As you know, I've thought there was a housing bubble. I believe the commercial bubble is even worse, and it will erode over the next year or two.

What I haven't talked about much, are destination resorts.

But, come on, how many of these suckers do we need?

Two of the first destination type resorts that opened in Central Oregon were The Inn of the Seventh Mountain, and Sunriver. What have we got after decades of use? By all accounts, the Inn is falling apart. How does that happen? It happens by extracting money from the place without reinvesting. Going for the short term gain. But it also means that the place wasn't so lucrative that it could both extract money AND reinvest at the same time.

Sunriver? Same thing, when it comes to their Mall. Let me tell you, it's much more difficult to try to revive something that is run down than it is to keep it from being run down in the first place.

Or take the situation up on Awbrey, one of our first 'gated' communities. Ultimately, the entire imbroglio was due that the 'owners' not being able to extract enough money to satisfy them. So they sold to a developer who leveraged a new resort out the situation instead of fixing the one he bought, who sold to another developer who tried to completely reinvent the place.

The money, obviously, is in the building of the place. After that, apparently, the developers could give a damn.

So what does that portend for all these new destination resorts? That they'll be milked for a couple of decades, and left as dried husks? Bait and switch? Left to the actual residents to try to restore some life and vitality?

I certainly don't see them as a panacea to all our problems. They seem to all contain dry rot at their core. Golf courses are notoriously difficult to maintain at a profit. (Ask the city of Prineville.) And yet no one questions that golfing tourism is one of the main selling points of these new resorts? Don't we learn anything? Or do we just have short memories?