What’s the real problem with congestion again?

I remember being a rookie on the Crested Butte Town Council in the 1990s and wanting to talk about the parking problem in town. There was too much congestion. We were running out of spaces to park. The council felt we had to do something to alleviate this problem.
Then town manager Bill Crank addressed the council: “Parking problem? This isn’t a parking problem. The real parking problem is when you have too many empty parking spaces. The problem is when there isn’t any congestion. This is a tourist town. You don’t want empty parking spaces.”

Flash forward to this past Tuesday when both the Crested Butte council and the Mt. Crested Butte council held brainstorming sessions with their business constituents on how to better support economic development. Generally, the downtown business owners felt the town of Crested Butte emitted an aura of not being very business-friendly. The town outlined what they did to support business and a good line of communication was opened.
In Mt. Crested Butte the frustration was with the ski resort. For the second time in a row a business forum was held on the mountain, and CBMR did not show up. The businesses up there depend more than anyone on a successful ski area and they generally line up behind the resort. But again, the local business owners expressed great frustration with CBMR owners and management for not bothering to send a representative to a meeting made up of their business supporters.

And so once again it comes down to figuring out how better to communicate and work together and try new things. One suggestion that came out of the Crested Butte meeting was the proverbial sidewalk café idea—go ahead and let the Elk Avenue restaurants put out a few tables and serve food and drinks on the sidewalk. The first reaction from the town was that with Crested Butte’s 12-foot wide sidewalks, it might be too congested.
Flashback. In a tourist town, as I’ve learned, congestion isn’t always the biggest problem. The real problem is when there aren’t enough people to be congested. Mt. Crested Butte businesses are shouting this mantra to the ski area.
The downtown mayor and staff both came around Tuesday morning and agreed it might be worth trying the sidewalk café idea this summer. Hopefully the full council will hop on board and if it works, great… if it doesn’t, well, at least we tried something new that the business community has endorsed and we’ll have something tangible to work from.
Other ideas that might be considered are looking at reconfiguring the artists’ tents in a new, safe and business-friendly way for the Art Festival. Line them up and down the middle of Elk Avenue or use the side streets even more. More flowers downtown are good. Banners are not the end of the world. And the town is moving in some of these directions. Continue building and marketing more mountain biking trails on the mountain… or maybe even on Snodgrass. Keep the Adventure Park open late during these sweet summer evenings instead of closing it to save a little dough. And the resort is moving there with Twilight rides this summer, and the new bike trails are great. Think wireless network. And figure out a way to work together, for goodness sakes.
Again, if these things work, great… and if they don’t, we’ll have at least tried something new and we’ll have something tangible to work from.

So the lesson is that while we all do a lot of things right—and the Crested Butte town staff rightly pointed that out in detail Tuesday morning—let’s get better at what we do. Being the biggest business and the one that matters the most from a trickle-down aspect, CBMR should show up at a mountain business forum when invited. If the downtown council puts out a call to brainstorm some economic development ideas, let’s actually try a few that come out of the meeting.
Don’t be afraid to try something different. Some of it is attitude. Some of it is showing respect and making a joint effort to find success. Some of it is simple perspective… “The real parking problem is when there is too much parking available…” Hmmm. Hey, the summer season is here. And it is short.
Let’s not be afraid to take a few baby steps and give something a fresh try.