An Aerial Day-trip with the Amen Chorus
By Rudizink
Our gentle Weber County Forum readers should not complain that Standard-Examiner publisher Lee Carter failed to give us fair and adequate warning. Part One of Scott Schwebke's previously-announced three-part gondola-promotional series makes the front page of the Slavish Boss Godfrey Official Propaganda Organ this morning under the chirpy headline: "Connecting resort towns - Colorado gondola has cut down on traffic, pollution."
Today's story reports on last month's secret fact-finding junket, during which Mr. Schwebke took a long cross-country plane-ride with a cramped cabin-full of rabid and unrepentant Emerald City Godfreyites -- folks like Mel Kemp and Dave Hardman -- for the purpose of getting up close and personal with several actual gondolas, deep within the Idaho and Colorado backwoods.
Ace Reporter Schwebke applies his usual probing style and critical-thinking skill to today's story, of course. And in our incessant effort to be the most useful blogsite in all of northern Utah, we obligingly link Mr. Schwebke's eagerly-awaited Sunday morning masterpiece here.
We pledge to update this article with links to the rest of Mr. Schwebke's articles in this series, just as soon as they become available on the web. We'll also add that we'll be sitting on the edges of our seat with abated breath until next Tuesday, chewing on our fingernails, wondering what went wrong with the gondolist sales-job in Cortez, Colorado.
And who wants to begin this morning's discussion? Who among our gentle readership will chip in their own two cents, prior to departing this morning toward the neighborhood ward-house?
© 2005 - 2014 Weber County Forum™ -- All Rights Reserved
49 comments:
Nice article, Scott. A good protion of it is taken word for word from already published material on this installation. This article is sorely lacking comparative analysis. Telluride's unique layout and a need for a point to point system spanning a mountain and ESTABLISHED ski resort in between made this a no-brainer. None of the criteria related to Telluride's needs are present on Ogden so there is little to draw from their experience. Personally I do not find them to be an eyesore and I doubt they would hurt property value anywhere in ogden. That is hardly the issue. Iis it appropriate for our communities needs. I have been rehashing mounds of evidence and criteria recently on this blog that refutes anything Schwebke has written here. Another example of these guys stacking the research and discovery to end up with their own favored result.
Be sure to read the link to Mel Kemp as the suit against him, the Ogden Airport and Ogden City RDA has been scheduled for April before Judge Tina Campbell in Federal Court in SLC.
Refresh yourself on the facts because this one is going to bankrupt Ogden and we won't have to worry about gondolas or River Projects or infrastructure for the trash heap on 21st.
The background on the illegal maneuvers by Ogden to put Kemp's Gateway in business OUTSIDE THE FENCE to the detriment of OK3AIR and other businesses makes for better reading than any mystery-soap opera you can pick up.
Old timers will remember that a similar situation occurred when Col. Dilley sued Ogden for trying to put him out of business at the Airport years ago and he cleaned Ogden's clock.
Get a ringside seat next April because this one will be a doozey.
If the Substandard Exaggerator were to charge Peterson/Godfrey for unquestioningly printing their propaganda (on the front page, no less), then they would have money available to hire a true investigative reporter.
Or, if they are so hard-up for material to fill their pages, they might consider asking permission from Tod Transit to print the true comparative analysis of these systems that appeared here yesterday morning. While Tod is anonymous, I'm sure they could find a way to ask him to contact them.
When I read Mr. Greiling's piece yesterday touting the up-coming series, I wrote to him about whether it was wise to send a reporter along with a sales team of gondola red-hots organized by the Mayor to "investigate" the gondola systems in Telluride and Kellog. Mr. Schwebke does not have a reputation as an investigative reporter, or even as a news reporter who asks probling questions. The danger was, I thougth, that Mr. Schwebke, flanked by the Mayor's gondola sales team, would simply repeat the sales pitch, unexamined. But I might have been wrong and I was willing to wait and see.
I just read Mr. Schwebke's piece this morning. All my fears confirmed. He made no attempt to relate what he was reporting about the gondola in Telluride to the proposed Ogden gondola. Permit me to offer one example. [There are, sadly, many others.]
The story goes on and on about the environmental benefits of the gondola in Telluride, that without it, thirty buses a day, belching exhaust, would have to make round trip runs to the ski slopes from the town. Doubtless true for Telluride. However, since there is currently no car or bus traffic to the as yet non-existent Malan's Basin Ski resort, just what vehicular traffic would an Ogden gondola to Malan's Basin eliminate? Did Mr. Schwebke ask? Apparently not.
Is any comparison made in the article between the Telluride free-ride gondola serving a town whose sole significant business is ski resort service and the one being proposed for Ogden? Well, the Mayor does suggest that since a couple of million ride the Telluride gondola to its well-established ski area, it necessarily follows that similar millions will flock to ride Ogden gondolas from downtown to a ski resort that does not yet exist, and that will, if it ever does exist, offer a ski area less than one fifth the size of Telluride's. The Mayor's claims are reported by Mr. Schwebke and left to stand unexamined.
I'm hard put to understand how a reporter, any reporter, could not have asked what traffic would be relieved by an Ogden gondola to Malan's Basin. I'm even more hard put to understand how Mr. Schwebke's editor at the SE did not insist that he ask that question, and a few more, before the piece ran. Uninquisitive reporters overseen by uninquisitive editors seems an odd formula for producing real journalism of value to the city.
The SE should be ashamed of the piece it ran this morning. I'm hard put to see how it can be seen by anyone as much of anything but shilling for the Godfrey Gondola Sales Team. At the very least, the SE should charge ad rates for running puffery like this. I don't know how the Godfrey Gondola Sales team managed to keep straight faces until Mr. Schwebke left the group and the performance ended.
Had the SE sent an investigative reporter to Telluride along with the Godfrey Gondola Amen Choir, one with a penchant for asking questions, probing, skeptical questions of what he was being told --- and yes, reporters should approach advocates for anything, street car proponents too, with probing, skeptical questions --- then the SE might have acheived this morning journalistic excellence and have performed a community service. What it achieved instead was a puff piece.
The SE should be embarassed.
Perhaps my standards for journalism have suffered of late, but I actually liked most of this article. If we read through to the end, we learn that the Telluride gondola shuts down for several weeks each spring and fall for routine maintenance. We also learn that the system costs $3.5 million each year to operate, and that this funding comes from a 3% tax on real estate transactions in Mountain Village. I wish the S-E had pointed out the relevance of these facts to Ogden's gondola proposal, but any reasonably intelligent reader can fill in the blanks.
