At the annual luncheon for the Park City Chamber/Bureau on Monday, attendees heard from local visionary Myles Rademan, who talked about the state of the town, questions about its futures, and the meaning of the phrase “Let Park City be Park City.”
Rademan is the founder of the Park City Leadership program and the namesake of the Chamber/Bureau’s Hospitality award.
He told the audience while the city’s leaders feel we are at a crossroads, the basics likely haven’t changed.
“Let’s be truthful, most of us like Park City the way we found it on the day we moved in. This sentiment is sometimes expressed as ‘keep Park City, Park City.’ It sounds great, its catchy, but its rather cushy in details. It doesn’t address the tricky policy choices that we have to confront. About how we actually manage the growth that’s engulfing us, or how we accommodate private property rights, or honor our local mobility and capitalism, or how we deal with our native entrepreneurial spirit, or how we deal with the distrust of government that many people feel, and certainly, it doesn’t discuss how we can pay for all we say we want to pay for, and all we want to buy.”
He joked that most people didn’t move to Park City to embrace reality but to avoid it. However, there are costs to maintaining our identity.
“Keeping Park City Park City will be neither easy nor cheap. It will require us to constantly reach for our checkbooks and buy what we don’t want developed. It will entail even stricter regulations, more bureaucracy and tighter enforcement, and yes, unfortunately, even greater inequality. We are victimized by paradoxes and some would say the tragedies of our own success. We have willingly trumpeted our natural assets, our accessibility and our hospitality; but now the tide is turning.”
He discussed what the concept of hospitality means.
“Hospitality, of course, is both a blessing and a burden. We are custodians of this world-class asset. We must accept the truth that it’s not ours to hoard, but ours to share. How we share it is really the yardstick of what our future success will be. I think we must be both cautious and balanced as well as welcoming. During the 2002 Winter Olympic games we proclaimed, ‘the world is welcome here’ and we invited the world to visit, regenerate and renew their spirits with us; I hope this is still true.”
But success, he noted, comes with the burdens like traffic, noise and discomfort. One other sign is that Park City has become the bad example that other communities want to avoid.
“I’m always amused to hear other communities proclaim, ‘we want to be successful, but we just don’t want to be like Park City.’ I heard something similar when I moved to Park City 32 years ago from Colorado. I was warned that Park City didn’t want to become like Aspen or Banff. It was as if those communities had performed some sort of intentional form of hara-kiri. What those towns did then and what we’re doing now in Park City and Summit County is making our communities the very best we can afford to be.”
Another issue for Park City now is equality. He urged the audience not to turn their backs on the community’s workers and immigrants.
“Success, as you all know, has many unintended consequences. It is often unequal and unfair. There are winners and there are losers. There are those who can afford the amenities and those who are left out. That’s why Park City right now is earnestly discussing issues like social equality. It’s a difficult subject for a small town to get its hands around but we ignore this at our peril. Both because its morally a right thing to do, but also because it makes good business sense. I know that these discussions will be long and contentious and difficult to resolve. I wish I had a formula to make them better, but I don’t.”
