Well, maybe it’s time to check the medical supplies because the natives—and the flatlanders, too—are restless in the Green Mountain State. They’re getting the wagons into a circle to help repulse what they see as an attack by certain ski areas on their cherished way of life.
It’s not that they arbitrarily dismiss the jobs and taxes which ski resorts provide. Rather, they simply aren’t willing to trade their quality of life for what they perceive as a lower—a much lower, some allege—level if wholesale area development takes place, complete with real estate and secondary impacts.
Killington, with its sprawling layout in the middle of the state, has been targeted by the Vermont Natural Resources Council (VNRC) for scrutiny (See SAM, January 1985, Page 53). The council has stated publicly that Killington is where the battle will be made to check what it considers uncontrolled growth threatening the quality of life for Vermonters.
Some industry insiders think the VNRC is behind more than just the shootout with Killington, and that VNRC is being encouraged by Governor Madeleine Kunin. She, however, denies the allegation (“I’m not a no-growther at all”), and the VNRC denies it is orchestrating anything more than its confrontation with Killington.
However, other brushfires have broken out:
- The mill town of Ludlow, back on its heels until Diane and Tim Mueller bought financially strapped Okemo Mountain in 1982, voted March 5 at a Town Meeting to place a two-year moratorium on condominium construction, despite a full-court press by the area and the Chamber of Commerce to defeat the moratorium.
- West Windsor, or—more accurately—the Brownsville section of West Windsor, which has watched several owners do a face-plant while trying to make a go of Mount Ascutney Ski Area, has told Summit Ventures, the area’s year-old owners, there will be no more permit approvals until a master plan is presented. Summit has completed 100 condos in Phase I at the renamed Ascutney Mountain Resort.
The irony, or perhaps the saddest part, the industry says, is that skiing—and tourism—may well be the new cornerstone of Vermont’s economy. The tourist dollar, many feel, is the purist dollar.
“That tourist dollar is the cleanest there is,” says Joe Gregorzek, general manager of Ascutney and a principal in Summit Ventures. “The people drive, spend their money and go home. It’s terrific.
“On top of that, what’s the alternative? I don’t see any politicians, or anyone else, coming in with an alternate plan if tourism doesn’t continue to grow. High-tech? Everyone wants it; all 50 states are after high-tech and how much is there to go around, so how much—really, how much—can Vermont get?”
A closer look at the top squabbles in Vermont this spring:
Ludlow vs. Okemo
The dust hasn’t even started to settle on this one yet. The town of Ludlow voted 460-381 at Town Meeting March 5 to establish a moratorium on condominium construction; however, town officials got legal opinions from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the state Agency for Development and Community Affairs and the town counsel—and all say the vote is non-binding on selectmen or the planning commission. Thus far, the town leadership has ignored the vote and reportedly is continuing to process condo development permit applications. “We haven’t had any new applications,” Town Manager Dean Brown said in mid-April, “but if we did, we’d process them just like before. The selectmen have instructed the town to keep going.”
Bruce Shutan, managing editor of the town’s weekly, The Black River Tribune, which supports the ban, predicts that while the wording of the proposal may be discriminatory (because it is aimed only at condos), “within six months they’ll have unquestionably legal wording” for the ban. Mueller, however, noted, “The legal opinions all reached the same conclusion: the ban is illegal. The only way you can control construction is through zoning; you can’t do it with some referendum, no matter how legally proper it might be. Zoning is the only route.”
To that end, the Cavendish Partnership, a planning firm from the neighboring town of Cavendish, has agreed to help develop a town zoning plan at no cost to the community. Shutan says the company, which scheduled its first (of three) town gripe session for May 2, is suspect in the eyes of some residents because it is heavily dependent on tourism continuing to grow. “They’re giving the town what normally would cost $30,000 and some people figure ‘you don’t get nothing for nothing.’ They figure they’ll pay for that plan somehow.”
The town manager says, “When General Electric pulled out of here in the mid-70s, I lost 84 percent of my industrial jobs in Ludlow and there was no one coming to help. Now we’ve got something good going and some people want to stop it. I don’t understand it. It’s more emotional than rational. . .and you can’t discuss much when it gets to be this emotional.”
