New book by local author looks at resort community evolution

Author Roger Kahn doesn’t necessarily painta pretty picture for CB…

Review by Dawne Belloise

Roger Kahn had a realization about Crested Butte and it was this revelation that inspired him to write his second book, The Rise of Recreation Exurbs & The Demise of Community. What he realized was something that is obvious to anyone who has been living and working here for the past few decades and has witnessed the loss of not only affordable housing but also the community that locals have built over the years. 

Kahn stated in an interview last week that, “Crested Butte has become a place for the rich and ultra rich, the one-percenters,” he adds that these uber wealthy were not only changing the demographics of Crested Butte but other resort towns and essentially, “Taking over these little rural communities that working class and middle class had developed. The wealthy bought out these places because they could.” The reasoning, in part, is that the rich wanted to live in environmentally pristine places where they could live healthy lifestyles, “and that was particularly true of Crested Butte.” 

Virtually all of these places are in beautiful, awe-inspiring environments which were formerly home to small, working and middle-class, tight-knit communities based on either fishing, mining, logging, farming or ranching. “Then, they became single-sport recreation towns (e.g., skiing or boating) that catered to a local and regional clientele,” he explains. “Following that phase, people who came with the recreation industry realized they needed a year-around economy. These areas evolved further into tourist towns and recreation communities with many amenities that served an ever-increasing national tourist base. Finally, during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first, they became today’s new American recreation exurbs.” 

Within a year after the publication of his first book, How Crested Butte Became a Tourist Town: Drugs, Sex, Sports, Arts and Social Conflict, Khan also realized that what happened in Crested Butte was also happening in places like Telluride, Steamboat Springs, Jackson Hole, Big Sky, Taos and virtually all of the Rocky Mountain ski resort areas. His research led to his awareness that this phenomena was not only happening in ski resort towns but other areas with resort amenities across the U.S. 

“I began to talk to people about what was happening on both the east and west coasts and in the big lake regions and oceanside resorts that had developed through the mid-1960s through the 1980s.” He noted that Crested Butte had developed tennis courts and golf courses during these eras and the same thing was happening in Martha’s Vineyard and Sedona. “There are hundreds of these exurbs that evolved from single sport ski or boat towns.” Meanwhile, the community of creatives and locals, the ones who formed the desirable ambiance, were being driven out of their towns. “The counterculture was being driven out,” he says. “They were all working-class communities, the baby boomers who came in and started the counter-culture communities and those people who, back then, lived in these towns with the one-sport activities needed to make a living year-round because the ethic at that time was that even if you were a “trust funder,” you worked. You played at work. A lot of middle-class people with college and higher degrees were working as service people, taxi and bus drivers and restaurant workers. Many had advanced degrees but were pursuing their arts and passions, many of whom were pursuing the passions of the privileged. They were downwardly mobile, but they could afford to be downwardly mobile because if they failed, their parents would bail them out.”

Crested Butte got a jump on mitigation but…

Many resort towns tried to offset the community loss in various ways. Khan feels that Crested Butte did more than other similar communities he studied. “CB is one of the leaders, in many respects, of providing affordable housing. It has as much or more affordable housing than the four resort areas I studied.” He notes that Martha’s Vineyard has about 150 units, but in Sedona, locals had to move 14 miles down the road to Cottonwood or to the smaller town of Rim Rock because Sedona no longer had affordable housing. He also compared housing and costs in Lake Tahoe as well, where, like Crested Butte, rent prices skyrocketed. 

Khan tells that currently CB has about 450 affordable units for locals. “CB consciously began developing affordable housing options in the late 1980s, but the prices keep going up because the super-rich continue to move in, buying houses at ever increasing prices and then leaving them empty on average for about 11 months out of the year. They refuse to rent to locals.” Khan, who has a condo in Skyland, counted 15 unoccupied houses in his neighborhood from mid-October to the year’s end. “This is true of the exurbs, it’s a phenomenon and it’s happened all over the country around mountains, water and desert. It’s pervasive throughout the nation and it is a real issue.”

Taxes pushing the trend?

Khan feels that the longtime residents who are able to remain in their community alongside the ultra-wealthy either have independent wealth of their own or work remotely. Additionally, he feels that most of the community are still there because there’s a need. “They all now serve the rich – real estate agents, teachers, firemen, the workforce – all of those who remain, they all indirectly serve the rich.” Among the many reasons for this demographic flip, Khan identifies one that he feels has not been addressed prior. “The tax laws that were in effect in the Second World War until about 1978 changed to favor the rich and super rich. Corporate tax rates fell and individual tax rates for the wealthy fell, and that process is still continuing. That has allowed people in the wealthiest class to accumulate and consume huge amounts of money and goods, including amenity laden resort real estate.” 

As an example, a 2011 article for Advertising Age Magazine stated that the popular store Nordstrom could not keep a $9,250 sequin tweed coat in stock. Additionally, Mercedes Benz sales of vehicles costing $200,000 had jumped by more than 14% and Tiffany sales were up by 20% to $761,000. “What the article didn’t notice was that pricey residential and land sales in destination resort areas was also on a strong upward trajectory. From 1975 through 2018, over 50 trillion dollars of taxable income was transferred from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 1%. The luxury market was doing well.”

Khan feels that for his community of Crested Butte it’s a no turning back scenario. “I think that for people who wonder if we can ever get back the community that we had, even the phase from the 1980s through the 2000s, I don’t see how we can. The tipping point passed many years ago. Those of us who still have the community of CB people have it because we formed it 30 years ago, but many of us are no longer in a single locale anymore. We maintain connection by social media, telephone, Zoom or visiting each other in the towns we’ve moved to but we’re rarely together in one place as we used to be. It’s not a pretty picture. The rich have screwed us over.”

Kahn’s new book, The Rise of Recreation Exurbs & The Demise of Community, is available on his website RMKahn-CBauthor.com.