Rocky Mountain Low: A Bad Feeling Is Growing Again

I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking.

But as Yogi Berra once said, it’s deja vu all over again.

In the late ‘70s, Denver vibrated with promise. To Midwest and East Coast transplants, it offered the best of both worlds--a sophisticated center of high-rises and arts centers flanked by some of the most beautiful scenery Mother Nature ever laid on anybody.

During the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the developers couldn’t rebuild downtown Denver or Colorado fast enough. At one point, with the building boom in full stride, a national publication took a look at downtown Denver construction and suggested that the state bird must be the 40-story crane.

If city life wasn’t for you, a growing suburbia ringed Denver where you could also buy a house and make a bundle in a short time. And whether you lived in city or suburb, you could quite possibly stand in your yard and get misty-eyed gazing at the snow-capped Rocky Mountains.

Baby, if it wasn’t paradise, it was close enough.

Like other people who moved to Colorado in the late ‘70s, I thought I’d caught a ride on a golden goose. I bought a house in 1978 and sold it five years later for a 70% profit. While there had been talk of Denver historically being a boom-and-bust town, everyone thought it would be different this time--that this time, Denver was on an ever-ascending path. Number one with a bullet.

The euphoria went beyond real estate profits. There was a headiness that was much written about and talked about--the notion that we were truly blessed to be living in Denver in the late 1970s, as if some kind of anointing had occurred and that by the grace of God we had been selected as the chosen people.

The front-page logo in the Denver Post-- “ ‘Tis a privilege to live in Colorado.”--was taken as gospel.

They don’t talk like that in Denver any more. The 1980s post-mortem is that Denver was drastically overbuilt, with commercial office vacancies now at a reported 33%. A friend of mine owes $90,000 on a house now valued at $79,000. One of the more vivid legacies of downtown is that of a new 37-floor office building that was nearly vacant for more than a year after it opened, with its most visible tenant being the city Planning Department.

During the ‘80s, many people who had a Rocky Mountain high left and took their dreams with them. When I went back last May to visit friends, I drove to my old neighborhood. There was a HUD sign on my townhouse.

Sigh.

Thank you for indulging me this burst of personal reminiscence. It was sparked a few weeks ago by a Mission Viejo woman who stood before the County Planning Commission and spoke in favor of a large residential development in South County. Before she did, however, she said that she and other friends felt lucky to live in Orange County and that while she wished people would stop pouring in, she knew that was unrealistic.

I can’t tell you how many conversations I had like that 15 years ago. I see the same strut here that Denver once had, the same sense that we can be bruised but never broken.

But recent reports of ill winds blowing aren’t comforting. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are rising; corporate earnings and home sales are falling.

And we keep building. And as we do, from Santiago Canyon to the Irvine coast, from the ridgelines of Laguna Niguel to Seal Beach, people are asking why. A planning commissioner recently chided a developer for seeking approval for a large project at such a perilous economic time. He then went ahead and voted for the project.

I’m no economic expert, and this soliloquy isn’t to suggest that Orange County could go the way of Denver. People much smarter than I say Orange County is nowhere near as overbuilt as other places in the country that bottomed out in the ‘80s.

They’re probably right. But I can’t shake these visions of golden geese and see-through office buildings and paradises with boards on the windows.

I think from time to time about the magic that was Colorado in the late ‘70s. In his song “Rocky Mountain High,” which probably lured more people to Colorado in the mid-1970s than anything the state tourism industry ever did, John Denver wrote about his love for the beauty of Colorado and his fear for its future.

Though his life is filled with wonder

His heart still knows some fear

Of the simple things he cannot comprehend

Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more

More people, more scars upon the land.

Colorado was a special place in 1977. I know many people have that same feeling today about Orange County.

And I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking.