH now find the group might fit very well into, or at the very least complement, the conservation ethos of Jackson Hole. Some even are finding that SHJH, as it refines its objectives and approach, is a group perhaps more aligned with their personal values and ideologies than it first might have appeared.

The battlefield
In October the group held a well-attended public meeting to discuss the 500-unit Teton Meadows Ranch – proposed for 288 acres in South Park – a project that will begin to move through the county application process early in the New Year. The property is currently zoned for about 50 homes, but developer James Reinert, with a radical plan to build attainable housing for locals, is seeking a density bonus through a special affordable housing mechanism.  

At the October meeting, Grubb addressed a receptive and concerned bunch and took the opportunity to criticize the project’s density while cautioning of traffic impacts and other potential woes if the proposal were to get the green light from the county. His tone –aligned with the ideals espoused by his organization – was one that, while respectful, was subtly critical of the development team, which, Grubb suggested, had tweaked the findings of a traffic study for the project.

But, SHJH and its sympathizers argue, that is the current approach to building in the valley, and developers – more and more of them coming from outside – are using the allure of affordable housing to build denser subdivisions in a valley that prides itself for (if not holds downright sacred) its rural, wide-open feel.

“The [affordable housing development zone] has become the carrot on the stick for the developer,” said Larry Kummer, who sits on the SHJH board.

A few weeks ago, Kummer, along with Grubb and SHJH President Louis Wang, as well as Armond Acri, Darrel Hoffman and Ben Clark – five of the group’s seven board members – met with Planet Jackson Hole to discuss the “community character” SHJH is focusing its growing influence to preserve. That sense of community character most worth protecting, however, is less concerned with social engineering than it is with preserving the rural, open space and wildlife qualities of the valley.

While one school of thought (one that includes some county commissioners) actively warns of an affordable housing crisis – one that is taking a toll on the valley’s middle class, that is causing an exodus of emergency personnel, teachers, hospital staff, young professionals – SHJH does not recognize the approach of simply building more as a viable remedy. It contends the costs to valley character too high and the social benefits are outweighed by the perpetuation of more growth.
But also, they say, perhaps the situation is not so dire.

“Crisis is a strong term that gets batted around in newspapers,” Kummer said. “I would be inclined to call it a housing shortage for the middle class. It’s not as if people are standing on the street.”

Board member Darrel Hammond agreed: “The community is not dying,” he said.
With the county’s moves to raise the affordable housing exactions required of developers, Grubb explained his group’s mission is not at odds, per se, with affordable housing, but the manner in which it is pursued and delivered.

“The percentage of affordable housing a developer has to provide is not as important as the community character,” he said. “Our focus is on that housing being integrated with our character.... There’s social aspects of community character, and that’s a much more contentious issue than the actual physical character of the community. The physical character you can more easily define. It’s one- and two-story buildings downtown. It’s a certain density in the county. This group’s focus is not as much social as it is land use and development oriented.”

It might be appropriate to call SHJH board members Constitutionalists, as they often point to the existing Comprehensive Plan, the town and county guide that dictates land development regulations and priorities, as a near sacred document that must be adhered to. Period. But they also recognize its flaws – it’s outdated, not cohesive, hard to implement – and are looking to raise public interest and involvement in the Comp Plan update.

Part of that goal includes rethinking the application process that in its current condition, Grubb and his board say, favors the developer, who, armed with time and money, can wear down most public opposition. At the end of the day, according to Grubb, a sack full of submitted public comments informed with SHJH data and theory is the most effective tool the group could have in weighing in on the Comp Plan. That process, after all, will shape what will or will not become of Jackson Hole in the next 10 or 20 years.
 
The growing support
SHJH did not, of course, emerge from a vacuum over the last year. But it is ascending on a path that corresponds to a particular community sentiment, one that values above most else certain qualities – the open space, the wildlife, the quasi-rural county aspects – of Jackson Hole.

In November, county commissioners voted down the Osprey Creek proposal, which offered to make half of its 74 units affordable. That the site was off Village Road, on 15 acres partly overlapped by a natural resource overlay, made the project too dense for its surroundings, commissioners ruled. During the four or so months that the application went through the public hearing process, a number of homeowners in that area turned out in opposition. Leading up to the decision, SHJH hosted a neighborhood meeting for the project’s opponents, many of whom lived near the property.

“Before, it was the emperor has no clothes phenomenon,” Acri said. “Now people thank me because they realize that you’re not alone if you oppose something because of size and scale and density. It’s okay for people to speak up … . It’s just too simplistic to paint it as being against affordable housing.”

In November, one valley resident, Jeff VanEe, wrote a letter to the editor that cautioned against an indiscriminate approach to building affordable housing. Later, out in public, he introduced himself to Hammond and told him that his support of SHJH and its goals had inspired him to write the letter. Though he has not done so yet, VanEe said he might donate to the organization.

“This is a community about committed to sharing resources and wildlife,” Hammond said. “There’s physical character but there’s also emotional things people have for community character, for a community with focus on sustaining a rural atmosphere.”

A product of the times
Franz Camenzind, executive director of Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, has said the emergence of SHJH, hinged most prominently with the hiring of a fulltime staff in Brian Grubb, is something he is not put off by.  

“I welcome the new kid on the block and I envy their ability to be very narrowly focused on growth and development issues in the county,” he said.

