UI Extension

Hi Everyone,

Please let me know if this Friday, May 13th would work for our next meeting date.  If not, how about Saturday?

The Connectivity Action team held their meeting on April 27, and folks had some big ideas at this meeting!

Of course, ideas can only become reality if the rest of the community subscribes to them. Finding out how the community at large sees this issue will therefore be the charter for the coming month(s), but here is at least an overview of the current thoughts.

Meeting subject: Cascade road structure east of Hwy 55
The specific issue for the meeting was to brainstorm a road structure east of highway 55 such that visitors of Kelly White Water Park are not lost to the community’s economy, but are encouraged to stay and help the local economy. The current (only) entrance from south-of-town forces visitors to get back into their car as opposed to explore town, and thus inhibits economic spillover.

Piggy-backing onto ITD
The idea behind brainstorming a road structure was to piggy-back onto the desire of ITD (Idaho Transportation) to create a secondary path through or by Cascade, and propose ideas that works both for ITD and Cascade. If the Cascade community can come up with a workable solution for ITD, and convince current landowners of its economic merit then the cost of road construction can potentially be born by ITD and implementation be much faster. That would be far preferable over getting a solution dictated by ITD that may not work so well for Cascade. Dan Davis had presented “food for thought” at the last meeting, where he showed possible north-south routes east of 55 (see attached pdf). This meeting elaborated on some of those ideas.

So what were some of the big ideas that folks came up with? To discuss that, we have to understand the earlier discussion that the group had:

Integrate KWP with town
In order to truly benefit from KWP, visitors should be encouraged to explore town without getting back into their car, be it through nearby shops or restaurants, a nice walkway, or other amenities. However, these shops and/or amenities have little chance of survival outside of the tourist season unless they can also benefit from the residents of Cascade. So this argues for creating a land-use and road structure that takes KWP out of its isolation and somehow integrates it with the rest of town.

The chicken and egg problem for connectivity
In order for KWP to help Cascade economically, it needs to be connected (previous point). The current downtown, however, is so far away from KWP that it would take a lot of development to connect the two; so much development that the current population of Cascade could never support that unless it sees substantial growth. In order to grow, however, Cascade needs to take advantage of its amenities, namely KWP, the rail road, the lake and Cascade’s gateway location. And now we are back to square one: to better take advantage of them, and have the economic spillover, the amenities need to  be better integrated with the town – there is our conundrum, our chicken and egg problem.

Armed with these two insights, the meeting brainstormed solutions like the following:

A “midway station”
Can we create a nucleus, or allow for development, somewhere midway between KWP and town? This would  help further development and allow KWP and  the town to grow together over time — a small start allowed to grow outward and gradually fill the gaps with future growth of Cascade. That growth could potentiall include some residential development in the area between KWP and highway 55. This could help support shops and amenities in the off-season (retail follows roofs).
One of the suggestions at the meeting was to create a depot station on the railway somewhere near KWP. This would be a station in addition to the existing end-station at the Ashley Inn. This new train station would serve White Water enthusiasts to transport them and their gear from either Cabarton bridge or Smith’s ferry. At the same time, this depot would encourage some initial development not too far from either KWP or town.

• Dan Davis would replot his maps to show how these thoughts would change the road-plan for the area;
• Dwight was going to think about how a land-use swap or some joint venture or lease idea could be constructed such that all stakeholders (community and land-owners) can benefit;
• If opportune, Larry would see if Borbonus has any developed plans in mind for his land and if so, how these ideas about connectivity could be compatible with his plans.
• Pat would evaluate how the current strategy of the rec-center could (bene)fit these ideas and vice versa.
• Everybody would contemplate the next steps: i.e. how discuss these ideas with a broader community representation; how to make this a win-win for all stakeholders and community

The sad, sudden closure of The Long Valley Advocate, for many years a main, dependable news resource for Cascade and Long Valley, has taken away an important means of information dissemination and added a greater degree of difficulty for the Communications Group. Not to be daunted, Dwight Jividen has begun to consider media devices for advertizing recreation sites and events of interest in and around Cascade. For example:

1. Dave O’Brien has initiated a brochure idea, designed both for advertizing the Cascade Lake Realty’s listings and for listing upcoming Cascade and county-wide events and dates. His prompt action is in the spirit of adaptation and holds promise for others’ inventiveness.

2. Dwight has made a brief survey of existing brochures, and has discovered with some overlooked items, already well-made with maps and text for trails and routes around Cascade. For example, a classy brochure: Idaho’s Central Mountains Winter Snowmobile Trail Grooming Map.  Dwight has himself designed brochures that advertize other mapped sites to help visitors and residents to know what exists for recreational use.  Another example: Dick Carter as Uncle Sam on the “I Want Your Business in Cascade” brochure.

3. With the design of necessary new brochures for communicating tourist information, we need to introduce the idea of effective points of dissemination, such as information boards and display racks to dispense the printed media in brochure forms. This will be an item of discussion when we meet next.

4. The longvalleyblog (www.longvalleyblog.org) may prove to be a key site for posting information. To apprise people of its existence and its usefulness will, among other strategies, require linkage through existing websites.  Businesses with websites can be urged to add the blog as a link.

Any comments or suggestions in this regard will be appreciated.