wedge blog

This editorial was published in the Great Falls Tribune on Sunday, May 8, 2005, just after a census report showed we’d declined a bit in our population base. Now that I have a ‘blog’ I thought it might be fun to re-publish it online. In the next few days I’ll fill you in on the effects this story had on the community, the Tribune, and how many people yelled at me.

It’s also a chance to see what’s changed…Read it for yourself and let me know what you think.

If you were blindfolded and dropped into the center of a midsize U.S. city, would you know where you were?

Sometimes it's hard, because cities characters are muddied by growth. Any decent size city has a similar landscape of national franchises: you could travel the nation in any direction eating only at McDonald's and sleeping only at Holiday Inns (hey, it might not be fun, but it's possible). Memories of one city melt into another, and many are forgettable.

Not in Montana. Each of our cities has that unique personality.

We have Billings, the big city wanna-be of Montana. Its downtown is crisp and boxy with a little graffiti in dimly lit alleys and on the sides of rail cars. Billings is the undisputed fossil fuel capital of Montana, the big fish.

Butte is the plucky little sister -- the kid who takes a black eye in stride (just look at the pit). Butte just picks itself up, wipes its eye with a well-worn sleeve, and claims it can take what the world dishes out.

Ever since I went to school down there, Missoula has been referred to as “Harvard on the Clark Fork”. She's the girl with the horn-rimmed glasses and a bag of granola in her purse. Every family has one -- you know, the person who can spell Sartre, reminds us about greenhouse gases and reflects a social conscience even when it's annoying.

Bozeman is in flux. She used to be the unabashed cowgirl, but she's traded in her real chaps and manure-scented cowboy boots for the Ralph Lauren Version of the Cowboy West. The change is somewhat awkward but inevitable as people from outside bring their upscale ideas of attire and property values.

Kalispell and Whitefish will, in my lifetime, become one urban area. Right now in any Montana city, you can drive for 15 minutes and be away from civilization. I predict that drive time will double or triple in the Flathead Valley.

You can't mistake Helena’s Last chance Gulch for any city center in America. Helena's cultural assets are not as overt as Missoula's. She's the polite political wife, who knows that social change must originate in the House, have at least three readings, and be accompanied by lunch at Jorgensen's.

That leaves us.

Sadly, Great Falls fills the role of the ugly stepsister of Montana cities. You want the smart one, date Missoula. You want the rowdy one, see Butte. The up-and-comer? Billings. The sister with clout, Helena. The popular girls? Try the Valley girls from Kalispell or Bozeman.

In the Electric City, we don't have an easily perceived persona, except perhaps Malmstrom Air Force Base. We’re the ag trade center, and we’re trying to capitalize on our associations with Charlie Russell and Lewis and Clark.

We do have great assets here, but let's not be too quick to compromise them for a one night stand. Let's not court environmentally unfriendly development that preclude clean alternatives. Let's not give tax advantages to companies that hire minimum-wage employees. Instead, let's decide what's great about Great Falls and do what we can to show our assets to their best advantage and grant our favors to the best suitors we can attract.

I suggest our own version of “Extreme Makeover”. Let’s help attract good dates and solid future relationships. First let’s do something about Tenth Avenue South. I don’t understand why we spent money making Central Avenue harder to navigate and easier to vandalize, while at the same time I try to avoid showing newcomers Tenth Avenue South.

Our town has lost potential professionals looking to relocate here in the ten minutes it takes to drive from the airport down Tenth. I’m tempted to set up flowerpots in the medians myself.

I would suggest that as a community we establish an identity that is easily perceived and understood and communicate this to visitors and suitors: we can’t do this without doing something about the blight of Tenth Avenue South. Our sister cities have for the most part good (or at least understandable) first impressions: we do not.

The Great Falls Tribune can be a standard bearer for a makeover. Let’s push our assets and let the Tribune do, what a classic ‘tribune’ is supposed to do: spread the word. The Tribune itself is one of our best assets. It’s Montana’s best daily by far. Let’s start by asking the Tribune to cancel its skewed “Greatest of Great Falls” contest and replace it by helping to assemble 100 reasons why Great Falls is a great place to live. From this list perhaps we can form an identity, and use it as a litmus test to see which potential development may be a true asset.

Our hundred reasons can be assembled by everyone from school kids to business executives to retirees, and used for promotion and reference lest we forget that we are the ambassadors for our own future.

At critical votes in local government the list can be removed from pockets, unfolded and flailed so our elected officials remember what’s consistent with our assets and what looks—or smells—bad.

I’ve lived in Great Falls pretty much all my life. It’s a great place to live and raise kids, but now my kids are growing up and moving away. I’d sure like to learn them home. When they come to town, I’d like to offer them more than Tenth Avenue South, and a shrinking population base.