At Telluride they can live with the down time because Telluride isn't nearly as nice a place to visit in the spring and fall, when it's too chilly for summer festivals yet there isn't enough snow to ski. They can run buses for the people who still need to get to Mountain Village, because it's not a roadless resort. The proposed Ogden urban gondola, though, is supposed to be used by students throughout the spring and fall, so when do you shut it down for maintenance? Likewise, the Malan's Basin gondola would have to run 365 days/year if it's going to be the only means of access (other than hiking) for residents of the proposed Malan's Basin condominiums.
As for operating costs, Mountain Village was already a successful resort before the gondola was built so they knew that the 3% tax would generate the needed revenue. Mayor Godfrey is similarly proposing that the Peterson resort complex absorb most of our gondola operating costs, but this is a risky gamble because the resort is not guaranteed to succeed--and even if it does, it isn't clear that the resort would be willing to subsidize the urban gondola in perpetuity since the urban gondola isn't really needed for the resort. (Peterson can easily provide enough foothill parking for the 500 daily skiers that his resort can handle, or run shuttle buses.) In fact, Godfrey has stated that the contract to operate the urban gondola would be renewable at Peterson's option.
So again, I think this article does a pretty good job of highlighting relevant features of the Telluride gondola. My main gripe with the article is that it repeats, for the umpteenth time, the bogus $20 million figure for construction of Ogden's gondola. It's about time for Schwebke to report that this figure has no factual basis, or at least, attribute the claim to someone who's willing to take responsibility for it.
It just gets worse and worse.
Just saw the little box on the front page of the examiner comparing Ogden and Telluride. It includes the following fiction:
Cost to build: [the gondola]
Ogden $20 million
Telluride: $16 million
The Ogden gondola's projectect cost is now well in excess of $30 million [as I believe the SE has reported]. But let that go. The figure for Telluride covers construction of a gondola that takes people from the town directly to the ski slopes. The box reportes its length as 2.5 miles. The $20 million the paper says is the comparable cost for an Ogden gondola only covers cost of a gondola that will take people from downtown to Weber State, approximately 3.5 miles, not to the ski slopes at Malan's Basin. And yet the box claims the length of the Ogden gondola will be 6 miles.
That's the total length of BOTH the downtown gondola to Weber State, AND the Peterson proposed gondola from WSU to Malan's Basin. So, the SE compares the cost of the Telluride system from town to slopes with the cost of only one leg of the proposed Ogden system, which will stop at WSU and leave skiers two and a half miles from and fifteen hundred feet below the proposed ski slopes at Malan's Basin.
Great work, SE.
Since the numbers in the front page are flatly wrong [having eliminated the cost of the Peterson proposed Malan's Basin gondola from the cost reported for Ogden's gondola], it will be interesting to see if the SE runs a correction. On the front page.
Dan:
Sorry, Dan, but you are extraordinarily well informed on these matters, and you therefor can read the article and make comparisons for yourself, as clearly you have done. That many readers of the SE who are not nearly so well informed as you are will make the same comparisons I doubt.
In trendy Telluride, where a two-bedroom home on Main Street can sell for more than $1 million, locals take for granted the free gondola that operates between downtown and picturesque Mountain Village.
What does this have to do with anything? And how many locals own those million dollar plus homes. Not the workin' folk. Still makes a dramatic intro to a baseless and completely uniformative article
Like a brilliant sunset enveloping the majestic peaks of the San Juan Mountains that ring the two towns, the novelty of the $16 million gondola as a tourist attraction has faded.
It was never built as a tourist attraction and these lifts are hardly a novelty to a ski town.
However, while views from the gondola are spectacular, what's even more stunning is the sheer volume of riders who continue to use it.
Why the stun, It took no analysis to determine that a point to point system connecting two remote villages seperated by a steep ski mountain could be served by well by this system. It will be used by workers, tourists and skiers. Both villages were quite well developed before this installation and it replaced a horrid and round about commute between the two economically connected villages. Both end points had sufficient population and employment to require such a system. That is the unique demand that existed in Tellurides setting. No such situation exists here or few other mountain resorts. IF... there were a large mountain village at Snowbasin's base and they desired it to be connected to Ogden, then we would have a similar need. Snowbasin is 25 years from having a comparable base village...If something of that magnitude were in their master plan. Telluride mountain village is a substantial small town.
Since opening in 1996, the gondola has averaged 2.6-million passengers a year on the 2 1/2 mile route between Telluride, population 2,300, and Mountain Village, population 1,000.
Straight from the stat sheet. Interesting fact. Telluride got it right. They chose the best tool for the job. I'll bet they hired unbased and highly experienced consultants. Let's have some of those guys come over here and evaluate or situation and listen.
The gondola virtually eliminates the need for a car when traveling between the two towns, reducing parking and traffic congestion, as well as air and noise pollution, said Mountain Village Mayor Davis Fansler.
Sweet. Telluride and the Mountain Village are 2 small towns seperated by a couple of miles of steep mountain. The gondola eliminated vecle trips between the two. Both towns are extremely pedestrian friendly and there is substantial bus service throughout the individual communities to complement the gondola. These analogies only support a gondola from a foothill base to a Malan's Village which if started today would be more than 2 decades behind Telluride Mountain Village development and has only a tiny fraction of the development ground. It will never have the need for this kind of system. Several thousand people LIVE at either end of this system.
Ogden-area business and civic leaders traveled by private plane to Telluride on Aug. 30 so they could ride the gondola. The trip, organized by Mayor Matthew Godfrey, also took the group to Kellogg, Idaho, to tour that community's gondola system.
Cool, Now lets ride public tranport in the form of airline general seating to any of several cities that more resemble Ogden and see what TRANSIT solutions they are up to.
In addition to Godfrey, others who participated in the excursion included Bryce Gibby, owner of Gibby Aviation; Mike Ostermiller, executive director of Weber/North Davis Association of Realtors; Mel Kemp, president of Kemp Development; Dave Hardman, executive director of the Ogden/Weber Chamber of Commerce; and Doug DeFries, chief financial officer for Bank of Utah.
What experience do any of these guys INCLUDING the mayor have in evaluating the myriad of criteria necessary to support the decision to build what kind of transit system.
The goal of the trip was to provide insight into the feasibility of establishing a gondola system in Ogden that would connect downtown to Weber State University and a planned resort at Malan's Basin, Godfrey said.
