A teacher friend of mine just
shook the change out of his trousers to buy and then fully remodel
a dump in Telluride, Colo. The house cost $1 million, and it was
the cheapest thing going. I didn’t ask about the cost of the
remodel.
At the same time that my friend was assembling
his financial house of cards, citizens voted to condemn a huge
chunk of open space at the entrance to the town. The vote was
widely understood as support for preservation over development, a
triumph of environmentalism over greed. But it wasn’t,
exactly.
If condemnation leads only to preservation, as
it likely will, and not to other community benefits such as
affordable housing or schools, the vote will represent the victory
of small thinking over big picture, “me” over “us.” Real estate
prices in Telluride are already beyond the reach of most common
folk, the teachers, policemen, service workers, counselors, and
other key community members we all want in our towns.
The
failed proposal — clustered development that would protect 90
percent of the land, high density affordable housing, 22 trophy
homes so the developer can make money and a school site —
wasn’t perfect. The big homes were considered disgusting,
bisecting the property, and a plan for ponds would have sapped the
watershed. The vote means that the town has protected a stunning
viewshed, but mostly, and increasingly, for folks who live in Texas
10 months a year.
Aspen faces similar issues. Recently,
the business I work for, Aspen Skiing Co., proposed a redevelopment
plan for employee housing, which involved tearing down an existing
structure, then constructing a new building with 10 more beds. At
an early town council meeting, the room was packed with the same
neighbors with the same objections from every town council meeting
facing similar proposals: It’s too dense. It will be too
noisy. Small-town character is why I chose to live in Aspen. It
will crowd the streets.
But small-town character is more
than the density of the building behind you. It means a place where
workers live in the community; where traffic isn’t backed up
for miles morning and night. Dense affordable housing belongs in
the town core that was designed to accommodate it. Instead, NIMBYs
will drive housing down valley as sprawl, threatening the quality
of life they want to protect, polluting the air, clogging the
roads, damaging the ambiance, and changing the climate. These
citizens, and others throughout the West, are making bad decisions
that are elitist, exclusionary and contrary to their own values.
Aspen smartly created growth controls in the 1970s, but
that drove real estate values up wildly, making Telluride’s
million-dollar homes seem quaint. (Try $10 million, amateurs!)
Aspen also has a vibrant land-conservation effort, but without
associated affordable housing it drives up housing even more.
What’s missing is thinking about our communities as systems,
not as a series of distinct issues seen through a paper-towel roll.
Growth controls don’t work without increased
density in the heart of town. Land conservation defeats itself
without new affordable housing.
Another long-term Aspen
sacred cow has been to preserve the curving, partly two-lane road
going into town. The reason: This protects the small-town
character. But a town besieged by road-ragers heading for work
— a direct result of the two-lane and curves — is the
antithesis of that goal.
Other examples abound. Aspen
denied more housing density (lopping off a story) because it would
block the view from the library. But I don’t think
you’ll find the guy with the 25,000 square-foot house
browsing climbing magazines and gazing wistfully out the library
window. Citizen “environmentalists” also protected a small park,
killing a proposal for more affordable housing. But who will sit in
the park?
There is a micro-scale park in Aspen’s
west end that’s perfect for a two-foot-tall, 20-pound
toddler. Sometimes, my wife, Ellen, and I take our daughter, Willa,
to play there. She loves the little ramps a few inches off the
ground, and tromps across the mini-bridge, giggling. But in a
beautiful three-month autumn we never saw another child, never
heard a neighbor walk past.
The houses nearby, some of
the most expensive in the country, stood empty, and Willa played
happily alone among the silent mansions of a non-community, dark
castles protecting a false dream of small-town character.
Auden Schendler is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service
of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado
(hcn.org). He is the director of Environmental Affairs for Aspen
Skiing Co. and lives in Basalt.
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