Asked if he believed SHJH represents a preservation sentiment or trend poised only to grow, Camenzind said, “In part it’s a reaction to what’s going on here. Voices are growing louder, more conspicuous, more strident. I feel more of a growing sense of frustration. I think Save Historic Jackson Hole is responding to that and is a product of that.”

Camenzind also said his organization was more likely to give consideration to zone changes, while SHJH, at this time, continues to stand hard on the reminder that the valley, under current zoning, could nearly double in population at build-out.

“That’s kind of how people see the difference [between JHCA and SHJH on development] but in the end I think we’ll be allies far more often than opponents,” he said.

In the fall, SHJH commissioned an independent polling firm to conduct a survey of how valley resident wish to prioritize the natural and human resources of the valley. That survey was done ahead of the joint town-county survey that will figure into the Comp Plan discourse. Grubb said much of what the polling results reveal SHJH is in many ways aligned with the values identified by valley residents. He will present the survey results, which still are in a somewhat raw, not fully- contextualized state, to the public at an upcoming meeting.

County Commissioner Ben Ellis, who once said he would have supported Osprey Creek had it been 100 percent affordable, is part of a board that will probably, at some point, approve an affordable housing project with a density bonus at odds with what SHJH has set out against.

“It gives them a very narrow focus – where and how much as opposed to what kind of development,” Ellis said. “The same case could be made for [pro-affordable] housing people that don’t take [those elements] into account. I ultimately think they add credibility to defining that characteristic of this valley.”

Other newsmakers in 2007

Bad year for bears
Newsmakers of the year can range from clean-cut, grin-flashing entrepreneurs to grizzled Unabomber types. This year, the hairiest, grizzliest newsmakers lumbered down from the mountains on four legs.

Game and Fish officials estimated that bear conflicts this year outnumbered those of the past five years combined. By mid-fall, the department had euthanized close to a dozen black bears and relocated many more. In a September interview, Jackie Skaggs, the spokesperson for Grand Teton National Park, said “I think that’s a record for them.”
An early summer drought caused an unusually meager harvest of high-elevation berries and white bark pine – natural foraging for bruins – which brought hungry, desperate bears to low elevations and, often, area subdivisions.

Humans, for their part, participated in reinforcing bear-human interactions by regularly making food rewards available, either intentionally or through neglect. Franz Camenzind of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance called this “the controllable factor” in the bear situation this year. While agencies and government groups can lead the information effort, “it all comes down to the individual,” he said.
— Grace Hammond

A ‘huge’ war protest – by Jackson standards
On Aug. 11, as many as 250 Jackson Hole residents organized a protest of the Iraq War and the role played by our most famous resident, Vice President Dick Cheney, on the corner of Hwy. 22 and the Village Road.

Democrats and Republicans came together under the common view that: 1) the war in Iraq is wrong, and 2) that Cheney was largely responsible for it. The protest happened during a time when Dead Eye Dick was in Jackson Hole on vacation, on the same day he made a speech at the Craig Thomas Discovery Center dedication ceremony in Grand Teton National Park.

The protesters marched to the gates of Teton Pines Country Club, where Cheney owns a house, and toppled a papier-mâché effigy of the Veep – echoing the manner in which Iraqis toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in the notoriously staged 2003 photo op during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

That weekend, an article and a video clip of the protest were posted on PlanetJH.com. It was then linked on both the conservative site DrudgeReport.com as well as the liberal site MichealMoore.com. By Monday morning the PlanetJH.com server had crashed due to the volume of web traffic received. After the dust settled, 40,000 people had viewed the article.

Despite being labels a “peace protest,” a lot of hate came out of it. Supporters of the Bush administration didn’t want to believe 250 people were there and said that everyone who did show up was a hippie-loser. Those who oppose the war in Iraq were also displeased, though, and said the protest turned violent and the speeches made were not thoughtful. As they say, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
— Sam Petri

Teton Valley survives recall
It was an interesting year for Teton County, Idaho, where a move to ouster two commissioners momentarily divided a valley undergoing development at a dizzying pace.

In March, Larry Young, chairman of the Board of County Commissioners, and member Alice Stevenson –both of them Democrats, both of them born and raised elsewhere, but both of them having lived in Teton Valley for nearly three decades –voted in favor of a six-month moratorium on new subdivision applications. The third board member, a Teton Valley native, voted against the moratorium.

In the last year, 90 new subdivision applications have flooded the planning office in a county that remains without a planned unit development ordinance, what Young called “the frontline” of defense against roughshod development.
A vocal, at times cantankerous, reaction ensued, with accusations of collusion between Young and Stevenson. A suit filed by some of the disgruntled – many of them from “old time” Teton Valley families and largely members of the same church – was successful in overturning the moratorium only weeks after it took effect.
A conservative landowners’ rights group led by former Republican County Clerk Nolan Boyle then spearheaded a petition to remove the two commissioners on a special November ballot. Voters turned out in droves and defeated the recall by over 60 percent. It might not exactly be the death knell for the old guard in Teton County, but it might have been the starter pistol shot to get the county up to speed.
— Ben Cannon

Photo by Morris Weintraub: (Back Row Left to Right) Ben Clark, Larry Kummer, (Front Row Left to Right) Darrel Hoffman, Brian Grubb, Steve Sharkey




PERMALINK:
Newsmaker of the Year: Save Historic Jackson Hole | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

Leave a Comment