Grand Junction: The Great, The Good and the Ugly.

Grand Junction: The Great, The Good and the Ugly.

 The Great Part 1

I have lived in Grand Junction for almost 2 years and feel semi-qualified to make some observations on Junction, the Valley and Mesa County.  I'm going to start with some of the things that qualify as "great". First among them is The Mesa Land Trust (MLT). There are others of course but I will start with MLT. Among the many things I love about the Grand Valley and its people is how much they use and love the surrounding land.  Homage is paid to it, consciously or unconsciously through outdoor recreation, making a living from its resources, and producing food from it. Although within this group there are differences about which uses are appropriate and which are not, there is an underlying love for our land and landscape that ties most of us together and often transcends political affiliations.  The Mesa Land Trust (http://mesalandtrust.org/) is a truly home grown organization formed 34 years ago in Palisade to preserve agricultural and ranching lands.  Local ranchers and farmers whose land had been in the family for generations were looking for ways to preserve their land from being subdivided and from being used for non-agricultural purposes after they were gone.  To achieve this goal they formed the Land Trust, which allowed them to put their land into conservation easements. This allowed them to continue ranching and farming activities but prevented the land from being used for anything else, even when sold to new owners. As it turns out, many of these properties also serve as major wildlife migratory routes, especially those located in the Grand Mesa area and are used by deer and elk to move to lower foraging grounds during the winter months. The MLT’s land preservation efforts are focused on such properties, thus preserving critical habitat for wildlife, important in their own right and also to the tourist economy of Mesa County. Non-hunters benefit because they have a greater chance of seeing and perhaps photographing an elk, deer, moose or bear during their backcountry wanderings.

One of the great challenges, as our population grows, is maintaining the distinctive nature of our towns and cities.  In Colorado, the Front Range cities have expanded with little thought to planning, at some point they will overlap into a seamless, Southern California style mess of repetitive strip malls and congested roads extending from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. A few enlightened city planners in the Front Range are fighting back by establishing, taxpayer-supported, greenbelts surrounding their communities. In the 30+ years I lived on the Front Range these taxes were generally supported by the voters. In addition to helping maintain distinct communities, preserved open space increases property values, which in turn helps the school districts. They also help promote the building of higher density living options close to shopping and transportation, a style that many younger people and older folks appreciate; thus reducing sprawl. The Mesa Land Trust has recognized the value of this kind of planning and is working with city and county governments to establish greenbelt buffers around our Grand Valley cities to prevent the overlapping urban sprawl that is making the Front Range increasingly unpleasant. 

More recently MLT has taken on the task of trying to preserve undeveloped land along the Monument Road, the corridor that leads to the east entrance of Colorado National Monument.  The Monument sees many visitors from all over the globe each year, and it is vital for the city to present its best face on this approach.  It appears to me that MLT has served as the catalyst for major improvements within the city limits of Junction that both visitors and residents find to be valuable lifestyle additions. Their efforts have already paid off with the work to preserve and develop “Lunch Loops”, the Three Sisters and the Bookends. These areas have been discovered by mountain bikers, hikers and runners.  According to the BLM this little bit of open space sees over 100,000 visits a year.

Winter Biking at the Lunch Loops

Among the visitors to the Lunch loops, I have chatted with investment bankers, hedge fund managers, biotech entrepreneurs, physicians of almost every type and members of the outdoor equipment industry. During the peak months in the spring and fall I have seen the number of out-of-state license plates equal the number of in-state plates and have met riders from several provinces of Canada as well as riders from France, Spain and Germany. It is not uncommon to see bike companies setting up bike demos during the week, these companies are from all over the U.S. My conversations with these visitors revealed that if it weren’t for this trail system most of these visitors would not have come into Grand Junction, but would have continued on their way to Fruita and Moab. Our city managers should enthusiastically support the efforts of the Mesa Land Trust and consider reclaiming the city owned land along the corridor by getting rid of invasive plants and reseeding with plants native to the area.

 The efforts of Mesa Land Trust and others serve not only to improve the quality of life for current residents but are also inducements to people and businesses considering relocation to our Valley. Given that, it has surprised me to find that both the Mesa County Commission and the City Council have, at best, been ambivalent and at times antagonistic to MLT’s efforts to endow the city with recreational open space that is easily accessible from downtown Grand Junction.  As Grand Junction struggles with the ups and downs of the energy business and the inevitable depletion of those resources (the shale gas boom has been predicted to last only another 5-10 years) ( http://www.nature.com/news/the-uncertain-dash-for-gas-1.16464?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20141204 ), it is essential that we  assess what we do have and capitalize on it. Grand Junction’s largest employers are those that provide medical services, St. Mary’s Hospital alone provides almost four times as many jobs as the largest energy-related employer (Halliburton with 538 jobs), so the local idea that we are an ‘energy’ town has been a little more than overstated. The oil and gas industries will always be a part of our economy, but the idea that they are the main drivers of our economy both now and in the future is questionable. By the way, this makes the county's decision to avoid St. Mary's hospital in favor of the University of Utah Health Center look like and especially weird decision for our local economy.

