David Jackson/Park Record
Since 2002, the place sure has changed. I hear this a lot.
Traffic has clogged, prices risen, lift lines lengthened. Housing’s so out of control locals can’t live here anymore. Even the doctors and lawyers are leaving. Folks don’t know each other like they did with so many wealthy strangers moving in and all the workers commuting in and then right back out of town. The ski resorts have gone entirely corporate now.
And what happened to our community?
Longtimers have lamented like this for so long it’s become a cliché. Like Minnesotans talking about the weather, uncles about their aching joints, downtown Heber about anything to do with that elusive bypass. On and on as if we hadn’t heard it all before, over and over and over again.
Has to be the Olympics to blame, right? Park City was so great before, and gone crazy ever after. Yep, it all began with the Olympics.
But if so, how to explain Aspen, Vail, Breck, Steamboat? Or Jackson, Sun Valley? Lake Tahoe? They all grew as crowded, congested, expensive, ruined as Park City — or more so — over the same years.
Colorado voted down the Olympics in 1976. That didn’t stop the hordes and I-70 traffic that makes Kimball Junction seem free flowing by comparison.
Squaw Valley, now Palisades Tahoe, hosted the 1960 Olympics and retained its hold on paradise for decades after that. The congestion didn’t come until much later, bumper to bumper for the long dozen miles from I-80 in Truckee to the resort in the Olympic Valley, worse on powder days.
So what makes us think the 2002 Games had a thing to do with the current state here?
The better explanation is that the crowding of the ski towns has more to do with social and demographic tides — throw in 9/11, the financial meltdown and pandemic as quickeners — along with the ease now of working remotely.
The 1% alone could buy every home in every tucked-away community and still hunger for more. Ski companies cater to them, as only makes sense. Ski equipment has evolved. Refinements in food, lodging, entertainment have followed. Even the warming weather has made a difference.
More people can afford skiing, too. Partly that’s from the Epic and Ikon passes. Partly that’s from class differentiation and population growth and migration to the Intermountain West generally adding up to more people with the means. I mean the richer getting richer, to be gauche. And there are more of them in hard count now, as well.
The Olympics can do more to help solve Park City’s biggest challenges than anything, though that’s no guarantee. Still, Aspen and Lake Tahoe have no such savior on a horizon.
The prospect of the 2034 Games here will attract public and private funding, along with the impetus to plan. But the big influence will be pressure.
I don’t mean only the obvious pressure on transportation improvements, say. Also pressure on more sustainable energy practices. Pressure on developing future generations of Olympic athletes and sport generally. Pressure on quality-of-life measures such as affordable housing. Pressure to improve community.
This is the real gold of staging the next Olympics and possibly joining a rotation of hosts after that.
Ski town problems afflict all alike. Longtimers are bemoaning in unison across the West, howling in harmony.
The Olympics give Park City a chance to step out of what we’ve so long viewed as insurmountable. That’s really what 2034 means. Another Olympics on the way bears hope we can do better. Here’s a torch worth carrying.
Don Rogers is the editor of The Park Record. He can be reached at drogers@parkrecord.com or (970) 376-0745.