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I live and ski in this area[0]. Have season's passes to Burke Mountain and even met Stenger and Quiros back when they were running the ski areas. On the slopes

I live and ski in this area[0]. Have season's passes to Burke Mountain and even met Stenger and Quiros back when they were running the ski areas. On the slopes, at my coworking space, and around the campfire in the Summer, the topic of how to make this little pocket of Northeast Vermont more economically viable is a topic that comes up often. I'm starting to form an opinion that we shouldn't try to compete, at any level, with larger job centers. We lost a huge (per capita, it was never large in total dollar values) number of manufacturing jobs over the past 20 years. That's not coming back. Perhaps there's a niche for us, and other rural communities in creating a great place for people to live and work remotely. Funding co-working spaces and high speed internet is a lot easier than getting a manufacturer to move in given that we have a tiny labor market. Bigger issues for getting any population growth is our perverse tax and housing regulations. Not going to go into them in depth here but we have a water protection act that adds 10-20% to any construction project near water and wetlands even if the area already has a lot of development. Besides making things more expensive, it also encourages sprawl since many communities are built near water but it's cheaper to build in the hills surrounding them away from wetlands. One of the only ways to make a real estate investment pay off up here is to buy a plot, subdivide into 3 acre lots, put in a road and electricity and sell housing lots. The hassle of dealing with Act 250 doesn't make it worth it to do the actual development and so you don't see it. The only developments in my area are either 40 years old or the aforementioned building lots. We also have an aging and decrepit housing stock and the tax structure for capital gains strongly penalizes flipping houses which is an accelerator on updating housing inventory. Instead, housing investment, like many places, is solely in short term rental or buy and hold/rent. [0] https://northeastkingdom.com/ https://northeastkingdom.com/

reducesuffering 3y ago
> On the slopes, at my coworking space, and around the campfire in the Summer Your answer is pretty much right there. Make the ski resort into a world-class apres-ski destination that many people would love to live around that environment or visit on the weekends from the Montreal metro of 4.3m or Boston CSA of 8.5m people. Then you'll have the second-order effects of buses, coworking places, cafes, restaurants, and breweries.
- iamthepieman 3y ago
  We've kind of got that already. It's not world class but it is quite nice. We do have world-class competition at Stowe and Killington though so not sure how well we could compete. I really do think that the bigger issue is the housing. That and NIMBYism. We have the Wildflower Inn nearby that I used to vacation at with my family when I was a kid. It was run by a family for 40 years before it was sold a few years ago to a guy who had fallen in love with the area. I've ridden the lift with him a few times and chatted about all the problems he had trying to get approval for his development ideas. The original owners did some beef farming on the land around the Inn. The new owner wanted to take the old barns and pastures and build a bunch of vacation cabins and camping spots with shared public spaces. The area was set back and not visible from the road. It would have been visible from the mountain biking trails but that's it. He got so much push back from the town and locals that he canceled the project. Of course, he could just subdivide into the minimum rural 3 acre lots and the town could do nothing about it and then we'd have 40 individual driveways and large houses obstructing the view instead.
- ok_computer 3y ago
  That’s what’s awesome about Jay peak tho in VT. If you want gaudy corporate attractions ski town then go to Stowe. There’s plenty of west coast and rocky mountain ski town targets too for that type of bland investment and redevelopment. Jay peak is awesome how it is as a low key border community. There was a corner store there that sold milk to the Canadians at CAD parity to USD around 2018. Not every town needs to become a tech hub. And VT basically locked itself in a time capsule by their regulations on development ensuring that the only land owners are wealthy people who can afford to buy large areas of farmland. Also the environmental aspirations of the state don’t support a population boom. They don’t have new landfills and restrictive waste policies that keeps the place awesome now but is not universally economically achievable with larger population centers.
atourgates 3y ago
One of the things I have trouble understanding is why "rural mountain towns near large population centers" are exploding in the West, but not the East. I understand some of the issues. The mountains are smaller and the snow isn't nearly as consistent. But still. It seems like a ski resort 3.5 hours from Boston should be absolutely brimming with customers every long weekend. On the other hand, I sat in a hot tub with a New Yorker at a Salt Lake City ski resort who claimed that it was quicker and easier for him to get there, than to Vermont ski hills. I don't think the math quite adds up (The drive from NYC to Jay is going to be 6.5 hours, but you could fly from JFK to Burlington in 1hr 20min, and drive another 1hr 20min to Jay, vs a 4hr flight and 1hr drive to Park City, UT) - but I get the point.
- iamthepieman 3y ago
  This is happening at the big Vermont ski resorts like Stowe and Killington. Stowe might as well be a suburb of Boston, New York and Quebec. No one around here can figure it out either. I sit next to a guy at my coworking space who works on rural economic development. Just today he was putting together a report on some funding that was given to promote small businesses. He said they were supposed to present the report to the board but the program had done so poorly that they were just going to file the report and never bring it up again.
- meandthewallaby 3y ago
  I'm a fellow Kingdom resident -- there are plenty of ski hills between here and Boston. The ones closer get more play. Stowe is a bigger resort, and it gets more play. Less so between here and Montreal, but there's ski hills north of Montreal that are closer. A place like Littleton, just beyond Cannon Mountain, _is_ brimming with customers every long weekend. Jay (and Burke, which is _really_ a locals' mountain) are very much in the in-between.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    In spite of doing a reasonable bit of downhill skiing at one point out of the Boston area, I have never been to Jay and have only been to Burke because a Dartmouth professor I knew was I think on the board and his son had gone to Burke Mountain Academy. Stowe was about my journey limit for a weekend and I was in a ski condo after graduation from grad school around Killington for 5 years or so. (Combination of New Yorkers and people in the Boston area.) Jay and Burke were always pretty much out of my range.