Well then why not search for a city of comparable density that used a point to point TRANSPORT system like a gondola to solve a linear transit issue. Our LINEAR transit needs are for an E-W CORRIDOR between downtown and WSU. The connection between a proposed resort and the foothill present entirely different transport criteria than the connection from downtown to that foothill base. Appropriate technology. Use a hammer on nails...a screwdriver to turn threads.
The gondola, estimated to cost at least $20 million, would attract tourists and provide mass transportation, he said, adding that it could be funded through the sale of the city-owned Mount Ogden Golf Course to developer Chris Peterson.
20 mil for the bare hardware ONLY. That leaves NO budget for terminals and gondola terminals are not cheap. Tourists already have gondola access to near the top of the mountain on the Snowbasin side and it's hardly a booming business. There is no demonstrated need for MASS transportation between the two endpoints served by the proposed system. In fact there is no demonstrated need for MASS transport between ANY two points in the system. Gee...if we don't need the town gondola we DON'T need to sell the city parklands. How friggin' easy is that to understand. It's elementary.
Reflecting on last month's visit to Colorado, Godfrey said he is impressed by the number of travelers who use the Telluride/Mountain Village gondola.
"It's clearly a major component of their transportation system and one that people prefer," he said.
Ostermiller said he was struck by how Telluride and Mountain Village residents overwhelmingly support the gondola.
"It was built with little to no opposition and essentially with taxpayer dollars," he said.
Yes, again the criteria presented by Telluride's unique geographical placement to it's economically interdependent Mountain Village made this one a no brainer. There was ONE treacherous road connecting the two and the gondola replaced the need to use that road to commute. Perfection. Now where is any criteria of any similarity here in Ogden. If anything this makes a strong case for a ROADLESS ONLY development, if there ever is one in Malan's...because the road will be hairy, expensive and the criteria of a mountain village seperated from the foothill by treacherous roadless terrain is quite obviously best served by the gondola. Down here in town , though we have entirely contrasting needs.
In contrast, the plan for the Ogden gondola has generated considerable controversy with some residents maintaining it would be an eyesore and have an adverse effect on property values along the proposed route.
The Telluride/Mountain Village gondola was built by the Telluride Ski & Golf Co. to eliminate transportation and air-quality problems due to growth throughout the region.
Without the gondola, the potential for increased air pollution would be staggering, said Candace Kjome, transit coordinator for Mountain Village.
More than 30 buses would have to shuttle between Mountain Village and Telluride each hour to match the gondola's ridership, which can reach 10,000 passengers a day during busy winter months, she said.
Joan May, executive director of the Sheep Mountain Alliance, an environmental watchdog group based in Telluride, said the gondola is green-friendly and efficient.
"It's considered an environmental benefit," she said. "When you have to get from point A to point B, it's a nice option because it runs all the time."
However, the gondola would be even more environmentally friendly if it operated on solar or wind power instead of electricity generated by a coal-fired power plant, May said.
Operation of the gondola is funded through a 3 percent tax on real estate transactions earmarked to the Mountain Village Homeowners Association. The tax will generate about $7 million this year; about $3.5 million of that will go toward running the gondola and the remainder will be used for other economic development projects.
The Mountain Village Metro District, a special taxing district responsible for operating the gondola, also plans to spend $6 million to complete an upgrade by the end of 2008. The upgrade would enable the system to run more quietly.
The gondola typically operates from 7 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, but runs longer during special events like the Telluride Film Festival held last month.
More travelogue pap and evidence to support their wise selection of an APPROPRIATE system for their needs. I'll bet they did their research, even so.
Ed Johnson, who attended the film festival with wife Lizbeth, said riding the gondola was a highlight of their visit.
"It's wonderful," the Dallas man said. "It seems very safe. The fact that it's free is a nice advantage. There's nothing to speak against it."
The gondola is closed for routine maintenance for about 6 1/2 weeks in the spring and 3 1/2 weeks in the fall.
Each car holds eight passengers. There are five terminals, with the first in Telluride at an elevation around 8,500 feet.
The highest stop is 10,500 feet, midway up the mountain at Station St. Sophia, and the last stop is at 9,500 feet in a Mountain Village parking lot.
The gondola towers are low-profile, typically not exceeding the tree line, to reduce visual impact and shutdowns because of high winds.
Although the gondola is free, a lift ticket or season pass is needed to access the mountain during ski season. Fansler said he can't fathom ever charging passengers to ride the gondola because it is vital in attracting customers to shops, restaurants, hotels, golf courses and the ski resort.
"I can't imagine what this community would be like economic-developmentwise without the gondola."
Again Scott, great work when you only have to manufacture a few lines on your own and retread the rest. You didn't even have to ask any pesky well thought questions that might spoil your comfy relationship and jeapordize any more junkets with the mayor. You uncovered absolutely nothing of substance that can be used to help concerned citizen's evaluate our needs and make key Multi Million dollar decisions that will affect our community and it's transit goals for the next few decades. Hopeless.
Allow me to clarify one of my comments...
Well then why not search for a city of comparable density that used a point to point AERIAL TRANSPORT system like a gondola to solve a NON-linear GROUND LEVEL transit issue. Our NON-LINEAR GROUND-LEVEL transit needs are for an E-W CORRIDOR between downtown and WSU. The connection between a proposed Malan's resort and the foothill present entirely different transport criteria than the connection from downtown to that foothill base. Appropriate technology. Use a hammer on nails...a screwdriver to turn threads.
Dan,
Yes the article is friendly, uncontroversial, and in a very subtle way, seems neutral. Yet it is exactly the opposite. The trend in todays media is to provide little of hard fact for people to digest so as to make for easy reading, bringing back those readers. Lack of information to support an unrelenting characterization of Iraq as harboring terrorists and WMD also has us in an intractable and unwinnable pretext to WW3. Again the media fails to serve by not sticking to getting answers to tough questions and folds under the demand to get out the copy to satisfy deadlines and the advertising flow. Nice to know our civic and national destinies are in the hands of such empty heads.
The APPROPRIATE way to deploy a gondola from downtown to foothill base would be in a straight line saving more than a mile of gondola installation and serving exactly what Peterson wants. In fact the mayor told me CP wanted to do it that way. It was the mayor apparently who sought to adapt this to transit following 23rd to Harrison and round the corners. Installed in a linear fashion over the city would require 50'-60' towers and relegate this system to even less utility. Either way it is not APPROPRIATE.
It was built with little to no opposition and essentially with taxpayer dollars
It seems very safe. The fact that it's free is a nice advantage. There's nothing to speak against it.
