FIRE causing problems in.... Aspen??

[lektrode]

seeing as we're coming into my fave time of the year (hint: when i finally get to stop sweating), eye happened to note this story (below) last week and finally had a moment to post...

this being vacation season for me (and about the only time of the year that i can actually leave town/biz/work and go play fer a spell...) and have done essentially all of my vacation travel in the rockies, both US and CAN, along with the sierra's thru the years - it was few years back (12 now? actually... oh how it do fly when yer havin fun..) when i had chance to return to aspen (in 2000), the prev time being circa 1980 or so - and noted that aspen had changed - pretty dramatically, esp for the working class residents (where the typical service employee would've been a 19to20something back then, thru the 60's into the late 70's, ski-bumming their way thru figgerin out what they really wanted to do when they grow up ;) - noted that the typical worker seemed to be almost 'exclusively' mexican/s.american - at least for the 'back of the house' people - further noted stories/op-ed's/letters to the ed, etc indicating that the residents (mostly the millionaires who could afford to own houses there) were bitchin about the billionaires driving up the cost of living - and driving them out - so its somewhat comical now that they've suddenly (over the past 30years or so) discovered the FIRE economy is now a problem??? (GASP! when even a mere millionaire can no longer afford to live there?!!!??? ;)

anyway... eye found this quite interesting:

Aspen has a problem that many towns would envy: too many rich people. (?? a lot of whom likely showed up from CA, importing their overpriced realestate problem with them - just like happened up in Bend OR, no doubt...)

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/02/...s-aspen-fight/

• February 6, 2012, 11:59 AM

‘High-Beta Rich’ Fuels Aspen Fight

By Robert Frank

Bloomberg News

Aspen has a problem that many towns would envy: too many rich people.


It’s leaders and businesspeople are constantly grappling with how to maintain the town’s natural beauty and culture while also accommodating an ever-richer breed of resident. The mansions get bigger, the luxury stores more numerous and the Escalades and Land Rovers more ubiquitous. The median home price now tops $6 million – and many of those owners are only in Aspen three or four weeks a year.


And now Aspen’s culture wars are coming to a head with a new real-estate development. And “The High Beta Rich” — which chronicles some of Aspen’s class struggles — is fueling debate on both sides.


The dispute centers around a real-estate development downtown. To over-simplify, a developer planned to tear down two historic buildings to build a new 31,000 square-foot building that would included the largest new penthouse in Aspen, at 7,000 square feet. Some town residents and leaders balked. The developer agreed to preserve the buildings only if the town exempted him more than $4 million in fees.


Aspen’s mayor, Mick Ireland, labeled the proposal “blackmail” and called the developer an “extortionist.” In a letter to the Aspen Daily News, the mayor cited “The High Beta Rich,” saying the development would only increase Aspen’s already dangerous dependence on the increasingly manic and transient super-wealthy.


“Aspen can ill afford to see its downtown economic engine converted into a speculative venue for the excesses of an increasingly volatile finance-driven economy,” he wrote.


In response, Aspen Times columnist Charlie Leonard wrote that the mayor’s “blackmailer” comment was “unbecoming a mature adult.” And he had a different view of “The High Beta Rich,” which I respond to here.


Whether “The High Beta Rich” inspired the mayor’s view or not (and I haven’t spoken with him about the issue), Mayor Ireland is one of the few town leaders in the U.S. who seems to grasp the deeper economic forces that are changing wealth in America and making wealth less stable. If the governors of New York and California were as well versed on the rich, maybe they wouldn’t have such frequent revenue crises.


I don’t support or oppose the Aspen condo development. But Mayor Ireland is spot on when he writes that “We cannot reform the national economy but we can dampen some of the excess” through zoning. “Sunnier streets and small-town feel are not recession proof but offer our best opportunity to sustain Aspen’s premier resort.”