 For the last 30 years or so I lived in Boulder, Colorado (OK, I know some of you will stop reading here, but I hope you don't).  During about half of that time I was working in the Biotechnology business.  I was Director of Research and Development and Chief Scientific Officer in the last company I was involved with.  I was employee number 5 in that company and my group rapidly grew to over 100 individuals, mostly comprised of Ph.D.'s in Molecular Biology, Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry along with a core group of folks with Bachelor’s degrees in the sciences.  In addition to directing the research I had to recruit experienced scientists and technicians from well established companies (for example, Monsanto, Genentech, Hoffman-LaRoche) and top tier universities (Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford and C.U. Boulder).  All of the people we were recruiting either had secure jobs or had the choice of other very good offers.  I was offering them the opportunity to be involved in exciting research, the potential rewards of being in a start-up company (with the non-existent job security that comes along with that) and living in Boulder. The companies I worked for represented only two of at least a half dozen biotech start-ups in a city not too much larger than Grand Junction.  There were at least as many non-biotech, high technology companies trying to get off the ground in the city as well.  For all of these companies the thing that made our recruiting job easier was the City of Boulder itself.  Boulder, like Grand Junction, sits in a beautiful landscape. It is only 40 miles from Rocky Mountain National Park, close to Indian Peaks Wilderness Area and Eldorado Springs State Park.  In other words, the outdoor amenities of Grand Junction are nearly identical to those of Boulder, except ours are less crowded, more uniquely spectacular, and Colorado National Monument is practically in town. 

Junipers in Colorado National Monument

In the 30 years I lived in Boulder, the city government pursued an aggressive campaign of giving the main entrances to the city a facelift, putting in bike trails and purchasing open space, so that the town could keep a greenbelt between it and the other Front Range Cities. The citizens of Boulder overwhelmingly supported the city’s Master Plan and accepted a small tax to pay for it. As a consequence the people we were recruiting saw a very livable city with great schools, surrounded by open space that they could hike, run and bike in.

Preserved Farmland in Boulder

  Time and again I had recruits who were being offered more money at well established companies, accept jobs because they wanted to live in Boulder. In fact my wife and I both accepted jobs in Boulder over much better offers in other locations for that very reason. I know that even though the dominant employers in Grand Junction are related to health care, that it has been difficult to recruit physicians and other medical staff to fill open positions in Grand Junction and I suspect the same would be true for other ‘high tech’ opportunities.  Part (but by no means all) of the problem is that Grand Junction does not present itself well. As a new resident, it seems like the city takes a perverse pride in its Grand Junkyard nickname.  As far as I can tell, the Mesa Land Trust has been the most aggressive participant in changing the looks and attitude of Grand Junction. Believe me when I say curb appeal counts when courting new businesses, people and tourists.

 The importance of MLT’s work to preserve agricultural land cannot be overstated. Even climate change Luddites are now admitting that the planet is warming (although they may not accept the idea of anthropogenic causes).  While the general models for global warming are good, the models for specifically predicting where the biggest impacts will occur are poor.  That means although we can predict the rate of climate warming, we cannot accurately predict the specific areas that will be most negatively affected for agriculture.  Preserving as much agricultural land, in as many climatic zones as possible hedges our bets and may be essential to our survival.  Who knows, perhaps the Grand Valley will help replace the Central Valley of California as one of the world’s major food producers. In my view, the Mesa Land Trust is doing far more, with fewer resources, to benefit more Mesa County citizens than the Chamber of Commerce, and the City and County planners combined. 

This is why I consider MLT to be among the “Great” things about Grand Junction.  Grand Junction has the potential to be the most beautiful town of its size in the West and as a consequence could become, not only for tourists, but for retirees, and new businesses a desirable location. As has been reported, we have a very favorable business climate here. I believe preserving our physical assets is essential to making our part of the Colorado Plateau attractive to new businesses and to individuals looking to relocate to a place where both jobs and outdoor recreation are both easy to access.

Rainbows Redlands Mesa