How Cooperatives Will Save Windham!

It's time to move past our Tourist Economic Base and Grow Something New!

I think we can all agree that Windham Mountain Club’s decision to go semi-private in the winter and full private in the summer according to the reported in Ski Area Management Magazine: “While the winter business will remain open to the general public, one of the biggest changes in the coming years will be summer operations, which will be developed and offered only to members “ is harmful to the community in many respects. Now of course this could change greatly depending on the ability for Windham Mountain Club to attract and sustain memberships given the overall environmental conditions that Northeast Ski Resorts are facing. In 2018 Powder magazine reported that low snow years cost the industry up to $1 billion dollars in lost revenue and thousands of jobs lost. The Financial Times reported that in the Winter of 2023 Vail’s Stowe, VT location was forced to cover 83% of its total trails in artificial snow. The reality is that by 2030 this region will be relying on the production of artificial snow to sustain the industry most reports are claiming now including industry leader Vail, Group. The facts are that if Windham Mountain Club wants to build itself as a premier exclusive local it has only real option eliminate the Non-Members! That’s the logic of this type of facility given the fact they wish to attract the “Big Fish” as Noah Lederman of the Robb Report stated in his article about the Club’s future. And it is very good point does the town offer the type of experience people with a spare $175,000 to $250,000 dollars sloshing around their bank accounts to keep them coming here in the long term to justify these projects of Windham Mountain Club?

Can we realistic compete with Aspen, Park City, Davos , Tahoe and so on ? I don’t think so. It took several decades to build up those types of reputations and more importantly client base. I’ve been to the Alps in France and I’ve been to Switzerland (not the Alps— just Zurich). Windham is a great town, it has great features and it has great potential. However, it will never be an Aspen , Park City, Davos, Jackson Hole or Tahoe— And that is okay! In the 1979 about 2 years before the first Semi-Private venture on the Mountain imploded due to lack of members it was funded by pulling out. The NYT reported that even though it had a “brisk business of selling home lots” on the mountain the club itself was still facing financial woes. Even in 1979 the NYT reported that “ Recreation seekers are also drawn by the conversion of more and more ski areas to year‐round operations featuring “theme” parks, Alpine slides, tennis and golf” in this same article about the woes of Windham Mountain.

Aspen is a corporate town in many respects— that is it is now a commodity about a life style and type of opulent life style that was built by luxury commodity brands like Louis Vuitton , Gucci , Armani , etc and so on. If you want to attract the “Big Fish” then you have to offer them these things and the culture that goes along with it. And for this really work for Windham Mountain Club they will need to transform their meager millionaire mountain into something more like Aspen’s Billionaire Mountain Red Mountain area. And that means two things: removing the peasants from the mountain side and increases the exclusivity of the mountain itself in the process. That is because if you want to make Windham Mountain Club a big location you have to isolate it from the rest of the community and offer a totally exclusive experience. It’s the only way given the finite space of the community that Windham Mountain Club true way to give the experience it wants to class of people it feels it wants to serve.

To that I say Okay…. Windham Mountain Club I say go Private either in a piece-meal process or in a band ripping fast and quick type fashion but do it. It might just be the great impetus that Windham needs to force the town into a positive action. So, while I believe if this happens it will be a difficult time for our town for sure. But, it might also be the only way people of Windham and the Mountain Top in general wake up to the realities facing them. And those are bleak realities if we keep traveling down the same path we have for the last 150 years of just selling out. And it is not working clearly out well for our community in the long. Our population is getting older and our youth is moving away! We can fix this.

Emilia-Romagna region is consistently one of the most stable and producing regions in the modern Italian State. In fact part of the reason it is so productive and so effective is the fact that cooperative businesses make a large portion of the business sector. There are several key factors that I like about Emilia-Romagna region that are mirrored in part in our community. It is a region that has a strong sense of self-reliance. It also a region that is at the heart of agrarian and craft tradition of small self sustained communities. And that’s something I think Windham and the Mountain Top Region believes is important to its own self image as well. What we need to do is abandon our fear and our egos to allow ourselves to properly cooperate together.

