Pick your topic, folks. Talk about whatever you want to talk about on this thread.
As an aside, I've received word from Descente's Bob Geiger that a student event has been scheduled for today at Weber State University, to discuss the gondola issue; and I'm planning to drop in on it myself.
Here's the skinny, as provided by Mr. Geiger:
Again, in the face of overwhelming community support, WSU Professors and Administrators are holding an Anti-Gondola presentation for their Student Body. Don’t be fooled, the Administration is backing this presentation.I'll be there, with my trusty notebook in hand.
12:00 Noon
Room 255 – Wildcat Auditorium
Main Floor of Student Union Building
The presentation has been publicized to the students, but not the community. It is however, open for us to drop in.
The speaker will be Professor Dorsey, Associate Professor and Head of Urban Planning and Development Program for WSU. He is the professor that wrote the “misinformation” article about the UTA study. (By the way, UTA was at the Gondola vote last night as well. They are supportive of putting the Gondola in across the city.)
I apologize for the late notice. I obviously need to check my email a little more often than I do.
Pick your topic folks. I won't be back until later on today.
16 comments:
The more things change the more they stay the same. This is from the Provo Daily Enquirer of March 23, 1881:
"Ogden has for several years past been counting on prosperity and greatness from what appears now to be a very uncertain source -- the establishment at the junction city of immense property and interests in connection with the two great railroads which intersect at this point ...
"Failing to build up from its own internal resources, Ogden has studied too much how it could establish a credit on prospective greatness, neglecting to gather together its own natural elements of greatness and build up a self-made and independent structure that would command capital both from within and without ...
"The junction city must indulge itself hereafter in humbler expectations so far as railroads are concerned, and look more to its own sinewy resources for permanent prosperity than to speculative dreams of becoming a 'second Chicago' through railroad influences."
If the Weber College students bring their check books with them to this meeting, then maybe they can fund the damn gondola and get it done with!
Also hope some of those genius biz students are there that Larsen is going to commission to take over Ogden's multi million dollar problems.
If the Lord Mayor talks I sure hope some one records him. We need to start documenting his serial lies pertaining to the gondola and its funding. Remember, when his lips are moving . . . . . . . .
Great quote, MM! The 1881 advice is as true now as it was then, too.
Smart Growth Ogden's website is now functioning, and there is an interesting, well-researched piece called "A Resort in Malan's Basin?"
It gets into facts: the fact that the slope of the land is too steep to allow development except for in one relatively small area, the fact that there is really not enough water to support it, the fact that much vegetation will have to be cleared, and that doing this on unstable land will increase landslides--quite a bit there.
Here's part of what it says about the gondola:
The base of the gondola would presumably be located either on the Weber State University campus, or west of the campus near Harrison Blvd., or at Mt. Ogden Park. A large building or shed to house and maintain the gondola cabins would have to be located at the base, in addition to any resort facilities or tourist attractions. Given the likelihood that the base of the gondola would be on public land, we are anxious to see a specific proposal for the location and footprint of this facility. At this time, it remains one of the major undisclosed details about the project.
I too would like to know exactly where this base may be.
Here's the link for their article, which I recommend, since it is well-researched and includes references to Weber County Ordinances prohibiting development on certain slopes as well as geological and other factual data: A Resort in Malan's Basin?
Bonnie Lee: "If the Weber College students bring their check books with them to this meeting, then maybe they can fund the damn gondola and get it done with!"
Not one WSU student seemed moved today by Professor Dorsey's dry (shall we say - and maybe bumbling) presentation, except those who were moved to sleep out the "event" between classes.
I didn't see one single WSU student ripping out his/her chackbook...although the free sandwiches were very much in demand.
One student finally chimed in and asked: "so what do you expect of us?"
This fine student was also clearly bored...as were most of us.
And Moroni: Why do I get the feel that you have mountains of olde Utah newspapers layin' around your flat? Great observation, BTW. This shows why we need to listen to the wisdom of our elders...
as well as the wisdom of the current crowd ... I say.
And to Dian: Yes! that's a very enlightening article. Etch this in your brains folks. Western-facing ski areas are better suited to ice-skating than skiing. Icy slopes are NOT what brings the tourists here. and there are many other problems listed in this excellent article that Dian reco'd.
I urge everybody to check out the "smartgrowth" website in the right sidebar.
Call me old-fashioned, but I truly believe people make the best decisions when presented with ALL the available information, from the whole mix of diverse sources.
