“If you don’t know your own story, how can
you expect newcomers to get involved in your community?”
– Myles Rademan
When Myles Rademan accepted the job of
director of planning for Park City back in 1986, he had no idea what the next
few years would bring. “Up to that point,” recounts the gregarious 63 year old,
“my experience with mountain towns was fairly limited. I had spent the last 15
years as a planner in Crested Butte, true, but working there was a unique
situation.”
He laughs. “Geography was our defining point
there. Attitude and a desire to do things differently was what motivated us.
But pure survival played a big role. It was such a small, isolated place that you
really had to work together if you wanted anything to happen.”
While Aspen — only a day’s mountain bike
away across the pass — was the place for sophisticated grown-ups, Crested
Butte was for rebellious youngsters. “It was a community-minded, egalitarian
kind of a town,” explains Rademan. A smile flits across his features. “This was
a place where the trappings of wealth were definitely not popular. Where
‘natural’ and ‘self-propelled’ and ‘environmentally-responsible’ became part of
the lexicon long before it did in other places. I guess you could say CB was
the anti-Aspen.” A long pause. “For my wife and I, it was like finding a lost
civilization…”
But then, before skiing arrived, Crested Butte
was a lost civilization. A remote, hard-scrabbling coal-mining town, the
original community consisted mostly of Serbians and Croatians who’d been
recruited to work the coal seams hidden deep in the local hills. And when those
dried up in the mid-1950s, the town had very little to fall back on.
“Great wealth was never made in Crested
Butte,” says Rademan. “The people who settled there originally were very poor.
When I’d ask some of the old-timers what life was like during the Great
Depression, they’d look at me blankly. Conditions were already so tough there
that the Depression had very little impact on their lives…”
Lest you think Rademan is just another
nostalgia-laden baby-boomer looking back at old times and waxing romantic,
think again. “I look back on my time in Crested Butte and realize that much of
my biggest fights were symbolic,” he says. And then he laughs, long and loud
and completely free of guilt. “One of my biggest battles, ironically enough,
was over a grant I got to pave the town’s mains streets — you know, get
the sidewalks done and plant some grass and get some street lights and stuff.”
He pauses. “People accused me of all sorts of things. I wasn’t being realistic.
I was betraying the community. It was a huge fight; it completely divided the
town…”
Another big smile. “I remember I managed to
find some used street lamps out of a dump in Burbank, California. And you know
what? Now people assume the lamp posts were part of the original town.”
He says he wasn’t all that surprised by the
furor, however. “Like pioneers in the old days, early adapters have a highly
developed sense of ownership and pride in the places they ‘discover’. After
all, you’ve distinguished yourself as an explorer — and you want to
protect what you’ve found. It’s entirely natural to resist change.” He stops
speaking. Frowns. “But change will happen — especially in beautiful
places that attract wealthy patrons. It’s how you manage that change —
how you make it fit your story — that distinguishes a great community
from a merely good one.”
By 1986, Rademan too was ready for change. And
so when Park City came calling, he and his family willingly pulled up roots and
moved northwest.
From isolated mountain community deep in the
southern mountains of Colorado, Rademan suddenly found himself in an entirely
different kind of ski town. Less than a half-hour’s drive from Salt Lake
— and facing an incipient boom in population — the municipality of
Park City had just gone bankrupt. And they needed some serious planning advice.
“It’s in the heart of one of the most conservative regions in all of North
America,” he explains. “Yet the desire to develop was huge. And the town’s
proximity to Salt Lake exacerbated the development pressures. They definitely
needed a road-map for the future…”
Rademan set about his new task with customary
zeal. “I’m quite happy with the way things have turned out here,” he says. And
laughs. “Now that I’m semi-retired, I’m at the point in my life where I’m not
too concerned with being careful about what I say anymore. I just stand up and
say it. So you don’t have to worry that I’m just being diplomatic…”
It was in 1996 that Salt Lake City was named
official host of the 2002 Winter Games. Like Whistler, Park City would host
many of the on-snow events. Now Public Affairs Director, Rademan immediately
convinced his municipal cohorts to start researching other host towns to see
what they could learn — good and bad. “We took the Games very seriously,”
he says. “We traveled to a lot of former Olympic sites, nosed around and asked
a ton of questions.” He laughs. “And the biggest thing we discovered? That the
Olympic hype is so much bigger than its reality…”
Still, there are a few lessons that he learned
from the Games that he’d love to share with us. Among them, are some striking
paradoxes; know how to handle these, he says, and you’re golden…
“The Olympics,” he explains, “are the most
prestigious sporting event in the world. At the same time, they are the
biggest, tackiest carnival event ever devised.” And they are both things
simultaneously. “It’s quite interesting, you know. You’re going to have these
huge corporate entities coming through your community. Your job — because
nobody else is going to do it for you — is to figure out how your town is
going to benefit from their passage…”
Perhaps the most important lesson of all, he
says, is that: “the host town has to become a fully engaged player. Unless
you’re in control of your destiny, you can’t look out for your best interests.”
He pauses. “And you can’t be in control of your destiny if you just sit back
and watch. During the 2002 Games, Park City became known as ‘party central’.
Why? We didn’t wait for others to plan it for us. We did it ourselves. We
organized a whole lot of things as a municipality to promote ourselves as the
fun place to gather. We had a story. We had a theme. And people were drawn to
that.”
Which leads to his next suggestion. “Make the
locals part of the party! The Olympics shouldn’t be perceived by local
residents as ‘happening to us.’ They need to be included. They need to be full
partners in the enterprise. Give locals a role to play — and not just as
spectators or Games’ Slaves — but as bona fide participants.” He pauses
for a moment. Searches for just the right words. “Olympic organizing committees
— no matter what country they come from — aren’t there to serve the
local community’s needs. Their job is to get the Games off. It’s the
community’s job is to make sure local residents enjoy their Olympic experience.
Again, no one else is going to do that for you.”
He goes on. “Locals can make or break the
Olympics. After all, this is a big sound stage for a worldwide audience —
over 2.5 billion people will tune in sometime during the two-week blitz.
Whether it’s dealing with the media or interacting with members of the Olympic
family or even how they welcome visitors, the people living in your community
will have a HUGE impact on whether or not your Games are deemed a success.
Engage your workers. Challenge them. Make sure they realize ‘what’s in it for
them’.” He smiles. “If you can succeed at that, then all the rest is easy…”
The following are 10 maxims and 10 lessons
culled from Rademan’s 2002 experience:
OLYMPIC MAXIMS
1. To Be Effective Sit at the Table
2. Participate then Regulate
3. Hype Trumps Reality
4. Long Term Clarity Cuts Short Term Fog
5. Desire to Know Far Exceeds the Need To
Know
6. The Cast of Characters Constantly
Changes
7. The Press Is Not Necessarily Your
Friend
8. Sponsors Are Fickle
9. Everyone Has an Angle
10. There Is No Guarantee of Success
OLYMPIC LESSONS
1. Olympics are Simultaneously the Most
Prestigious Sporting Event in the World & the Biggest Carnival of
Pretension & Hype
2. Telling the Truth Doesn’t Mean People
Will Believe It
3. Olympic Experience Grows &
Attitudes Change Quickly
4. Commercialization is a Fact of Life
But it can be Mitigated
5. Details are Very Important as is
Sequencing
6. Things Go Wrong; Fix Them Quickly
7. Olympics are Over Quickly But Planning
Takes a Long Time. Be patient and Manage Your Resources Well
8. Under Promise & Over Deliver
9. Post-Olympic Expectations are
Generally Unrealistic
10. Capitalize on the Buzz, but Discount the
Hype