EXIT Interview: Ray Elser on 13 years
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
By Jake Nichols
Jackson Hole, Wyoming - Born and raised in the Rockies, Ray Elser moved to Jackson Hole to work as a hunting guide and carpenter in 1979. Elser, a real estate agent, became the president of the Teton Board of Realtors in 2000 and 2001. He later served as president of the Wyoming Association of Realtors in 2005.
Elser recently resigned his position on the planning commission after 13 years. It’s a move, Elser said, he has considered for a while but could never find the right time. He sat down with The Planet to discuss growth, affordable housing and boom times in the West. He followed up with The Planet in an email.
Planet Jackson Hole: A “hockey stick” graph pretty well captures how Jackson Hole has grown. A slight, straight-line rise for a hundred years and then, wham, an exponential takeoff in population, land values, building, crime. When did we start becoming a big city, Ray?
Ray Elser: Thinking back over the years, I think things went through a normal transition as the area grew. It was a measured growth. We started to accelerate when some of the developments around the ski area began, like the Aspens.
When some of the technology advancements came in, that was when you really started seeing more of an explosion in developments. Things like FedEx and fax machines and the airport. All of the sudden we weren’t as isolated. People could do business from here.
Now we’ve got broadband and the Internet and the incredible amount of wealth that was created in the country in the last ten or fifteen years. It has allowed people to move here and live here and work here. Instead of this being a retirement community and second home kind of thing, this is now a place for people’s secondary primary residence.
PJH: When did you get the real estate itch?
RE: I got my license in 1980. Chuck Tice talked to me about coming to his company and working with ranch brokerage. And, in reality, you get to be a little bit older and you spend enough winters working outdoors and I just started looking and saying, “Hmm, do I wanna go feed when it’s 40 below, or stand walls in the wind?” And I thought maybe I’ll continue to work on my real estate career.
I took some time off from Jackson Hole and move to San Antonio, Texas, where I worked there in commercial real estate. When I came back I worked for Paul Gilroy at hunt camp and built some houses over in Victor and sold real estate for Art Hazen.
PJH: You worked for several ranchers when you arrived in JH. There are very few working ranches anymore and you, Ray, are probably directly responsible for the demise of some of these ranches and ranch life. How do you sleep at night?
RE: [Laughs]. Yeah, it’s all my fault. Sometimes you ask yourself the question, being involved in the real estate business, “Am I promoting the real estate investment coming into Jackson?” And the answer is, “If I wasn’t part of it, wouldn’t it have occurred anyway?” More than likely, looking at what’s happened in the country, it probably would have occurred one way or the other. I don’t know that there is any way that anybody could have put the brakes on it and stopped it. How do we force people to quit coming here?
We see an area like Jackson Hole, with all of the changes going on. I hear people all the time, especially being in the real estate business and also being a planning commissioner, talking about how they hate Jackson Hole because it’s not like it was when they moved here 27 years ago. You know what, there’s no place in the West that’s like it was 27 years ago. Everything’s pushed out.
When you start crossing over a population of 20 or 22,000 people there’s just a natural cultural shift. And people are selling out and heading off to Cody or Ennis or Sheridan, MT because they want to get back in touch with that smalltown feel. But one of the things I point out to those folks is you’re leaving Jackson with your saddlebags full of gold and now you’re going up there to Sheridan, Montana and you bought the old Miller place for 300 grand. Well guess what, all my buddies [Elser still has family in Sheridan, Mont.] are down at the bowling alley having a beer saying I can’t believe somebody bought the Miller place for $300,000. But in the Jackson Hole perspective you think, “Man, that’s a steal.”
PJH: How did you get involved with the planning commission?
RE: I got involved by helping Abe Tabatabai – he’s an old fraternity brother of mine from Utah State [University]– with his first campaign to get on the town council. After Abe got elected, I finished Andy Schwartz’s term on the council when he moved out of the town. After that, I thought I’d stick my toe in the water or my head in the noose.
I saw it more as a way to understand things like zoning and how they could help me with my chosen profession. I hadn’t really gotten into a mindset about having an agenda or anything initially. It was more a decision to help me better understand the process.
PJH: But the potential for a conflict of interest is always there. Haven’t you ever come across a project that you thought wasn’t quite right for Jackson but drooled at the thought of selling it as an agent?
RE: I would definitely be given an insight into some projects being able to see things way before they hit the streets. There were times when I would be looking at them thinking, “Boy, I wish this guy was my customer and we could do business.” But it came down to a character issue. My job as a planning commissioner was to look at these projects and ask how they fit into the Comp Plan and met our goals and objectives.
I will say that any time there was anything that held a financial interest for myself or any company I might have been involved with at the time, I just stepped away from it. I didn’t want any appearance of impropriety or anyone saying, “Ray is in the bag of the developer because he’s going to get the listing on the back end for selling those units or leasing that space.”
PJH: So you would recuse yourself. How often in 13 years?
RE: Only two, maybe three times. I would talk with the town attorney and asked questions. If it wasn’t going to pass the smell test, I just backed away. On Patos, I recused myself. I did start bumping into it a lot more with my new job [at Real Estate of Jackson Hole].
PJH: Looking back on your years as a planning commissioner, who did you enjoy working with? Who really got on your nerves?