While Mueller doesn’t see the moratorium scrap as an “Us vs. Them” firefight, he says the issue does have that potential—and some residents clearly are polarized.
“I think a lot of it is just resentment against tourism,” says Mueller. “Some older people—no, the opposition isn’t all just older residents—don’t want Vermont to change. They don’t like the extra traffic, for instance, but they don’t stop to analyze that Routes 100 and 103, which go through Ludlow, are two of the state’s busiest and those aren’t all tourists. They’ll get up to 13,000 cars at peak times and we’ll have less than 10 percent from Okemo because we hit a peak of maybe 1,200.”
Mount Ascutney
They’re not at the pistols-at-dawn stage, but the time may be nearing. The resort originally said it planned about 450 condos and a golf course with a 70-unit annual growth rate. Build-out was to be in six or seven years. The first phase was launched last spring with a resounding (3-1) town vote.
Now, though, the town is concerned about reports the mountain is talking about an additional 700 or 800 units. The planning commission has asked for a master plan, noting there will be no more approvals—and that would stop things dead, right here—without a master plan.
Said Win Johnson, chairman of the planning commission, “We want to find out just what the company is planning. If it’s 700 additional units, that’s twice what they originally told us and they’re going to have some problems. We shouldn’t have to pay if they blew their original calculations so much that they have to double the size of the project.”
“We’re very pleased with the first phase—they did a nice job and they’ve done what they said they would do—but we have to be as selfish in thinking about the town as they are in thinking about what they want for the mountain. It’s not just a question of tax dollars, either. That won’t wash because we’re not looking to the mountain to underwrite any additional services for the town. We simply don’t want to provide those additional services if they’re going to change the character of Brownsville.”
Fine, said Gregorzek. We’re talking the same language. “If we mean such changes to Brownsville that we’re changing the town that much, we’re dead in the water,” he said. “People come up now, see the town and surrounding area and they’re sold. If we have anything going for us, it’s that we’re not like other resorts and other resort towns. We’ve got exactly what we’re looking for in Brownsville and if that changes, we’re dead.”
To help resolve the issue, the resort and the town agreed to form a coordinating committee with representatives of the various groups in town—school board, selectmen, etc.—meeting two or three times a month. “That’s fine with us,” Gregorzek said. “We’ve tried to work with the town on everything. Take no short-cuts, hire locally, use local companies and so on, and this is no different. We need Brownsville more than Brownsville needs us.”
Stratton Mountain
The Stratton Area Citizen’s Committee is concerned about potential water pollution from the building at Stratton, and especially during the Volvo International Tennis Tournament, which is expected to attract 50,000-plus spectators in August. It petitioned state officials to analyze samples from several brooks, but the state said it was unable to do so. Stratton stepped in and said it would conduct the analysis at its own sewage treatment laboratory with any samples which it couldn’t handle being sent to a commercial lab.
“We’ve tried to work with them instead of against them,” said Stratton’s president, Lovick Suddath. “We feel that because of our tertiary treatment plant, any water going into those brooks is even cleaner than when it came in. We don’t interpret this water situation as anyone pointing a finger at us, other than they’re saying they’re worried about the possibility of a problem. Fine, so are we.”
People Polls
In another touch of irony, the controversies seem to go against two recent polls taken by the Vermont Ski Areas Association. One poll was conducted in 1983 and another was completed in mid-January, 1985, by the Becker Research Corp. of Cambridge, Mass. They surveyed 500 residents throughout Vermont. The latest poll showed 84 percent were either “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” to the state’s ski industry.
“The replies couldn’t have been better if we had written them ourselves,” said Candy Moot of the VSAA. “The survey showed the longer people live in Vermont, the more they were favorable to the ski industry. The newcomers, according to the survey, seem to have that shut-the-door-I’m-in mentality. Two years ago, the survey showed 82 percent favorable or highly favorable and we wondered if the recent headlines and controversies had changed that. We came out even higher now that there is more controversy than ever.”
While the VNRC has been picking up headlines, Moot said there may be a question about how much real support it has been picking up. According to a VNRC survey, she said, 20 percent of VNRC members make $50,000 or more annually. “Only three percent of Vermonters make that,” she said. “We know we have strong grass-roots support for the ski industry, but we’re also not going to take it for granted.”
Especially not in Ludlow, one supposes.