These two statements are included to suggest an undertone that anyone who is against the mayor's initiative is way off-base. It is insulting that Schwebke goes out of his way to forward the Naysayer line in such a subtle form.
Tod:
You make a good point. What the Telluride experience seems to relate to is not the Mayor's gondola from downtown to Weber State, but the Malan's Basin proposed gondola from somewhere near the head of 36th Street to the Malan's Basin resort if/when it is built. In other words, the Telluride experience with its gondola seems to fit Kent Jorgenson's Plan B proposal far better than it does the Peterson/Godfrey double gondola proposal.
Has anyone thought about Switzerland which has the best skiing in the world?
They use narrow gauge trains to go from ski resort villages to other ski resort villages.
The Swiss insist on getting their money's worth. They do not build gondolas.
FWIW, I think you would find a lot of gondolas in switzerland. They are the leaders in lift technology. The great thing about the swiss is their insistence on appropriateness in any infrastructure installation. They will take into consideration projected ridership, terrain, engineering difficulty, among many other technical criteria to arrive at the appropriate transit technology. Our mayor o, on the other hand picks and chooses his way around advice and other's experience. Since he has gone way out ahead of any research and advocated the proposed system and gone to the trouble of creating a divided situation within the voters we are now stuck with a hodgepodge of entrenched media generated disinformation that has muddied the whle issue. His position is well entrenched in the urban gondola and no amount of data can rescue his political commitment. I almost thought these trips were an attempt by him to uncover some hidden gem of data that owuld conveniently allow him to back out of the gondola proposal, but I was dreamin'
The swiss use gondolas, trams, streetcars, trolleys, narrow guage trains, cog railways...etc. They are awesome. The reason they have engineered so many unique transit and lift mechanisms is the terrain they have in switzerland demands the most approprite means to an end. They will engineer a project like this to the finest detail before arriving at a conclusion. In many instances they have engineered completely unique systems based on the criteria of the particular job. Here we pick and choose off the shelf...too lazy to do the math and find the perfect fit.
crum- you rant against Mr. Schwebke for not asking what traffic would be relieved here seems a bit off base. While he doesn't ask, he also doesn't say it will do anything here. He reports on what it has done there.
He also doesn't analyze what might be the diference between to communities with a total population of 3,000 versus a population base of whatever it is here...at least 70,000 plus depending on which people you want to include in your figures.
Obviously the situation is different there and anyone with half a brain should be able to see that.
No where does he say the same would be the case here. I beleive he does his best to report what he found.
Should the headline have been: Colorado gondola would be better with solar power?
Curm and Tod,
Okay, granted, I'm not a typical reader. Neither is either of you. Perhaps some others would like to chime in and give us their reactions?
Been thinking about that 2.5 million rider statistic, which sounds pretty impressive. It would be interesting to see this broken down between the summer and winter operating seasons. Last winter Telluride had 390,000 skier visits. However, two of the three gondola legs actually function as ski lifts, and the third, though not exactly a lift, can transport skiers between different portions of the ski area. So it's easy to imagine each skier boarding the gondola several times in a day. The only leg of the proposed Ogden gondolas that would function this way would be the leg from Malan's Basin up to the top of Peterson's property. (I'm ignoring Peterson's ridiculous claim that for 60 days each winter you'll be able to ski all the way down to the golf course.)
The Malan's Basin ski area will have a maximum capacity of about 500 skiers per day. Even if it reaches this capacity every single day during a four-month season, that's still only 60,000 skier visits per year. What fraction of these skiers would ride Ogden's urban gondola? Probably well under half, because Peterson is gonna provide at least a hundred parking spaces at the top of 36th Street, and don't forget all the WSU ski bum students.
To underscore the fact that Mountain Village is not analogous to Malan's Basin, consider that Mountain Village has a land area of 3.3 square miles, a population of 978, and 1022 housing units (2000 census data). Malan's Basin has only a few acres of buildable land, where Peterson claims he'll eventually squeeze in 350 condos but "phase 1" doesn't seem to include any lodging at all.
Another big difference is that there are parking lots in Mountain Village. In fact, from what I can tell, a lot of the Telluride gondola riders are actually tourists and festival attendees bound for Telluride who know that it's easier to find a parking spot in Mountain Village. Obviously there will be no parking in Malan's Basin. Perhaps the day will come when parking in downtown Ogden becomes so scarce that tourists will park at WSU and ride the gondola into downtown...but I ain't holding my breath.
EIAU-
Again it's the subtle at work. When a healthy portion of the article is devoted to it's positive environmental benefits and traffic reduction, it is implied that those same issues are parallel to ours in Ogden. It's not
If the situation is so different there as you say, and it is, then this foray to Colorado has no meruit whatsoever and the reporting of it is so much filler. Why don't we just go round the world reporting on all kinds of unrelated stuff in support of the gondola. Can't find your logic...
EIAU:
Sorry, but I think you are wrong about this. If Mr. Schwebke had been dispatched to Telluride on his own [not flanked by the Godfrey Gondola Sales Team] to examine the operation, and draw conclusions from it that he thought might be valuable for Ogdenites to know as they consider the Mayor's and Mr. Peterson's proposals, you'd hear no gripe from me. I might disagree with the conclusions he drew, but if he was sent to examine and reach a conclusion on his own, I would have had no complaints about that assignment. But he wasn't.
Had he been dispatched to Telluride with a Lift Ogden guide and a Smart Growth Ogden or Sierra Club guide in tow, to look at the gondola operations and report on how those in Odgen thought it related, or did not relate, to Ogden's dilemma, no objection from me. But he wasn't.
Had he simply gone there, on his own, to descirbe Telluride and its gondola... the kind of travel section peice that often appears in papers and magazines, no objection from me. But he wasn't.
He was sent to accompany the Godfrey Gondola Sales Team, and rather than just reporting on what he found there, he also reported their spin. Unexamined. The whole purpose of the Godfrey Gondola Sales Team going to Telluride with Mr. Schwebke in tow was to make the case for the Peterson/Godfrey proposals. That was the entire context for the article. So when Mr. Schewbke dutifully parrotted points the Sales Team wanted made, and without further examination, he acted as a PR flack, not a reporter for an independent and serious paper.
The really surprising thing to me is that his editors let the story run as it did. EIAU, the SE didn't even get the bare facts right. Estimated $20 million to build a six mile two gondola system in Ogden from downtown to Malan's Basin? [Look at the "facts" comparison box next to the story on the front page.] Not even Hizzonah claims that. And even for just the downtown leg, the unattributed $20 estimate is no longer valid, if it ever was. Did the SE bother to check? Apparently not.