That's why Weber County Forum exists, as a matter of fact.
And is there anybody with a brain who doesn't already know, with naturally-developed Ogden street-smarts, in their herat-of-hearts -- that Earl Holding, or what's left of him isn't really the entity behind this whole gondola deal?
Get real, people.
What do those Smart Growth people know? After all, some of the biggest brains in the ski biz dutifully looked into this already. If this was a bad idea, do you really think a $700 million company like Descente or Scott USA, would have relocated their worldwide headquarters in Ogden. These people didn’t get to where they are by being idiots. Doesn’t Smart Growth realize that overnight, this “world-class” resort will bring businesses and flocks of students to Ogden and WSU, respectively? By the time this is over, they’ll be saying, “Park City who?” What have the Smart Growth people ever done for Ogden?
I’ll tell you what, they’re providing another side of an issue that needs to be studied out before we leap into another money pit. If this is a viable project, then shedding light on it will only make that more apparent. But if this is another Ogden Ground Zero, we need some exposure.
As always, nice research Dian. In looking at the map on the Smart Growth site, I can’t see why Snowbasin wouldn’t be a much better fit. It is farther, and I can probably drive there in a blizzard faster than ride a gondola, but it would remove all the unknowns. The resort is already there. It has water, infrastructure, a road, approval, a ski area, and so on.
The historic newspapers are available to the public here
"Time to work together. Time to be honest."
This from Gieger who talks out of both sides of his mouth at the same time!
This gondola bunch has been working behind the backs of Ogden citizens from day one. They have been lying through their teeth from the beginning.
They spread the word that they would do the whole shebang with private money at the same time Geiger senior and the master lier Godfrey were planning a trip to Washington, on the Ogden tax payers dime, to plot and scheme for public money to do the deal.
Time to be honest indeed...
I worry about a comment Curt Geiger made in a recent letter to the editor in the Standard.
He believes in withholding information as a bargaining strategy.
How can you trust a single word from people who tell you up front that they're not telling the whole truth?
You can't.
Of course Chris Peterson is not stupid, he married the birkenstock wearing daughter of the billionaire! The question is what else has he done?
To say that he "put the whole Snow Basin project together" is a real stretch. Earl Holding was still playing with a full deck at that time and to think he would give the son in law that kind of responsibility is a total joke. This assertion is a big insult to not only Earl but his group of employees that really did the heavy lifting on the modernization of Snow Basin. Snow Basin incidently was there as a fine ski mountain long before this pretender Peterson was even born. Chris Peterson, on his very best day, couldn't hold Holding's jock!
I don't know anything about this group of professors that Geiger is talking about, but if they are pointing out the fallacies of this scam then I am all for them.
If Peterson, or more likely his wife, want's to spend millions to build this deal in Malan's basin then so be it. What is the whole discussion about if they aren't scheming on the public to pick up a major part of the tab? They put out a bunch of publicity a few weeks back that they are going to spend only private money on the deal, yet here they are back plotting and planning for the taxpayers to pony up a pile of cash for their private toys. How honest is that?
The situation the Gondola really will create is that it will further bury Ogden in debt and push it that much closer to bankruptcy if Lift Ogden has its way. How the hell you gonna market that Geiger? The only thing Geiger Jr. can really attest to is that his daddy's employer let him move home to Ogden, and two other small time operations opened shop here. They don't employ ten people amongst the whole lot of them.
Scott moved up the road 12 miles for more space, not because of this goof ball scheme or because Descente moved their sales rep here. They did not hire one new employee in Ogden. So what did we really gain but a little bragging rights? And why don't we ever hear a word from Scott about any of this?
The only real significant ski company to move to Utah chose Park City. Hells bells, these HUB promoters couldn't even beat out Layton for the biggest ski convention in the world! So much for their fantasy of becoming the center of the ski universe. I mean friggen LAYTON beat them at their own game! We sure haven't heard them mention that one now have we?
It is indeed time for some new ideas. It is time for these scammers to put up or shut up. So Geiger et. al. If you want the damn gondola, rec center, malan resort, etc. then have Peterson's wife write a check and just shut up and do it. But quit your damn lying and scheming to lay off the cost on to the back's of the honest tax paying citizens.
Semper Fi Bobby G. I know the Marines taught you about integrity, how about showing us some of it.