RE: Actually, I was fortunate out of all the people I worked with – Gordon, Chris, Cindy – there was no oil and water mix. I remember being terrified of Bob Horn when I started. Bob was the planning director when we went through the adoption of the Comp Plan. He was one of the most technical and knowledgeable planners – even though Mark Obringer will probably roll over and die when he hears me say that. I think, as a planner he was tops but his people skills sucked. We really ran into problems with him in terms of trying to do something with the public.
I remember when Glenn McWilliams and I used to have some heated discussions at the commission. People were wondering whether we were going to go out in the parking lot and duke it out or something. But I always respected his opinion. Later we would go have a beer and talk about it and find out we just had different opinions on the interpretation of the LDRs or Comp Plan. I would tell him, “I gotta admire you for sticking by your guns.” I learned a lot from him.
PJH: How about your relationships with the council members?
RE: How you deal with the [situation where] everyone votes for a project and sends it forward for recommendation of approval and then [the town council] just votes it down; or if you vote something down and then they approve it. People used to ask me, “Does that ever really stick in your craw?”
Initially, when that would happen, when I was new, it would bug me. I wondered, “Why do I do all this work and then you people shoot it down?” I would give Abe and Scott [Anderson] and Obringer a bad time but then I finally figured out there is a political side to these things and that’s not our role. The planning staff and commissioners should be looking out for comp plans and the LDRs and how they fit into our goals and objectives. But the political decisions fall in the lap of the elected.
Because as planning commissioners, too many times we get to a point where all we are doing is asking ourselves how do we get to yes? Instead of just saying, “No, you can’t do it.” You look at something and you naturally want to start saying well, maybe if you do this and then that … It’s very easy for the planning commission to fall into the role of planning the project for a developer, because everybody wants to get to yes. It’s in our nature.
PJH: And then you started seeing the end with the commission?
RE: Sometimes I would see something and think, “This is an interesting project” or
“I like what they’re doing here.” But then there were times when you are sitting through three years of Albertsons meetings and fighting and fussing with them.
I started to notice that my energy and interest level had waned considerably. With the comp plan coming up and the responsibilities I’ve got with my new job I thought, “Now’s a good time.” We aren’t too far along with the comp plan that someone couldn’t get in and up to speed.
We’ve got a pretty good planning commission right now. I would hope we get somebody in who would have some old west, butt-in-the-saddle common sense. As much as we’re having to shift to a more urban style living here that’s something we have to be conscious about trying to keep. I always tried to keep a foot back on the Wyoming western values as I made decisions and not just buy into new trends that are coming out. I hope like hell they can find somebody that continues to embrace our core value but I don’t know if they will.
PJH: What are you views on the recent large development proposals in the county? Teton Meadows Ranch, specifically?
RE: That is … not an easy one to answer, unfortunately. The community is faced with some tough choices: How do you balance the need for workforce housing against the impacts on traffic, schools, wildlife, open space, etc.? What sacrifices is the community prepared to make and accept? While it is admirable and creative what Mr. Reinert is proposing, given its location, is the proposal dense enough?
The location of this proposal presents many challenges and I am not sure it is the right location for affordable housing because it is far enough from services and jobs that residents will be required to be two-car households, which will put more cars on the road. It may be wise to accept more density there, if it would reduce traffic. But additional density is only acceptable if it does not externalize its impacts. More density may allow for some neighborhood commercial development that could help reduce those daily trips.
But with only two large tracts of land, east of the Snake River, remaining for development, this parcel and the Porter Estate, beggars can’t be choosers.
PJH: You mentioned the Porter Estate? When are we going to kick that around again?
RE: That is anybody’s guess. As a former planning commissioner and longtime resident of the valley, it would be great to see a master-planned development that meets the goals and needs of the community; But that will take an investor/developer with very large and deep pockets and the patience of Job to comprehend and wend through the approval process. Unfortunately, I don’t know too many people that meet all of those criteria, though they are out there.
Whether another attempt at annexation is possible is anybody’s guess, there have been several attempts that all resulted in failure. Its location makes it the logical location for expansion of the City of Jackson. Further, it is quite possible that the ranch will be sold in 35 acre parcels over time.
PJH: Do you think that entire corridor will be annexed into Town one day?
RE: Quite possibly, but don’t think there is a necessity to do so. It would be less costly to the town to do so now, since the repairs to the infrastructure of Rafter J have been completed; so the cost of the annexation for the benefit derived by the town would be more favorable for the town.
PJH: Do you think there will ever be enough affordable housing in JH?
RE: The short answer: No. This is a vexing question for the community, because the current solutions seem to focus on providing housing opportunities for purchase vs. affordable rentals. Further, many of the candidates for workforce housing have credit issues that make it difficult for them to qualify for a loan. Because of the tightening of credit standards by mortgage providers, there are fewer sources of loans for this market segment. Additionally, unless land is zoned in the county for “apartment-only” sites, the construction of multi-family rental properties is non-existent. While it is admirable to house as much of our workforce in the valley as possible, not everyone that desires to live here can; so affordable rentals are the key to the solution.
Ray Elser portrait by Derek DiluzioPERMALINK:
EXIT Interview: Ray Elser on 13 years | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories
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