If not paradise, Aspen during
the summer comes close. The mountains are dazzling, the gussied-up
Victorian homes beguiling. The musical menu is rich, and a Nobel or
Pulitzer prize-winner lectures nearly every evening. Everywhere are
trails. It’s a heaven for tourists.
But Aspen is no
longer a tourist town in the conventional sense. A new kind of
tourism, one dominated by extravagantly expensive homes, has gained
economic swagger in Aspen and Vail, Colo., Jackson, Wyo., Sun
Valley, Idaho, and several other resorts of the West. This
second-home economy is bigger than skiing, bigger than summer
tourism and in some places bigger than both.
Mountains
have always been places of weekend and summer cabins. Then, during
the 1960s and 1970s, as skiing became a lifestyle, condominiums
proliferated. But in the 1980s and 1990s, a fundamental shift
occurred. Buyers wanted stand-alone homes, sometimes miles from the
ski slopes.
“Supersize me” can apply to more than fast
food. Homes of 10,000 square feet have become common, even if used
only a few weeks or months of the year. The sweepstakes winner of
this conspicuous consumption is the 55,000 square-foot mansion in
Aspen owned by Prince Bandar bin sultan, the Saudi Arabian
ambassador to the United States.
Even at little-known
Fraser, Colo., a “cabin” in a mountain resort goes for $450,000.
And a cottage in this vacation world goes for even more. Talk about
a cottage industry: It takes hundreds of people to build one of
these mansions, then a steady stream of workers to scrub the
floors, tend the flower gardens and keep the pantry stocked.
The trickle-down is enormous. Many maids get $30 an hour,
and immigrants who barely speak English can earn $18 an hour
chiseling stone. No wonder low-paying tourist businesses complain
they have a hard time getting help.
Demographers predict
a strong demand for such vacation homes as baby boomers conclude
their peak earning years and then retire. Some second homes will
become first homes, at least for the early retirement years, a
phenomenon that is already occurring.
All of this means
existing trends will continue. Few people working in the resort
communities live there. In a market hyperinflated by the demand for
second homes, land becomes too expensive for laborers. Almost all
affordable housing in resort towns is subsidized. One-time
down-valley towns have become upscale, which means bedroom
communities are ever-farther away. One-way commutes of 30 or 60 or
even 90 minutes become common. Just as second-home owners have dual
existences, so do the workers.
The massive infusion of
money from second homes has also helped cause profound demographic
shifts. Ski resorts were once the domain of young white kids, but
the median age is rising rapidly — close to 60 in the Aspen
area without including second-home owners. There are
proportionately few GenXers, as couples in their 20s and 30s have
found the resort communities too expensive to sink roots into.
In most resort towns of the West, the term “second-home
owner” has almost pejorative connotations, similar to “developer.”
But the truth is nowhere that simple. Spend some time in a small
mountain town that hasn’t had fresh blood in three
generations, and you’d probably be happy to see a few
second-home owners in your midst.
Many resort towns have
begun to question whether this new industry pays its way. Most
towns depend upon sales tax revenues, and unlike factories, these
homes pay few taxes. A lot of people look back fondly to the old
days of tourism, where the tourists rented hotel rooms instead of
buying the corner lots.
Some locals also say it’s
hard to relate to second-home owners who have so much money they
don’t buy their own groceries, let alone know the price of
bread. Social divisions between the haves and have-nots, between
the locals and the second-home owners, are widening, and
that’s not good.
In Aspen, former Mayor Rachel
Richards observed this year’s Fourth of July parade, noting
that second-home owners were the spectators while locals
participated in the parade.
“We need each other,” she
said. But the issue, she added, is one of balance. Once a town
loses that balance, it’s hard to get it back. Aspen, she
thinks, has tipped. Other towns, she says, should take note.
Allen Best is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He lives and writes on Colorado’s Front
Range.
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