A standing-room-only crowd filled the Big Sky Chapel basement Tuesday night for the resort area’s first Community Visioning Session in three years. The meeting drew both populations: the pre-boom boomers who bought when a condo cost a summer’s wages, and the post-boom buyers who refer to 2019 as “vintage.”
Facilitator Marge Pendleton of Ennis opened by asking attendees to write one word describing Big Sky’s future on sticky notes. “Growth” appeared seventeen times. “Stop” appeared fourteen. “Trader Joe’s” appeared three times, all in the same handwriting.
“I remember when Lone Peak had a rope tow and a warming hut that smelled like wet wool and chili,” said Dale Hargrove, 72, who bought his Moonlight Basin condo in 1992 for “what a decent truck costs now.” He wore a Bridger Bowl ski patrol jacket from the Reagan administration. “Now there’s a guy at the coffee shop who tells me my carbon footprint is too big. I drove a Subaru here. In 1992. It still runs.”
Across the folding-table aisle, Tanner Whitfield, 34, a private equity associate from Greenwich who winters in a Spanish Peaks residence listed at $4.2 million, nodded patiently. “Dale’s perspective is valuable,” Whitfield said. “But we need density. Workforce housing. A vibrant year-round village core. I’ve decked three Airbnbs in the Meadow Village myself. The ROI on short-term rental is — " He paused. “It’s good for the community.”
The Yellowstone Club came up within twenty minutes. It always does. Everyone agreed the Club represents everything wrong with mountain towns. Everyone agreed they’d take a membership if offered. Nobody said the second part out loud.
A compromise emerged around 8:30 p.m.: a moratorium on new luxury designations until someone defines what makes a condo luxurious besides the price tag. The motion passed unanimously. The Chapel’s coffee urn was empty by 9.
Dale Hargrove drove his Subaru home through the dark, past the new workforce housing breaking ground near the roundabout, past the billboard advertising “Mountain Modern Living from the $900s.”