Roslyn's Last Hope Is Its First Resort -- But Old-Timers Worry `Cicely' Will Be Lost

ROSLYN, Kittitas County - In a matter of hours, a friend would be buried in the cold, mountain earth that once sustained this area's mining and logging.

Dressed for the funeral, Nick Henderson braked his topless Jeep Wrangler at a stop sign on historical Pennsylvania Avenue. He could have just as well been waiting to pay his last respects to Roslyn.

The street, aside from a chain saw's howl somewhere in the surrounding forest, was as quiet as the leaves changing colors.

Henderson said his hometown, which only two years ago was flourishing as a tourism mecca for legions of "Northern Exposure" fans, "is dying, whether we like to admit it or not."

"We need good jobs," he lamented.

Good jobs, hundreds of them, and a strong economy are what Bellevue-based Trendwest Resorts is promising as part of a $35 million plan for the largest destination resort in the Pacific Northwest.

Henderson was among the first locals to be hired by Trendwest this year. As the resort is built over the next 20 years, he said, it will require carpenters, groundskeepers, computer technicians, managers, security guards, chefs, busboys and maids.

If completed, the MountainStar resort and residential area will be bigger than Roslyn and the nearby communities of Cle Elum and Ronald combined. It would bring an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 visitors to the area every year, Trendwest said.

"Our children will have something to stay for," said Cle Elum Bakery owner Davene Osmonovich. "And new faces will be coming into our businesses."

But researchers of the timber-to-tourism "New West," warn that big development and newfound prosperity usually arrive with unintended consequences: population booms, traffic snarls, culture clashes and inflated real estate prices, among them.

At risk, they say, is the small-town serenity that lured urban refugees to the country and kept many descendants of the early pioneers from fleeing.

"These towns need to be absolutely careful to put their hopes and expectations for the future in separate baskets," John Baden, a former logger and University of Washington economics professor who writes about the contemporary American West. "If they don't, there will be some big disappointments."

Rattling past cemeteries nestled in the woods west of Roslyn, Henderson's Jeep left pavement and bounced onto a rugged, rain-gouged road. A yellow version of the logo, with its sweeping, river-like "R," was stenciled onto a wood sign at the old logging road's entrance.

It's here - 7,400 acres of former commercial timberland - that Trendwest hopes to start construction on MountainStar Resort next summer.

The company's plans call for a 550-room hotel to be erected first. Eventually, 800 condominiums, 3,200 homes, golf courses, historical parks, hiking and biking trails, campgrounds, a restaurant and a conference center will be added over the next two decades.

Like the scenery, he said, Trendwest will offer economic security "that'll be forever."

But some local residents don't share his enthusiasm.

In an awkward position

The Ridge Committee, made up of local environmentalists, worries the resort will bring water shortages, traffic headaches and too many low-scale service jobs. After a decade of fighting Plum Creek Timber Co.'s logging practices, the group now finds itself in the seemingly awkward position of wanting the site to be kept as commercial forest land, with limited harvesting.

In an open letter to residents, Ridge said it accepts that some development will occur, but that it would be irresponsible "to write Trendwest a blank check."

"We can't afford the taxes, the housing inflation and the mess that such an unrestricted romp would create," the group said.

Virginia Brodine - an 82-year-old novelist and environmentalist who settled in Roslyn in the 1980s for its peace, clean air and starry skies fears the resort "will simply overwhelm this town."

Welcome to the New West

Cle Elum and Roslyn are typical of small towns in the New West, where productive agriculture or forest land is being converted into ranchettes and resorts. The new pioneers are urbanites escaping the bustle of city life or tiptoeing into retirement.

Thirty minutes west of Ellensburg and an hour from Yakima, many Cle Elum-Roslyn area residents already commute to work daily. County officials estimate about 600 drive or carpool to the Seattle area daily. Others stay on "the West Side" during the week and drive home on weekends.

The new pioneers are bringing distinctly urban values and habits with them. They'll eventually want urban services such as art galleries, stockbrokers, fast food and movie houses.

Washington State University rural sociologist Anabel Cooke said some level of friction between the old and new West is inevitable. "There's almost always a power struggle when old timers and newcomers try to share the same piece of paradise," she said. "The newcomers usually win."