When the SE touts a story in advance, and runs it with splashy graphics starting above the fold on the front page, with boxed "facts" to accompany, and the editors don't even bother to fact check the "facts" box, you are going to have a hard time convincing me that this was a serious piece of journalism produced by serious people working for an independent newspaper.
So, compadre, we're going to have to disagree about this.
Who and where did they all get the money to go to check out these venues? Was it a taxpayer expence and how much was the cost of the trips for each one of them. and did they take their spouses with them? anyone know?
Let us also not forget that Telluride Ski Company is essentially THE government in Mountain Village, Colorado, The gondola traverses THEIR ski area, and it was the explosive growth in THEIR Mountain Village that necessitated it's installation. There were no options, and opposition is quite non-existent within the corporate/government structure. Fact also remains that they had the perfect scenario for the gondola solution. We do not. If we did, I would be all for it. I like gondolas. I care enough for our city to explore solutions that will contribute to redevelopment in the central city and create an infrastructure that eases our local population into a sustainable transit and pedestrian based lifestyle. That means we focus on putting an end to strip and boulevard development and create pedestrian zones linked by ground transit. That makes a city lively and draws people in with the quality of life. A transit zone with coffee shops, cafes, bookstores, music shops, theatres, artisans, bakeries, stoners on guitar and dulcimer, sword swallowers, fire eaters, jugglers, bums, this is the stuff of street life and it's very cool. A gondola through town will create nothing of the sort.
See I told you:
Mr. Greiling's piece yesterday said that the SE reporter's way was paid by the paper. That was proper. He was not a guest of the Mayor or the Chamber. I think elsewhere it was reported that all along on the trip paid their own way. Whether this means that the mayor shelled out out of his own pocket, I don't know.
And I don't think it matters. Taking trips to see how other communities do things he thinks might work here is a legit function of a Mayor and it's not wrong or an abuse of his authority to have the public pick up the tab. That comes with the office omes, and it should come with the office.
Of course, a some years ago the Council passed a resolution stating that no further public money should be spent on gondola plans. But, sadly, it was a resolution, and not binding beyond the Council. Had the Council made it an ordinance, the Mayor would now be in violation of that ordinance. But the Council did not.
I am not a fan of Mayor Godfrey [no, really, I'm not], but we elected him, and it is well within the scope of his legitimate powers to travel to other cities, conventions, meetings to look for things done elsewhere that may, with good results, be done in Ogden.
What a stain this sorry assed article puts on all the great news paper people of the Standard's past. There isn't one of these incompetents that run the Standard that would have even qualified to be a press room janitor in Abe Glasmann's Standard.
Just one more piece of evidence why the Standard is sliding into irrelevance and obscurity.
This is no doubt the high point of this dismal so called reporter's life - riding in a biz jet with the big guys, basking in the reflected glory of this circle of sleazy manipulators.
The most embarrassing thing in Ogden is this poor excuse for a news paper we have.
Thanks Sandusky, we owe you one.
I wonder where Bernie, Bob, Dustin, Stephen, etc are these days. There is very little nastiness around here recently, which is what turned them off so much. Seems when we finally get to the nitty gritty details and facts of the matter they have nothing to offer to support their view. All they had to say is WCF was a pool of negativity. I think things are quite well tempered. Their boy, CP, has shown how little he really has to show. Sad too, as there has been some real sorting out of this issue in the last few weeks. It would be nice to hear from some of the hard core LO folks and what research they have been doing.
I guess your assurtion that everything written has an evil unsaid meaning and motive behind it could be true. I would ask you to consider the opposite may also be true, that he wrote what he saw. Nothing further implied or meant.
He did get the opinion of the local environmental group there and pointed out the differences ragarding how the thing is paid for.
The truth of the matter is that a gondola seems to work there...period. Does it mean it will here? No. Does it mean it won't? No.
Also, does Matt Godfrey have some mystical power over people that I'm not aware of that forces them to no longer be able to effectively evaluate things when he is in their presence? I don't know Mr. Schwebke, but is he no longer capable of holding his own thoughts just because he was on a plane for a few hours with the all powerful Godfrey?
I personally think thåt Mr. Schwebke is a young beat reporter who tried to stick to the facts. He's not clever enough to be propogating a subversive message. So I repeat...a gondola seems to work there.
But then again, I don't think the government brought down the towers on 9/11 or that the CIA killed Kennedy or the moon landing was conducted on a Hollywood sound stage.
I have a feeling that if he'd come back and said, "Most of the people in Telluride hate it." Many of you would be singing the praises of Mr. Schwebke. You will get your chance Tuesday.
EIAU:
You wrote "I guess your assurtion that everything written has an evil unsaid meaning and motive behind it could be true. No where in my posts on this did I say that. Don't set up straw men just to knock them down.
I did say if Mr. Schwebke went there to report on the gondola in Telluride, he'd have had no complaints from me. But he also reported the Godfrey Gondola Sales Team's reactions to what they saw, the points the Mayor wanted to emphasize. That was the problem, not that he reported them, but that he left the spin from the Mayor unexamined. As I said above, if he had gone there on his own, not amidst the Godfrey Gondola Amen Chorus and reported on what he found, and what he thought it meant for Ogden, if anything, no complaints on his doing that from me. But that is not, again, what he did. Take the spin from the Amen Chorus out, make the story entirely what Schwebke saw [straight reportage] or what Schwebke concluded based on what he saw [op ed piece, or investigative piece], and I might disagree with his conclusions, but I would not be complaining about his having written a puff piece. The inclusion of the Mayor's contingent's opinions, unexamined, is the problem here. What possessed the SE to send him in the company of the Godfrey Sales Team escapes me.
You also wrote: I have a feeling that if he'd come back and said, "Most of the people in Telluride hate it." Many of you would be singing the praises of Mr. Schwebke." Probably true. But not me. If he'd gone there with a street car hotty in tow, and failed to probe his answers and left his statements unexamined, I'd be on him as I am now.
Ogden needs a good independent paper with inquisitive reporters who are backed up by even more inquisitive editors. It needs a paper at which the culture encourages and rewards sharp questioning of all advocates of anything and especially skeptical and sharp questioning of statements by anyone in elective or appointed office. That's the press's most important role in a democracy: community watchdog. Not PR. [And yes, it should play that role no matter who is mayor, no matter what party might be in office locally or statewide.]