PS - Is it true that you're dad went to DC with the little one on tax payer money? How fair and honest is that if true?
The following sounds horrendous and disturbingly familiar to what we've been hearing recently. Too, too familiar.
I found that the city of Portland, Oregon, has been in the throes of aerial tram transportation for a long time, almost ten years, maybe longer, and interesting things have happened there, to say the least.
Originallly, Portland's tram was marketed as connecting downtown with the university, and paid for partially by the university and the rest by private funding. However:
A strange thing has happened to Oregon Health & Science University’s aerial tram as it rises toward reality.
It is no longer OHSU’s tram.
It is Portland’s tram, according to OHSU officials. The tram project that university officials have pushed for years, from the North Macadam development area to OHSU’s Marquam Hill campus, will be a public transportation device — sort of like the bus system, OHSU representatives say.
And OHSU officials can make no promises on how much they’ll help in building it.
“We don’t see this as the OHSU tram, the way you write it up,” OHSU President Dr. Peter Kohler said in an interview last month. “We see this as a transportation issue.”
The distinction could be important to Portland taxpayers...
...The financing questions come as university officials and North Macadam landowners are negotiating with city officials about one of the largest unanswered questions surrounding North Macadam: how to divvy up the $60 million to $70 million in infrastructure costs required to make the development happen. The tram’s costs — $10 million to $16 million for construction and $2.4 million in annual operating costs — are part of the negotiations..
...Sean Brennan, a tram opponent and a resident of the Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood, said he remembers a March 2001 neighborhood meeting in which an OHSU representative “solidly and unequivocally said they were going to pay for the tram through donations. … We weren’t hallucinating about that..."
Much more here: Nice tram, who pays?10/11/2002
(Remember prices and the date of the above article.)
Background here:
The Portland Aerial Tram is an aerial tramway under construction in Portland, Oregon. It will connect the city's South Waterfront area with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) and the Marquam Hill neighborhood surrounding the university, and introduce yet another mode of transportation in Portland. It is tentatively scheduled for completion in 2006 at a cost of $40 million.
Portland Ariel Tram--Wikipedia
Two years after the newspaper article "Who Pays?" we have citizen reaction and escalating costs as they go ahead with it:
The Portland City Council has voted unanimously to approve the building of the OHSU aerial tram.
It also voted 3-2 to buy out residents along the street below who don't want to live under an aerial tram.
Perhaps the most alarming news to emerge from the hearing was testimony that the real budget for the construction, originally pegged at $15 million and recently increased to $28.5 million, is going to be more like $40 million. And counting.
And that the tram's operating budget is going to be more than $3 million a year. And that there's still going be lots of increased street traffic on account of various shuttle buses that will be running up and down the hill in addition to the tram.
Congratulations to Homer Williams and all the other developers who will profit enormously from the massive outlay of scarce city tax dollars that this project will entail. And to their political fixer, wherever he may be hiding.
Jack Bog's Blog: Done Deal 6/10/2004
The residents under the tram could choose to stay under it or sell to the city, but the designation of the tram, mid-project, as public transportation, might have opened it up to eminent domain, which has historically been used for transportation. So nobody had a choice at that point, it seems.
Then... they ran out of money:
It's so sad. They sold this to the City Council on a $15.5 million budget, with the mayor saying it was going to be a beautiful picture postcard. Now, at $28.44 million, they've got a nasty looking bunch of concrete boxes and plastic towers about which even the Architecuture Dandy (see below) can't find much good to say.
And where is the other $13 million going to come from? Here's the latest rap from the tram people:
"The board also asked an informal finance committee to figure out new revenue sources without asking the city for general fund money, and without reducing city funds designated for transportation maintenance and operation.
The guidelines suggest looking for additional contributors from the Marquam Hill community, such as the Veteran Affairs Medical Center and the Portland Shriners Hospital for Children. OHSU committed to $9 million of the original $15.5 million budget.
Other potential sources include possible tradeoffs for federal funding in the urban renewal area; energy tax credits based on the efficiency of tram operations; and additional property tax money generated by the estimated $1.8 billion of development that the tram is expected to help stimulate."
Mike Lindberg, a former Portland City Council member who serves on the nonprofit board, recalled earlier instances when the city faced shortages for Pioneer Courthouse Square and the Performing Arts Center. Instead of cutting important details, the city found additional money, he said.
