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Cascade Idaho gets ready to shift economic gears

Former mill town making transition to tourist mecca

It was a shock, even though people had been expecting it. This
timber town´s heart, the Boise Cascade sawmill where generations of
Cascade residents had earned an honest wage, stopped beating
early last summer.

The Idaho Statesman

Since that day, nearly a year ago, Valley County has been coming to
grips with that new reality.

After years of struggling to stay a timber town, Cascade reluctantly is
embracing a new self image: a tourist and recreation destination.

But the internal struggle is great.

People are worried the town´s character will disappear behind a Sun
Valley-like traffic jam, that the average Joe won´t be able to afford a
home, and that once-proud timber workers will become de facto
manservants for well-to-do retirees.

“It´s a given that Valley County has become the playground for Ada
County,” said Lee Heinrich, the county clerk.

No one in Cascade, it seems, wants the town´s quaint blue-collar
nature — speckled with cafes and log-cabin motels that cater to
hunters, anglers and snowmobilers — to change.

The prospect of creating an exclusive touristy enclave like McCall —
or, worse yet, another Sun Valley — in Cascade goes against the
town´s easy-going grain.

Some residents worry it could also create an economically polarized
community of haves and have-nots.

But people need jobs.

Valley County residents say they have no choice but to like the
changes that have forced them to forgo their timber traditions in favor
of the West´s new mantra: tourism and recreation.

“I don´t want to see the community grow,” said Heinrich, who has
been in office since 1991. “But you either progress or you regress.
To make things better, you just need more people.”

Valley County already has gone a long way down the outdoor
playground path.

Two-thirds of the county´s housing units are owned by people whose
primary residence is outside the county. Most of those second homes
are in the McCall area, where people Heinrich calls Idaho´s “rich and
famous” have built “million-dollar cabins” along the shores of Payette
Lake.

Adding momentum to the county´s metamorphosis was last month´s
state land lease offer to WestRock, a $1 billion four-season resort
developers hope to build on the shores of Lake Cascade, just a short
drive from Cascade and McCall.

Hailed and criticized as potentially another Sun Valley, the
self-contained resort´s potential effect on development in Valley
County is still unclear.

Some, mostly the county´s working class, see WestRock as a panacea.

To others, who worry their mountain hideaway may become sullied, it´s the plague.

“I don´t think I´ve seen another issue that´s split people here like WestRock,” Heinrich said.

One thing is certain: If WestRock clears its remaining legal challenges, its existence will bring
more people through Cascade on Idaho 55 — and those people will have money.

’Getting rid of the middle class’

Until recently, Cascade has not ventured very far into this new era.

The city lobbied for the state park facilities that now grace the shores of Lake Cascade and
welcomed local businesses such as RV parks, lodges and fly shops that cater to people from
the city.

But many of the city´s post-Boise Cascade economic development projects would foster ties
to the timber industry — a plan civic and business leaders say is important for their
community identity and the health of the hillside forests ringing the city.

Cascade hosted a 1998 protest against the Clinton administration´s “roadless initiative,” one
of a number of government policies the timber industry blames for its own decline in the West.
Until the mill closed, the city seemed to be focusing more on fending off the timber industry´s
coming demise than embracing other possibilities.

Michael Mauk, a former forklift driver at the mill, and his wife, Lorie, have watched as many of
their friends left town after the mill´s closure. In total, about one-third of the mill´s families
have left Cascade in the past year.

Some, like David and Cori Anderson, were able to land jobs at other Boise Cascade mills.
Some gave up on the industry´s uncertainty all together. Still others have just drifted away —
the Mauks´ neighbors turned their home over to the bank, saying that finding a way to keep
up with the mortgage would be futile.

Enrollment in the Cascade School District shows that the exodus goes well beyond those
immediately tied to the mill, Superintendent Gene Novoteny said. The student population has
fallen to about 350 from last year´s 420, a much larger drop than administration officials had
expected.

Today, Lorie Mauk works two jobs in an effort to make up for the $20,000 pay cut her
husband, a fourth-generation Valley County resident, took when he lost his mill job and
became a county deputy sheriff. But credit card bills and 8- and 10-year-old kids quickly eat
through their paychecks.

“Basically what you´re doing is getting rid of the middle class,” said Lorie Mauk of the mill´s
closure and the town´s newfound reliance on motels, restaurants and resorts.

Since last month, she´s been running David and Cori Anderson´s little greenhouse, which is
for sale as David Anderson settles into a new job at the Boise Cascade paper mill in
Kennewick, Wash.