A brief boom as `Cicely'

Mary Andler, the 77-year-old daughter of a Yugoslavian coal miner and curator of the Roslyn museum, was around when "coal was king," before World War II.

She pointed out a tattered black-and-white photo of Roslyn 60 years ago, when it was a vibrant town of 5,000. Look out the window to see it today, struggling with a population of 930, she said.

From 1990 to 1995, Roslyn's historic storefronts moonlighted as fictional Cicely, Alaska, on the television series "Northern Exposure." Then the show went south in the ratings and was canceled.

"There wasn't a soul around who thought that TV show was going to be for good," she said.

A gift shop, a restaurant, a real-estate office, a clothing store and an arcade in the area have closed in the past two years.

In July, the Kittitas County unemployment rate was 5.7 percent, compared with 4.4 for the state. No one believes there are any permanent jobs left to squeeze out of the area's major employers: the U.S. Forest Service, the county, the state Department of Transportation and Plum Creek.

Enter Trendwest.

The company - whose annual sales hit $100 million last year - operates 19 smaller vacation resorts, including sites at Lake Chelan, Leavenworth, Ocean Shores, Discovery Bay, Lake Tahoe, Long Beach, Birch Bay, Whistler (in British Columbia) and in Mexico and Hawaii. It also developed Oregon's Eagle Crest and Running Y resorts.

Its condominiums are run on a time-share basis. Figures from the American Resort Development Association show that time-share purchasers are typically over 45, with an annual household income of more than $80,000 and married, but with no children at home.

To Baden, the professor, that profile demonstrates why local residents should worry. "These are well-off transients, who are in no way dependent on the local area," he said. "They'll probably look down on the indigenies. Of course they will."

Resort will bring 950 jobs

Trendwest says MountainStar, named by a local couple in a contest, could eventually bring about 950 jobs to the area, with a total annual payroll of more than $90 million.

Trendwest has promised to leave 56 percent of the forest land untouched by bulldozers, developing it instead as a public park for hikers, horse riders, mushroom pickers and mountain bikers.

The company also is working to preserve a historical Italian picnic area. It plans to turn the sealed entrances of coal mine shafts into historic landmarks, complete with interpretive markers. The company recently helped build the Coal Miner's Trail. It has donated money to local festivals and a new Little League park. It also has volunteered its engineers and architects to help plan a community center in Cle Elum, a town with 1,800 people and only one traffic signal.

Moreover, the conversion of the land from forestry to a resort would generate about $1.5 million in property-tax revenue alone for the entire county, Moyer said. The fully developed project, he said, would cause the county's assessed valuation to shoot up $1.2 billion and force tax rates to drop.

Land values, taxes heading up

Yet in Deschutes County, where the value of a family home has climbed from $84,600 to $188,150 in 15 years, lower tax rates haven't translated into smaller tax bills.

"People are paying more because development and an influx of people have made the cost of property go up," said Helen Sherman of the Deschutes County Assessor's Office. The actual taxes on a family home in the county have nearly tripled since the early 1980s.

In July, Trendwest opened its first MountainStar office in Roslyn, inside what used to be a service station. Administrative offices fill half of the newly carpeted headquarters. The other half houses the public-relations operation, headed by Cle Elum City Council member Jennifer Beedle.

Beedle answered a question before it was asked: "It's not a conflict of interest. You see, I excuse myself from meetings when Trendwest business comes before the City Council," she explained.

On the street, trucks and Jeeps bearing the Trendwest logo cruise in and out of the forest like worker bees.

Kittitas County planners are expected to take at least a year to review Trendwest's book of blueprints, maps and applications, submitted in March.

Until then, Cle Elum restaurant owner Lexi Vallone will wait anxiously. Once convinced that "change wasn't going to happen in my town," she's now converted and confident Trendwest will be healthy for both the local economy and environment.

"There's still a mindset that we should be closed off and not part of the world," she said. "That's a nowhere situation."

So what if some people don't like it, said Julie Cohn, a Cle Elum insurance agent with cold blue eyes and hot pink earrings. At least smoke-belching factories or mobile home parks won't be going on that forest land, she said.

She likes the idea of her hometown becoming a destination spot, where wads of cash from tourists will energize the sagging economy. As it is in the movies, "if we build it, they'll come," she said.

"Let 'em come," she said, flashing the thumbs-up sign. "Let 'em come."