I repeat, where is the additional money going to be found this time? I'm sure, in the pockets of people who pay (a) local property tax, (b) state income tax, and (c) federal income tax....
Jack Bog's Blog: And she's buying a stairway to heaven2/12/04
More history and links here:
It is interesting to note that Doppelmayr CTEC, linked on the site referenced above, is the European tram engineering corporation with offices in Salt Lake City, and it has been chosen to build the Portland tram. This is the corporation that builds bi-cable gondolas, which, from what I have read, are the only ones that will work in Malan's Basin.
The organization in charge of building the aerial tram is PATI, Portland Aerial Transportation, Inc.
Portland Aerial Transportation, Inc. (PATI) is a private non-profit organization empowered by the City of Portland to ensure that the process of designing and constructing the ...
Portland Aerial Tram
Another blogger says:
In beautiful downtown Portland, OR there is a tram that is mighty important to some strategically placed rich people. Some of the financing is coming from the less wealthy taxpayers of Portland...
...The tram doesn't go a long distance but it does go downhill from the top of the hill. In fact, it goes from the top of the hill down to South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area. South Waterfront Urban Renewal Area sounds pretty important, doesn't it? It doesn't really exist except on plans to get money from somewhere. However, when the urban renewal area is finally brought into physical reality, it will house, theoretically, rich people and places where rich people can party...
JohnHays.net: The tram scam of portland, oregon
Our original idea, which has been around Ogden for decades, was to build a tram from Ogden to Snow Basin. What we're seeing and hearing now is just too close to this Portland disaster for comfort, and our tram isn't even going to Snow Basin anymore.
Look at it---suddenly, here in Ogden, there is an idea that will "make us unique." Tram from new development downtown to the university, etc., etc.
We absolutely cannot afford to go the way Portland went on this. Ogden has enough financial problems already. If we walk into this and find ourselves in Portland's position a few years from now, we deserve what we get, because a better blueprint on how Not to do something like this I have never seen.
But it's so familiar.
Red flags all over on this one.
"Found nowhere else in the world!" "Chrisa Peterson will spend MILLIONS of DOLLARS in Malin's Basin!" These cavalier comments, cast about by those allegedly in the know, yet details remain shrouded in SECRECY. Is there any wonder why the public in general is not embracing this idea? Is there any wonder why people are asking questions about this gondola super-project? Is there any wonder why there's some skepticizm? Is there any wonder why there's a desire for meeting, wherein SOME REAL INFORMATION from the principals might be forthcoming? Is there any wonder why all of the above is necessary to have answers before we rush headlong into another project that may result in a half finsihed erector set running up 23rd or 26th?
Just supply some answers, quit with the secrets, and perform this initial stage with more integrity and openness, with an understanding that many people need many questioned answered in order to get that "warm & fuzzy," and things might begin to go better. We might look upon this as a partnership instead of an advesarial treat.
Some of the finest people I know are English professors and history professors and/or belong to the Sierra Club.
The lead in for this thread includes this statement from Mr. Geiger: "UTA was at the Gondola vote last night as well. They are supportive of putting the Gondola in across the city."
I'd be curious to know Mr. Geiger's source for his claim that UTA is "supportive of putting the Gondola in across the city." Anyone know what it might be?
Left out a Portland tram link in above post. Good page, with links to the architect, the tram engineer, news stories, and a history.
Interesting bit here:
The tram will travel 3300 linear feet in a ride planned to last two minutes, 40 seconds. Its upper terminal will be adjacent to OHSU, 140 feet above grade, and connected to the ninth floor of a new patient care facility on the university's campus. Its lower terminal in the South Waterfront will be the focal point for a mass transit center and development in the surrounding area by OHSU and others.
A single tower will support the tram's cables between the two terminals, allowing the tram to rise 500 feet over Interstate 5.
The tram cabins are shaped and painted to look like "bubbles floating through the sky"; the surface of the cabins will reflect and refract light, minimizing their visual impact to the neighborhood underneath. The cabins will be designed to limit passenger's view of the neighborhood.
Portland Aerial Tram
"Some of the finest people I know are English professors and history professors and/or belong to the Sierra Club."
Bingo, Elder McConkie.
Accusation of "membership" in any of these groups can hardly be deemed pejorative.
Such accusations are entirely provincial and ad hominem, actually, I think.
Captain Geiger - High noon tomorrow in front of the Stage coach office. 45 's at 50 feet! No seconds.
I'll call in AM to confirm.
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