Hell, if I were mayor and the SE didn't come after me with probling questions like "Mr. Mayor, what's your source for that? What do you base your claim on?" and "Where did you get those numbers, Mr. Mayor?" and "Mr. Mayor, since there is no car or bus traffic to Malan's Basin now, what traffic in Ogden do you think will be releived by a gondola to the Basin?" That's the press's job in a democracy. [NB: Senator... Senator... If I may, Senator, I hereby avow that I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, a candidate for mayor.]
You also wrote: You will get your chance Tuesday. What's happening Tuesday?
curm- I was refering to tod transit as addressed the "implied" meaning of the article: "When a healthy portion of the article is devoted to it's positive environmental benefits and traffic reduction, it is implied that those same issues are parallel to ours in Ogden."
LOL I agree about your paper comments. I'm not a big fan of the newsroom, but I also consider what they write-knowing they aren't the most skilled-to be topical. I attribute it to lack of experience not some underlying agenda. Just as when I read something here, I consider it knowing the slant.
Tuesday the story is evidently about a Gondola that didn't work. It will give everyone a chance to say, "I told you so!"
Trust me, I don't think any of these stories are deep or "smart" enough. I just hate that many look for conspiracies instead of considering it is just shallow reporting. It is equally plausable to me that someone could go on a trip with Godfrey and attempt to counter everything he said as it is to concur with everything he said.
EIAU,
Did I say that "everything written has an evil unsaid meaning to it" . Where on earth did you determine that twist. I simply made the point that there is more communicated than what is said ...or unsaid. A sharp observer of media slant can cut through statements that are loaded or unloaded. An article such as this one we dicuss today is severely short on data that is relevant to Ogden's implementation of an Urban Gondola system. Yet it was touted by the SE as a fact finding mission. Never mind that the facts they discovered were of little relevance to us. You seem to be satisfied with ANY facts. Not me. My previous posts and those of Dan S. and others have covered FACTS about the Telluride Gondola installation that ARE relevant to Ogden. Those facts were conveniently left out of the SE article, not by evil design, but by a lack of curiosity and observation on the part of the reporter. Unfortunately the bulk of the SE readers hoping to gain more factual information so that they may form an informed position on this project were left severely shortchanged. Some will actually form their opinion from Schwebke's hopelessly lacking piece. We are just filling in the gaps. Just because Schwebke works for the paper and just because we do not does not diminish the facts that have been delivered in todays discussion. There was nothing unfactual in the SE article. There is alot of difference between random facts and relevant ones.
I guess I just had trouble reconciling the following:
"I simply made the point that there is more communicated than what is said ...or unsaid. A sharp observer of media slant can cut through statements that are loaded or unloaded."
and
"Those facts were conveniently left out of the SE article, not by evil design, but by a lack of curiosity and observation on the part of the reporter."
You seem to imply that the reporter is diliberately lazy...and he may well be. I just think he's inexperienced. I readily admit, I could be completely wrong.
And as far as fact go, I don't think anyone knows the true numbers....they are all guesses. In Baltimore proponents of the "Baltimore Lift" estimate a minimum of $5 million per mile up $14 million per mile depending on land aquisition costs. Quite a spread.
http://www.baltimorelift.com/
Perhaps the next two days article will be deeper and more enlightening.
I think we ought to give Schwebke a break here. The original teaser on this article said he was going to give us the story in three installments.
This is just the first of the three. Let's see how he builds this story over the whole series. I think it entirely plausable that this first installment is just that, the set up of the story and not indicative of all plot twists coming our way.
Lets give this story teller the opportunity to tell us the tale in three parts as advertised.
Then we can tear him up and throw him to the dogs if necessary, or we can lionize his brilliance if he stabs Godfrey in the heart with a Gondola tower.
I was wondering when the Oz would chime in...Very democratic. I'll bite. Can't wait for part 2
[NB: Senator... Senator... If I may, Senator, I hereby avow that I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, a candidate for mayor.] - Curm.
Curm,
I'm really sorry to learn this. I think you'd be a very effective mayor or at least provide one heck of a race!
Oz:
Granted, it's a series. But, each part of the series ought to be able to stand alone, on its own merits, as an article. Not everyone will read all three.
EIAU:
OK, I think I have a better handle on your arguement now, and I don't think we are very far apart on this. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting [though others have I suspect] that the SE is in the Mayor's pocket or on the take or deliberatly produced a bit of PR. What I am suggesting is that sending along a reporter who seems not to be particularly inquisitive, and not particularly prone to question the statements and press releases of public officials, to accompany the Godfrey Gondola Sales Team on a "fact finding" trip was very likely to produce what it did: a story that reported the Sales Team's take on some things unchallenged. Even allowing for inexperience of lack of inquisitiveness on the reporter's part, I'd expect whoever edits his work to demand a higher level of inquisitiveness than this report showed. And if that means more digging and a rewrite or two before it sees ink, so be it. This was after all a feature story of sorts, not breaking news.
And, that aside, there is the problem of the errors of fact prominently displayed in the fact box of the front page story. Like listing the estimated price [estimated by who? They don't say] for the three and a half mile city gondola as the price for the combined six mile city and Malan's Basin gondola. [BTW, the Wasatch Regional Council, which Hizzonah says will be on hand at his Union Station "open house" to provide "accurate" infromation about the gondola plans, estimated construction costs for the city built gondola to WSU --- well over a year ago now --- at millions more than $20 million. So where did the SE get the lower estimate? No clue given. I agree, you can find a range of estimates for construction costs. If the paper doesn't want to assign someone to do the digging and pick, and defend, one of the estimates as the most plausible, and evidently it doesn't, then the way out is to report that estimates range from $20 million to $40 million -- or whatever --- for construction of the city part of the gondola plan. Not that hard, really, if fact checking and accuracy are important to you. And if "you" is a journalist, they damn well better be important. Que no?]
I agree, we are not far apart and I as much as I think we can hope for an in-depth piece, I keep my expectations low.
I've just been around enough to know that there is a big difference between being an average paper and being a subversive force. They can look a lot alike though.
And yes, ozboy, I give Schwebke the benefit of the doubt. He is in a tough position, no matter what he says it is going to be torn apart. My guess he is trying so hard to not be "opinionated" that he just doesn't say much at all. Instead of being a real piece of analysis, it is turns out to be: Gondola in Telluride works, everyone including the environmentalist like it and other folks from Ogden liked seeing it work. Oh yeah, it is free too. Tune in tomorrow.
