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Farmers fight central Oregon resorts:
New developments are helping revive Crook County's economy, but rural residents ask: At what cost?
December 31, 2007
MATTHEW PREUSCH
The Oregonian
POWELL BUTTE -- It's dark enough on this December night that the yellow glow coming from the windows of the Powell Butte Community Center barely lights the gravel parking lot filled with sedans, pickups and SUVs.
Inside, about 40 farmers, retirees and others who live in this unincorporated community west of Prineville are thinking of ways to stop the growth of destination resorts in their central Oregon home.
Crook County, which struggled for decades with double-digit unemployment and the decline of logging and ranching, is now both blessed and cursed with the distinction of being the state's fastest-growing county.
Blessed by the long-awaited arrival of new jobs and prosperity, but cursed if you talk to the folks in the folding chairs at the community center, who pass a sweat-stained Resistol hat around for money to fight development.
"What we're against is them coming in as subdivisions under the guise of destination resorts," said Carole Hancock, one of the founders of a group calling itself the Concerned Citizens of Crook County.
From 2006 to 2007, Crook County added more than 1,300 residents, a small number by Willamette Valley standards but one that boosted the local population by 5.5 percent. Overall, the state grew by 1.5 percent.
The county also has had strong job growth in recent years, particularly in the financial, tourism and construction sectors, although the unemployment rate has climbed from its historical lows in 2006 to about 6.1 percent.
In downtown Prineville, new businesses have opened and old ones are being renovated. This winter, the neon marquee outside the Pine Theater on Main Street was turned on again after two decades of darkness.
But most of the county's growth is in the unincorporated areas near Prineville, the county's only major population center, said Risa Proehl, a demographic analyst with Portland State University's Population Research Center, which compiled the figures.
And anecdotal evidence from the center's study indicates that aside from younger workers and families forced out of the higher-priced markets in Bend and Redmond, many of the newcomers are retirees seeking rural respites, Proehl said.
That's just the sort of buyer the new resorts -- with their golf courses' Cascade Mountain views -- are seeking.
Conceived in the 1980s under state land-use law as a way to help revitalize moribund rural economies, resort proposals multiplied in central Oregon as the national second-home market crested. Recent changes in state law also loosened requirements for overnight lodging, allowing a larger proportion of owner-occupied homes.
Crook County, following its neighbor Deschutes, embraced resort development as a means to boost tax rolls and county revenue. A study by resort advocates found that Deschutes County's resorts contributed nearly $26 million in property taxes in 2005-06.
With logging largely a thing of the past and other resource industries struggling, county officials see tourism as a large part of its economic future.
"A lot of people who moved here for the rural life wish it would just stay the same. But that's not how rural economies work," said Judge Scott Cooper, Crook County's top elected official. "It's the tomato theory for rural communities: You either ripen or you rot. You don't just sit stagnant."
Currently, four resorts covering more than 7,000 acres are either under construction or have submitted applications in Crook County, although the declining housing market has slowed sales.
Though resorts are mostly hidden in the timber in Deschutes County, they often are next to functioning farmland in Crook, whose 685 farms and ranches account for nearly $33 million in market sales, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2002 agricultural census.
The hay grown on Gary and Mollie Eder's 112 irrigated acres, and the cattle it feeds, are part of that farm economy.
The Powell Butte couple, both wearing blue jeans and plaid Western shirts, stood to speak at the recent community meeting about how one of the proposed resorts, Seven Peaks, would interfere with hauling hay or herding cattle down the two-lane roads beside their property.
The Eders and others are pushing for a moratorium on new resorts in Crook County. During the 2006 Legislature, a bill that would have banned resorts in and around the Metolius Basin in neighboring Jefferson County passed the Senate but died in the House after Gov. Ted Kulongoski threatened a veto.
"It used to be you could stop in the road and talk to your neighbor for an hour and nobody would get mad at you," Gary Eder said. "You can't do that now."
Besides traffic, the Eders and others are worried about resort developments' effect on water, wildlife and land values.
"We understand why people want to live here; it's beautiful here," said Casey McKinnon, who with her husband, Mark, raises horse hay on 580 acres in and around Powell Butte. "But we'd like to continue to be able to make a modest living."
Matthew Preusch: 541-382-2006; preusch@bendbroadband.com
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