Best blogger fodder in 20 years.
I've borrowed Bruce's phrase. Yeah. Like looking at a big chocolate cake with ice cream.
But I'm too full to eat it, today.
Maybe later.
I've always had a sneaking admiration for Hollern's business astuteness. (As I pointed out a year and a half ago, he was the first developer to start to respond to the slowdown with real actions: selling property and putting his developments in mothballs. He kept the land and sold the mill all those years ago, which seemed crazy at the time.) Smith has pulled off what I didn't think possible. I never thought the Old Mill would be viable, and it's at least that.
Hollern's been around even longer than me, and I saw the 70's as a kid, and bought my store at the very bottom of the '80's downturn. And of course, my store is pretty small potatoes.
But....I will make one observation. Once again the Bulletin has left off the all important word "YET". We may not be as bad as those two previous downturns, but it ain't played out YET.
It was alarming to me to hear some businesses are down by half, because I think we have another plateau to fall off of. I figure the overall downturn will be half, in another year or so. That will be very hard for many businesses to endure.
But I think we've only halfway there.
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>>It was alarming to me to hear some businesses are down by half, because I think we have another plateau to fall off of.
I think we do, too.
The business closings are throwing people out of work, so they can't buy anything. They maybe even have to move away.
That phenomenon will intersect with the massive foreclosures we're scheduled to have over the next two years.
And we still don't know what the banks will do with all the foreclosures they have now.
I saw foreclosure papers up on a house and it's not even in the MLS.
Yes, a plateau to fall off of. Another hard step down.
We've gone, as a city, from optimistic to worried. We're about to shift from worried to panicked.
The locals are my base, but the tourists are my profits
* WHAT IS BEND??
I really think that the 'tourism' thing in BEND has been played.
There seemed to be NO coordination. The SORE with events and COVA spending taxpayer money, bringing them in to BUY condos.
Then on the other hand you have city-leaders demanding JOB's, so we got net-zero gain $30M ++ wasted spending on JR. Which told the world that BEND made Suterra, which means that BEND is "LOVE CANAL".
Today the BULL says WALMART is our future, its like a dis-connect, of the beautiful BEND that COVA & SORE want to SELL, ... on the other hand you have BEND-1031 buying Deschutes water rights and transferring them to CALI water-banks. If you hear an orchestra, look for a conductor. This is how LA stole the water from Owens Valley, nobody noticed until the river beds ran dry.
Something has to give, and I see that TOURISM completely FUCKING COLLAPSE. WE FUCKED TOO MANY TOURISTS.
When ALL these 'Dismayed' 1031 people tell their story, and the word gets out about what a terrible place that BEND-area is actually to be, .. last night at a party a guy told me that up at Black-Butte where he lives its now one in 20 living there, that is FUCKING SAD.
Same with WIDGI, its 1 in 10, the other 9 sunbird in AZ during the winter.
There needs to be BIG thinking in BEND, about what we want Pollution,Chemicals,SUTERRA or Rivers, and tourism. You can't have BOTH. It's NOT going to happen.
Like the State economist said, BEND is not a resort, too fucking BIG.
Thus DUNC, be prepared for a MAJOR fucking tourist drop-off.
These days at the deschutes brew I only see locals now, used to be many tourists, when I do sit next to tourists now ALL I hear is that there is NOTHING to do in this town.
Something has to give.
Someone has TO DECIDE.
WHAT IS BEND?
Do we have to wait until Drake Park becomes Mud Meadow? Before we force city-hall to make a public statement on "WHAT IS BEND"??
All right. I've read the whole article.
Not a lot to quibble with, except the usual Bulletin 'positive' headline, and Hollern's almost perfunctorily, it might be "better" next year than we expect.
But Wow, these guys take the long view. Climate change?
The bigger the outfit, the longer the view?
Me, I'm thinking about the next six months, and then...with my lease due up, I'm also thinking about the next five years.
Hope my landlords are paying attention.
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