What do you think rich towns like Aspen can do to better weather the ups and downs of today’s “High-Beta” wealth?

oh i dunno - how about have the town/county provide free/subsidized lift tickets for Ajax?
that way even the millionaires can afford to pay the 100bux+ per day they charging now??

and then the mayor gets riled, or... ahhheghhm - FIRE'd up, if you will, with this almost ironic observation (in the sense that while it was a good thing? when aspen was tearing down all the old victorian woodframe singlefamily houses that populated most of the town, replacing them with steel/stone/glass townhouses) now its a bad thing, because even the millionaires are being priced out (and fuhgetabout us skibums, who now are relegated to staying down valley in glenwood and riding the roaring fork transit auth bus, since even parking has got ridiculous, tho its still cheaper than vail is...) - but hey! at least somebody re-opened the Red Onion, so guess its not all bad, eh?

http://www.aspendailynews.com/sectio...-editor/151376

Stable and long-term success

Friday, January 20, 2012

Editor:

Aspen’s long-term success depends on the creation of an economy that is not overly dependent on the wild swings of fortune alternatively enjoyed and then suffered by the narrow slice of what Wall Street Journal author Robert Frank describes in his book as, “The High Beta Rich,” (Crown Business, New York, 2011).

Aspen can ill afford to see its downtown economic engine converted into a speculative venue for the excesses of an increasingly volatile finance-driven economy. The downturn following the speculative dot-com bust sapped the vitality of Aspen’s core, as residential development first supplanted commercial vitality and then left behind vacant spaces.

In addition, allowing the transformation of commercial space into residential speculative cold beds has forced up rents for the remaining commercial space. Businesses are competing with speculators for space, paying rents equivalent to residential use rents. When the bust comes, many of these spaces become part of an international bankruptcy limbo, unable to return to their former uses and unable to move forward.

The violent swings of a speculative-based economy has had other adverse consequences. Public policy response to the boom-bust dot-com cycle led to the “infill” zoning that greatly increased allowed downtown mass and scale in hopes of restoring economic activity. The result was that the subsequent era of toxic mortgages and jackpot payouts to money managers saw even more viable businesses and profitable lodges replaced with more “cold bed’ residential space.

The Little Red Ski Haus, the Crystal Palace, the Mother Lode and the Chart House were all swallowed up in the speculative frenzy aimed at creating luxury residences. Each of these businesses contributed to a sustainable economy, providing beds or meals, and each was a popular venue for our guests. Each now remains in financial limbo, waiting the salvation of another boom or a court ordered sale.

The lure of huge, leveraged payouts can, as the high-beta economy recovers, bring us more of the same transformation that is best summarized it two words: Base Village.

It is, as a legal matter, too late to rezone Little Annie’s or the Benton building. Nonetheless, I do not favor negotiating the preservation of those buildings. Either the buildings are historic and should be ruled as such by the City Council or they are not eligible for such classification.

If the buildings are properly found to be historic, there is no need to pay “ransom” or whatever one chooses to call the $4.5 million in concessions that have been asked. If the buildings do not merit protection as part of the historic district, then there is no justification for paying someone not to tear them down.

Mr. Frank’s book warns us as follows:

“Yet Aspen’s next crisis — and there will be a next crisis — will likely be more extreme than the last. More than two hundred years after the silver bust almost wiped Aspen off the map, the town is once again is home to financial mania, this time from stock markets and asset bubbles rather than silver prices. ... [H]ypercycles of euphoria and despair, and the strains they produce on the daily bonds of community, are now as much a feature of Aspen’s landscape as the snowcapped peak of Mount Sopris.” (Page 151, “The High Beta Rich,” Crown Business, New York, 2011.)

We cannot reform the national economy but we can dampen some of the excess with zoning that restores a more moderate mass and scale and places larger structures where they fit. Sunnier streets and small-town feel are not recession proof but offer our best opportunity to sustain Aspen’s premier resort. Let’s amend the land-use code to conform with the desires of the citizens and endanger fewer puppies.

Mick Ireland
Aspen

and if he waits long enuf, maybe even silver might - again - cause the next building boom???