This morning, at last, the SE takes a welcome break from featuring mudslinging by Godfrey Administration officials and runs on its front page a story about Ogden's becoming increasingly a "hot" outdoors activities destination. Travel magazines, ski magazines, outdoors magazines running features on Ogden praising is proximity to first class outdoor sports [rock climbing, skiing, kayaking, mountain biking, hiking], the charm of its downtown shops, restaurants and gallaries and more.
What's very interesting is that all the "buzz" is about what Ogden has to offer now, about businesses that have come here now, about travel writers recommending Ogden as a good place to visit now. This is very puzzling, since as we all know there is no flatland gondola to whisk tourists over city streets to WSU, where no gondola waits to take them to Malan's Basin where no mini-ski resort is to receive them. How strange....
Mayor Godfrey is to be congratulated for his successful efforts to market Ogden as an outdoor recreation mecca [and I've congratulated him for that, here, on several occasions]. Now if we can just prevent him from ruining what he's begun by selling off the City's prime close in biking, hiking and golf land in and above Mt. Ogden Park and filling the space with up to six hundred vacation villas in a gated community, and funneling 35 to 50 million dollars or more into a flatland gondola that even the Boomer Ogden Weber Chamber of Commerce didn't include as a transportation option in its presentation to the City Council this week, Ogden may really take off.
There is one other problem, of course. Godfrey administration officials like his Chief Administrative Officer John Patterson running down the city in the press. Sort of reminds me of Mayor Godfrey telling reporters that Mt. Ogden Golf Course [recently named by a national golf magazine one of the nation's best courses to play] was not golfer-friendly, and then, after widespread coverage of his remarks, his complaining that not enough people played it. Why, that would be like the Mayor complaining that Ogden's highly successful Summer Festival was not family friendly, and drew all kinds of undesirables to the city, and then complaining that so few people came to his reformed Summer Festival that the City had to abandon holding it at all. Oh, wait. He did do that.
Charles Trentelman has an interesting column this morning taking Godfrey's Chief Administrative Officer, John Patterson, to task for dissing downtown Ogden. The headline in "OGDEN OFFICIAL OUT OF LINE FOR TALKING DOWN ON OGDEN." Pretty accurate I thought.
Here's the money quote:
I went to the model train show at Union Station last weekend. So, I would guess, did most of the Top of Utah.Trentelman notes that Patterson has only lived here four years and so perhaps does not appreciate how nice a place downtown Ogden has become from what it once was. How nice is it now, Trentelman asks?
Downtown was jammed. Business was booming and I thought, “Wow, what a cool place my town is.” I even bought a train.
Then I opened my paper Tuesday and saw where John Patterson, Ogden’s chief administrative officer, says my town is a dump.
He didn’t use the word “dump” but all he talked about were public urination, people bathing in public fountains, aggressive panhandling and weird-looking people scaring normal folk.
None of which I ever see. True, I only get downtown once a day or so.
On March 1, Frommer’s travel web site put up a glowing review of Ogden. Author Jennifer Reilly spent three days here and filled four pages talking about central Ogden’s many art venues, restaurants, museums, the Egyptian Theater, the antique shops, the world class skiing, and so on.It's an interesting paper this morning, and one you can read without needing to take a shower afterward. And don't miss the kick-ass photo on page one. Really fine work.
Did she see anyone pee in downtown Ogden? She didn’t mention any.
Good thing she didn’t see John’s column, or she might have stayed
home.