###
Tod, when everyone is on the same side things are usually quite civil. When someone has a differing opinion from many here it becomes quote nasty. Doesn't suprise me that the LO gang aren't saying much here.
Well now Curmudgeon, Ezekiel stands on its own but is not necessarily indicative of what the rest of that little ol book is about.
And EIAU I certainly agree with your take on Schwebke, He does seem to try so hard to not be opinionated that his work is very bland usually. His style is very much "He said and then she said". I think he would be good at writing brochures.
Oh but it is so easy to sit in the stands and criticize the gladiators in the arena.
Ed - I agree with you on the Standard being a sorry shadow of its former great self.
Arcritic, I think the Giegers have gone underground because Peterson's big shot mouth piece has told them to shut the f___ up and take those dumb signs down. And if this forum didn't get kind of aggressive and "nasty" there wouldn't be very many eye balls looking at it - would there? Including maybe yours?
It is sort of like the difference between how many people sit around and watch the debating society versus how many fall out and watch the fist fight in the parking lot. Besides, we all like to see arrogant bully punks like Godfrey get their plows cleaned and their asses kicked!
EIAU
You wrote: "there is a big difference between being an average paper and being a subversive force. They can look a lot alike though."
Damn, what an interesting idea. Have to think on that some.
As for the matter of why the SE might not be better than it is in its news reporting.... Well, I'm not in the biz and never have been but I know that Sy Hersh is not coming to work for the SE. [Though word has it Judith Miller is looking for work.... OK, OK, I know. I'm not a nice person.] I'd expect the SE, then, to put a lot of effort into developing talent in the newsroom. I'd expect the editors to be constantly saying things like "Scott, in this story you just filed, where did the Mayor get those numbers? Well, did you ask? You should have. Call his office and get an answer or a refusal to answer. We need one or the other before we print this. Next time, ask up front," Or some such. A steady diet of being told to go back and get more when you think a story is done would, I imagine, train someone up fairly quickly to begin asking questions of those he interviews or covers, particularly public officials pretty quick.
I agree Mr. Schwebke can't win for losin' often. He will get criticized no matter what he writes or doesn't, since the issue is so volitile in Ogden. And some of the criticism is, IMHO, over the top. And I've defended some of his pieces here when I thought the piling on was unjustified. None of that, however [meaning the inevitability of criticism, some of it unreasonable] should excuse anything less than the best possible work on a story. From him. From his editor [and the more I think on this, particularly in light of your comments, the more I'm leaning toward the idea that more of the responsibility for the shortcomings in today's piece lies with the editor involved than with the reporter. But I want to think more on this too, when I'm more awake than I am at the moment.]
Interesting posts, EIAU. Enjoying the conversation.
Oz:
We are mostly in agreement, you and I. However... [you knew a "however" was coming, didn't you?], you wrote: Oh but it is so easy to sit in the stands and criticize the gladiators in the arena.
Nope, Oz, that one won't fly. I'm a subscriber to the SE, and that gives me [along with anyone who stuffs half a buck into a coin slot as well] standing and leave to give the paper unshirted hell [civilly of course] when I think it dropped the ball on a story. If I were a publisher, I'd really start to worry if my staff stopped getting letters and emails commenting on the paper's articles. [Please note: commenting includes telling reporters or editors when I think they've done something well... and I do... not just dumping on them when they screw up.]
I'm "the reader" Oz, which means I [and you and anyone else who reads it] has not only standing, but the best possible standing to critique the paper.
A big part of Schwebke's bland problem is that he followed two pretty damn good reporters on the Ogden beat - Cathy McKitrick and John Wright. I don't ever remember either one of them catching a bunch of flak from the readers of this blog.
It is always difficult for mediocre talent to go on stage after a hot act.
SE Repeats Front Page Fact Errors Again Today
Front page box next to today's gondola piece again has the facts wrong. It again says estimated cost of constructing a six mile gondola in Ogden [downtown to WSU and WSU to Malan's Basin] is $20 million. That estimate [which is millions lower than the Wasatch Regional Council estimated orginally] was only for the downtown to WSU leg of the gondola and not for the WSU to Malan's Basin portion of the gondola. Once again, the SE proves unable to get even the simple undisputed facts right. On a front page feature. It offers an estimated construction cost for half the system as an estimate of the total construction cost for the whole system.
Didn't they cover fact checking in Journalism 101?
And the beat goes on....
Is there a link for todays piece. I don't subscribe.
ted, have you been around long?
I don't think I was reading this blog when Cathy McKitrick was at the Standard but I remember that John Wright got slammed a lot here. Granted he got a lot of praise as well. In general he seemed to either get slammed or lavished with praise on just about everything he wrote. But it seemed more even than Schwebke. Scott gets slammed lots more than he gets praised (and he has been praised here when people agreed with what he wrote). Look in the archives, even rudi lavished him in the main article a few times.
Suspense got the best of me, so I ran down to the store for a copy. Sounds more like a travelogue right out of Sunset Magazine.
Another piece sorely lacking in any congruence to Ogden's particular needs. Dave Hardman says that "I gained the idea that gondolas were the catalyst to get people to come to the community and created a transportation system that didn't disrupt other traffic." Nice idea, Dave. First of all the only traffic issue was on the road to Silver Mountain. There was no Resort related traffic issues in Kellogg. The little village of Wardner was probably tired of ski traffic, but back in 1990 the ski area was not what it is today and the traffic was not much of an issue. The gondola simply allowed people to park near downtown Kellogg and save driving up the mountain road. A nioe relief for the folks in Wardner and good for downtown. Hardman also said the visits gave him insights how gondolas drive tourism and provide effective mass transit. Actually the Ski Area is largely responsible for driving tourism as it does almost everywhere. The gondola provides no mass transit except to the ski area. So he has it backwards. The gondola would never have been built without the ski area.