Lorie Mauk, too, holds a grudge against government policies she says forced the timber
industry´s demise. But she and others reserve some of their ill feelings for Boise Cascade,
which many residents say didn´t give local residents enough opportunity to find buyers for the
mill.

Last month, Boise Cascade announced the mill will be dismantled.

Although they felt jilted by Boise Cascade´s announcement, business leaders are quick to
temper their criticism in hopes that the company will donate the mill site to the city as it did in
other Idaho towns where mills were closed.

Ralph Poore, a Boise Cascade spokesman, said the company hasn´t yet decided what it will
do with the property.

Making the transition

For Ron Lundquist, one of the organizers of the 1998 roadless initiative protest, the word
“surrender” is too strong for the situation in which he finds himself.

The former Boise Cascade forklift driver and Chamber of Commerce president — he used to
own a sporting goods store and a movie rental store in town — sees a lot of opportunity for
Cascade in the future.

Yet, when the conversation turns to the mill´s demise, his preference for the town´s past is
clear.

“Losing one more sawmill like Cascade will further erode the strength of the fabric of the
whole nation,” Lundquist said.

When it became clear his job at the mill was in jeopardy, Lundquist accepted an invitation
from his friends, Ashley and Katrin Thompson, to manage the hotel they hoped to build in
Cascade.

For the past year, he´s been taking hotel and restaurant management courses through the
state Labor Department´s Job Service in the hope that a state economic development grant
allowing the hotel´s construction would come through.

Just last month, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne presented Cascade with a $400,000 check to build the
sewer infrastructure needed for the project. Now, when Lundquist is not in the classroom,
he´s helping the Thompsons lay the groundwork for the Ashley Inn, which could be complete
by Christmas.

The upscale hotel will be the centerpiece of a number of economic development projects city
leaders and state economic development officials — who have been working closely with the
community — hope will fill the void left by the mill.

WestRock’s effect

Although many people in town say the service-oriented jobs a project such as WestRock
would bring to Valley County would fall far short of replacing mill jobs, they would welcome
wage-earning residents like the Mauks.

“WestRock will be good,” Lorie Mauk said. “But I don´t see it providing a lot of good-paying
jobs with benefits like the mill did.”

Some worry that WestRock´s success will so inflate property values in the area that only
people building second homes will be able to afford living there.

WestRock opponents point to the dearth of affordable housing in Blaine County, where Sun
Valley´s success has more than quadrupled property values since 1989.

But Heinrich and Blaine County Assessor Ron Haught said higher property values allow the
county to lower tax rates.

In Blaine County, depending on where the property is, Haught said levy rates have dropped
between 40 and 50 percent since he took office in 1989. The county´s total value then was
$1.6 billion. Haught estimates this year´s total value will top $7 billion.

Heinrich said Valley County´s total value is about $1.4 billion today. But with WestRock´s $1.2
billion estimated value and another $500 million in ancillary development related to
WestRock, the total value will easily top $3 billion by the time WestRock would be completed
in 2018.

That would allow at least 15 percent to 18 percent to be cut in the current .225 percent levy
— even factoring in a need for more services that the resort would bring to the country.
That´s on top of property value increases created by McCall´s boom in the 1990s.

Michael Anderson, owner of McCall Real Estate, said the value of lakefront property in McCall
has increased fivefold in the past 10 years. In 1990, Anderson said, a piece of property with
100 feet of lake shore ran about $185,000. Today the same property approaches $1 million.

Gates Kellett, director of the Blaine County Housing Authority, agreed that higher property
values will make living in Valley County more expensive. But she said if the county recognizes
the problem and takes action early, the chronic problems facing Blaine County could easily
be avoided.

Also, Heinrich and other leaders point out that Valley County´s more open terrain will not
confront developers with the space problems they have in Blaine County´s narrow Wood
River Valley.

Since the announcement of the WestRock lease offer last month, Valley County real-estate
agents have seen little activity.

“I couldn´t point to anything dramatic as a result of the Land Board decision on WestRock,”
Anderson said.

Because of land speculation created by Valbois, WestRock´s failed predecessor, Anderson
and other real-estate agents say much of the immediate markup that might happen because
of the project has likely already happened. It may be only when construction is well under way
that significant property price spikes will happen.

At best, WestRock´s state approval has made people hold off on putting property on the
market because of the likely property value surge that could happen after WestRock opens
its doors.

“People are taking a conservative approach,” Anderson said.

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