reducesuffering 3y ago

> On the slopes, at my coworking space, and around the campfire in the Summer Your answer is pretty much right there. Make the ski resort into a world-class apres-ski destination that many people would love to live around that environment or visit on the weekends from the Montreal metro of 4.3m or Boston CSA of 8.5m people. Then you'll have the second-order effects of buses, coworking places, cafes, restaurants, and breweries.

iamthepieman 3y ago
We've kind of got that already. It's not world class but it is quite nice. We do have world-class competition at Stowe and Killington though so not sure how well we could compete. I really do think that the bigger issue is the housing. That and NIMBYism. We have the Wildflower Inn nearby that I used to vacation at with my family when I was a kid. It was run by a family for 40 years before it was sold a few years ago to a guy who had fallen in love with the area. I've ridden the lift with him a few times and chatted about all the problems he had trying to get approval for his development ideas. The original owners did some beef farming on the land around the Inn. The new owner wanted to take the old barns and pastures and build a bunch of vacation cabins and camping spots with shared public spaces. The area was set back and not visible from the road. It would have been visible from the mountain biking trails but that's it. He got so much push back from the town and locals that he canceled the project. Of course, he could just subdivide into the minimum rural 3 acre lots and the town could do nothing about it and then we'd have 40 individual driveways and large houses obstructing the view instead.
ok_computer 3y ago
That’s what’s awesome about Jay peak tho in VT. If you want gaudy corporate attractions ski town then go to Stowe. There’s plenty of west coast and rocky mountain ski town targets too for that type of bland investment and redevelopment. Jay peak is awesome how it is as a low key border community. There was a corner store there that sold milk to the Canadians at CAD parity to USD around 2018. Not every town needs to become a tech hub. And VT basically locked itself in a time capsule by their regulations on development ensuring that the only land owners are wealthy people who can afford to buy large areas of farmland. Also the environmental aspirations of the state don’t support a population boom. They don’t have new landfills and restrictive waste policies that keeps the place awesome now but is not universally economically achievable with larger population centers.

atourgates 3y ago

One of the things I have trouble understanding is why "rural mountain towns near large population centers" are exploding in the West, but not the East. I understand some of the issues. The mountains are smaller and the snow isn't nearly as consistent. But still. It seems like a ski resort 3.5 hours from Boston should be absolutely brimming with customers every long weekend. On the other hand, I sat in a hot tub with a New Yorker at a Salt Lake City ski resort who claimed that it was quicker and easier for him to get there, than to Vermont ski hills. I don't think the math quite adds up (The drive from NYC to Jay is going to be 6.5 hours, but you could fly from JFK to Burlington in 1hr 20min, and drive another 1hr 20min to Jay, vs a 4hr flight and 1hr drive to Park City, UT) - but I get the point.

iamthepieman 3y ago
This is happening at the big Vermont ski resorts like Stowe and Killington. Stowe might as well be a suburb of Boston, New York and Quebec. No one around here can figure it out either. I sit next to a guy at my coworking space who works on rural economic development. Just today he was putting together a report on some funding that was given to promote small businesses. He said they were supposed to present the report to the board but the program had done so poorly that they were just going to file the report and never bring it up again.
meandthewallaby 3y ago
I'm a fellow Kingdom resident -- there are plenty of ski hills between here and Boston. The ones closer get more play. Stowe is a bigger resort, and it gets more play. Less so between here and Montreal, but there's ski hills north of Montreal that are closer. A place like Littleton, just beyond Cannon Mountain, _is_ brimming with customers every long weekend. Jay (and Burke, which is _really_ a locals' mountain) are very much in the in-between.
- ghaff 3y ago
  In spite of doing a reasonable bit of downhill skiing at one point out of the Boston area, I have never been to Jay and have only been to Burke because a Dartmouth professor I knew was I think on the board and his son had gone to Burke Mountain Academy. Stowe was about my journey limit for a weekend and I was in a ski condo after graduation from grad school around Killington for 5 years or so. (Combination of New Yorkers and people in the Boston area.) Jay and Burke were always pretty much out of my range.