Now for the contrasts. The Silver Mountain Gondola was also a perfect fit for this area. You have a very small town like Kellogg with little or no transit issues within it's city limits. They wanted to preserve space at the resort base for development instead of paving parking lots. The gondola base is about a 1/4 mile from I-90 making the particular geographical layout perfect. This gondola does not serve any urban transit function. Again this installation resembles more the Foothill to Malan's base leg than any proposed urban leg. Sure the base is right adjacent to the downtown area like the Ogden plan but the similarity ends there. There is 4 miles of Urban route between our downtown proposed base and the Foothill base. Kellogg is nothing like this. Again, Peterson is welcome to build his mountain gondola if he can secure the land for a foothill base. As for Ogden's inner city transit needs. The gondola will not serve nor provide any backbone to reach key centers of urban activity. It also fails to contribute to street level development. Something that Ogden needs to lead the way for a new urbanism. Ogden is not like all the rest of Utah's exploding new cities. Those other cities are being carved fresh out of retired farmland. Ogden is an old city with fixed boundaries and little newly developable acreage. Cities like this must focus on REdevelopment which is why a transit corridor is so key to our resurgence. Unfortunately for all the rest of the suburban hotbeds they have no central city with magnificent historical homes. Ogden does have this and wide streets shaded by 100 year old trees. Our situation lends itself to street level transit which will stimulate that redevelopment making Ogden's central core great again instead of sliding steadily into rental property and bulldozing perfectly restorable buildings. A gondola system to reach the foothill for a proposed tiny resort places too much emphasis on that proposal as the lynchpin to Ogden's resurgence and assumes tourists are what this city needs. Tourism is fine but Ogden needs a transit corridor to stimulate that resurgence. Let Peterson build his resort without selling the golf course and Ogden retains part of what makes it great.
Dan S. makes the point clear that Malan's skier capacity will never place the kind of demand on our city to require such a system. We should concentrate on what our city needs, not Chris Peterson. Which leads me to this point. Most of these ski area and infrastructure projects are done by corporations. Only in Ogden do we get an individual who probably salivates everytime his name gets in the paper which is quite often. I'm sure he and the mayor feel that the personal touch will serve the project well. Hardly. I get damn tired of hearing his name tossed about as the saviour of our community. It's gotten so tiresome to hear what Chris Peterson wants. Sounds like we are serving it up to some child who won't take no for an answer. Corporate structure came about as a function of infrastructural needs. The first corporation in America was formed to fund and build a badly needed bridge, an Infrastructure. Corporate structure allowed everyday citizens to form an investment group to build things that were necessary for their common livelihood...bridges, tunnels, causeways, toll roads, etc. Corporations today exist only to serve the profit and growth needs of the stockholders and get quite a lot of preferential treatment from the government and the IRS. This has evolved considerably from the original spirit of the corporation. The pointin this corporate rant is that todays ski corporations are quite sophiticated when viewing development plans and come to communities with well drawn proposals that are easy to understand and shape to a communities needs. Here we get Chris Peterson who thinks he can do all of this singlehandedly without showing us his backing, any engineered plans and has the gall to try to force a sale of municipal parklands. This last attemp would have him run out of town in any other outdoor sports community.
The SE map is a joke and only serves up more disinformation. Why not show a local layout with a map of their gondola route. Is the SE too cheap to pay mapquest or other professional mapping services. Their map provides even less information than their statement of Kelloggs locale in the opening paragraphs. I thought map boxes were supposed to provide clarity.
I don't know what more to say than what was said yesterday that also applies to todays awful piece.
The piece leaves the impression in it's language that Gondolas alone spur growth. Well they have to go somewhere. Gondolas either shuttle skiers up steep mountains or connect between two key points of human activity. In Telluride it connects the historical town to the new Mountain Village with the ski mountain conveniently between. You could not ask for a more perfect situation. In Kellogg it connects the very small town with the ski resort. They are building a similar setup in Breckenridge and Avon Colorado which share a similar geographic layout. Kellogg, Breckenridge and Avon all needed to eliminate the mountain access traffic. All three had no urban ground to traverse and no transit need for the gondola. Our mayor somehow, somewhere, latched onto this idea of gondola as urban transit and ran with it without doing any research as to it's best application. My sense is that Peterson simply hopes to garner and leverage the complete gondola installation contract so that the cities gondola budget subsidizes his gondola when purchased under one contract form Doppelmayer or Poma. Notice doppelmayer, who have a substantial presence in Utah, are strangely silent in all of this. I do not think they get into promoting themselves rather waiting for contracts to come to them. They could be in a heap of mess if they promoted the construction of a rig that turned out to be a loser. Still it would be nice to hear their engineer's view of the proposals around here. Of course if they said it was unwise they would be shooting themselves in the foot losing a lucrative 6 miles of gondola construction. This is equal to their average yearly construction from what I can see of worldwide gondola construction. Surely Peterson sees the potential of swinging a sweet deal by cornering and muddling the whole thing to the city.
Ogden does not fit that layout. For some reason the term transit has been placed on the gondola system yet transit is usually reserved for systems that serve urban arteries
Curm,
You do know that Plan B is a non-starter. CP doesn't have the money or investors to build the mountain gondola or his Malan's Basin resort. He has to have MOGC and the land around it to fund his investment that can then be matched with investor money. That same sale will fund the urban gondola. So if there is no sale/development at MOGC then nothing is going to happen period.
I am not saying that CP has no money to invest, I am sure he does, just not enough to attract other investors into the risky resort/gondola project. He probably has enough to get the MOGC purchase/development going where investors will be much easier to attract.
Arcritic:
If the Council adopts Plan B, then it will be up to Mr. Peterson to raise the investment capital needed to build his gondola from the top of 36th Street to Malan's Basin, and to build his Alpine Village in the Basin, or whatever it is he wants to build there... just like anyone else who is trying to get a major development scheme off the ground. If he cannot raise the capital, then "the market" [so much praised by Republicans like the Mayor until they want to finance something "the market" will not support, and so want the public to pick up the tab instead] will have given its opinion about the viability of his projected development and he'll have to live with the results.
Whan angers me about the Peterson/Godfrey land specualtion scheme is that Peterson is asking the public to finance a development up mountain that the market will not finance. He wants the public surrender its resources [the parklands, millions for downtown gondola construction] to finance his speculations instead.
I just love these "free market" worshiping Republicans who are all for it when it comes to things like minimum wage [can't raise it; that would interfere with the free market, which, the insist, is always the optimum setter of prices and wages] but who, when "the free market" says no to a pet project, throw it over immediately for public funding instead.
Peterson is a businessman and, he says, a developer. Fine. Let the city assist him by selling him a few acres at the head of 38th Street for a base station and a few attendant shops, and then let him raise the capital he needs for his project like any other businessman touting a project.
Arcritic is on the money about Peterson not having the money to do this project. If he can't get a big welfare subsidy from the public trough then he can't pull this scam off. Seems like the great unwashed members of this Republic of Godfrey's are a lot easier to pull a fast one on than those slicksters on Wall Street, who incidently, like our very own SGO, tend to ask to many pesky questions. Like does this bull shit make any sense at all?
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