And this means we will have to work together in a new fashion. We will have to look at our community and region as a microcosm with hundreds of potential with links to each that can be grown to increase our overall economic success. Windham Mountain Club might decide that their toys aren’t for the mere peasants to play with— fine. We don’t actually need them.

So, first off we need to look at the resources that we have and how do we leverage them to maximize our prosperity. I was talking to a friend of mine about the troubles’ with the Path Controversy and she said to me why aren’t you using that area as “maker’s market and farm market”? And, that is a great question why aren’t we leveraging this natural resource to benefit the community in a low impact fashion? Studies have shown that for every $ 1 million dollars in direct-market revenue earned 13 full time jobs can be create. Not to mention the revenue that can be created in town itself by selling permits to the venues— so let’s say we 6 months of farm markets at the Windham Path each Saturday from May to November. Let’s say that the farmer’s market last’s 30 days total. Let’s assume that you have 40 vendors at it paying $75 per Saturday, that’s $3,000 per Saturday, and per Farmers Market season $90,000 dollars. That’s essentially low cost money since all we have to do is mow and provide access to a space. When you add this to the influx of people in the town it will bring, you will quickly see that we can easily start to replace the loss the Windham Mountain Club with revenue streams that are focused within the town and the region.

These same farmer markets could be the perfect locations to sell locally produced goods. Imagine if we have a cooperative that grows and makes Sunflower Oil or line of tote bags that are made from recycled fabric in another cooperative company these and more potential low impact resources could all be ways to replace and even profit further from the Windham Mountain Club. Imagine a future where Windham Mountain Club is purchasing in the Summer $500,000 worth of Produce and Goods all from our new cooperatives to feed their overpriced culinary arts desires— like The French Laundry in Napa that has its own farms that make Thomas Keller’s cooking possible we could turn their exclusivity into our profit margin. And think of the careers we can create if we these couple resources together in this manner. We could become the breadbasket of a new movement in culinary arts in the Region that puts the focal point on our other local eateries as well.

We have the resources such as little Apiary operations that we can combine together through a Honey Producers Cooperative and we can help to fund these ideas with grant money from the USDA and NYS Department of Agriculture. With the price of fresh organic honey today running about $9 to $11 per pound this could be a lucrative operation for sure.

Another great thing for our community would be a Winter Festival/Market— like the famous Strasbourg Christmas Market in France. But, in general all of Europe has these. We could start our Winter Market on Dec 1st and run it through February. Celebrating all the Winter Holidays, we leave no one out of this celebration because inclusivity is the way this works best. So Chanukah and the 12 days of Christmas and everything in-between can have a home and celebration in our town. That is how we will make this important and fun for everyone. We will open it with a Parade of Lights like we’ve been doing and then we decorate the town with Lights. We can have food stalls and vendor on the Windham Path and if we have snow, snow shoe rentals from our local Mountain Outfitters, so people can snowshoe in the day during the winter festival and then enjoy a snack. All while also looking over handy crafts made locally or regionally. This could have a great impact on the economy with the vendors fees making a nice little profit for the town’s coffers. And of course we will welcome the Windham Mountain Club members into our Farmer Markets and Winter Markets because they will purchase things too. And nothing brings more enjoyment than making them pay.

So, while I understand this could be a devastating economic blow to the community. It doesn’t have to be if we change our perspectives a little and learn the power of Common Pool Resources and Cooperation. In the end probably the worst part about this Windham Mountain Club policy of Exclusivity is that it alienates people from the town and the resources within it. Now, I’m not a golfer or a skier— but I am a member of the town and I feel the pain that these changes bring to the town. However, I’m also optimistic, because I believe, we can and will do things that will be even better for the town. We might even one day have the cash flow to turn Windham Mountain into a true Public Mountain if we work together.