{"id":2448868,"date":"2019-09-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=313007"},"modified":"2019-09-18T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T13:00:00","slug":"roger-marolt-so-now-we-are-just-big-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/roger-marolt-so-now-we-are-just-big-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Marolt: So, now we are just big enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Roger Marolt<\/strong>
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Can we please not call Snowmass Village \u201cjust big enough\u201d? It sounds like some people want to adopt the phrase as our town\u2019s slogan, like Reno calling itself \u201cThe biggest little city in the world\u201d or La Grange boasting that it had, \u201cThe best little whorehouse in Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

My humble opinion is that \u201cjust big enough\u201d tries just a little too hard to put a positive spin on a new reality many of us feel we simply have to get used to. Remember when Aspen Skiing Co. came up with \u201cuncrowded by design\u201d?<\/p>\n

That one came on the heels of a pretty severe national economic recession in the early \u201990s that neatly coincided with statistics indicating that the U.S. ski industry hadn\u2019t grown in almost two decades. The slopes around here were empty for a couple of winters. That slogan tried to imply that the desolation was planned. It was supposed to entice new visitors to come on out and enjoy the serenity we had engineered for them.<\/p>\n

The unintended irony was that it made no sense to bring lots of visitors into a place that you had purposefully designed to be uncrowded. The slogan has been a enduring inside joke ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust big enough\u201d implies that, before Base Village, our town was too small. I have always assumed those were the good \u2018ol days, but I\u2019m sure somebody has sales tax statistics or the results of some visitors\u2019 exit poll to prove they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

There is a name for people like me. I believe it is \u201cyokel.\u201d And, we have a name for Base Village and it is \u201ca cluster,\u201d a slogan that makes it sound like the three dry-docked cruise ships that now obscure our views of the mountains as we drive into town, such as it is, was all part of our perfect plan for this place and the culmination of our collective vision makes me feel like I am getting a tad car sick each time I go through the roundabout.<\/p>\n

More wishfully, the slogan implies that we won\u2019t get any bigger now that we have just added a million square feet of new development to our once \u201ctoo small to thrive\u201d community. It provides false hope that somehow we have now managed to knock the development genie on the head, shove him back in the bottle, and stuff the cork back in it to seal it up forever.<\/p>\n

Let me put it this way, if we start telling everyone we are \u201cjust big enough\u201d now, what are we going to tell them when the fourth and fifth beached cruise ships of Base Village arrive or when The Center redevelopment pops up like a pimple on our cheek? I think we are setting ourselves up for embarrassment.<\/p>\n

There is no realistic way we can live up to such a static statement about our existence. The village is not going to stay this same \u201cperfect size forever.\u201d The most popular scenario, of course, is that it will continue to grow. We may even get a Base Village East at Two Creeks someday soon, sorry to suggest it.<\/p>\n

But, there also is a chance that we shrink. I mean, if you really consider it all and that global warming is real, Snowmass Village will shrink, if not in our lifetimes, then certainly during our proverbial great-grandchildren\u2019s lives. Think how hard they will be laughing at us about this \u201cjust big enough\u201d thing when this place is a ghost town in the middle of a high desert.<\/p>\n

All said, I think \u201cjust big enough\u201d sets us up for huge failure. It is wishful thinking, rationalization and an afterthought all shoved into a shoebox and wrapped with a paper grocery sack in the car on the way to a birthday party you had forgotten about until your neighbor called and asked if you wanted to carpool to it. When the recipient opens this gift in front of everyone, there is bound to be a wilted piece of lettuce or the stem of an apple that falls into their lap giving away the haste in which the offering was put together. Sure, we\u2019ll all give it a nervous laugh, but still it\u2019s embarrassing.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t mean that we can\u2019t have a slogan. I\u2019m only pointing out that slogans are a dime a dozen and that you usually \u201cget what you pay for.\u201d I recommend we go with one that is less contrived and more from the heart. The one that will stick is the one we already clench silently in our cerebral fists. For me it that would be, \u201cEnough already!\u201d<\/p>\n

Roger Marolt would rather not look at Base Village through rose-colored glasses. He can only start to make sense of it when it looks all blurry. Email him at roger@maroltllp.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Marolt Can we please not call Snowmass Village \u201cjust big enough\u201d? It sounds like some people want to adopt the phrase as our town\u2019s slogan, like Reno calling itself \u201cThe biggest little city in the world\u201d or La Grange boasting that it had, \u201cThe best little whorehouse in Texas.\u201d My humble opinion is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 22:22:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}