NB: A version of this first appeared as a column in Tuesday's edition of Business to Business, a monthly publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Bozeman-bashing seems to be in vogue this summer. In his farewell column last month in Business to Business, Parker Heinlein lamented the creeping big-ness of Bozeman and cited a battery store as the last straw in his exasperation with what Bozeman is becoming. He’s not alone, at least if the blogosphere is to be believed. On Internet sites from BobcatNation to New West, posters decry the loss of Bozeman to roving hordes of yuppies demanding McMansions to live in, chain store to shop in, and Starbucks to drink.
Maybe if I lived in Bozeman, I would be joining the angry mob, too. As it is, I find myself somewhat bewildered by the venom heaped on a town I consider still friendly, accessible, and convenient. Sure, it’s not all those things all the time, but compared with other places I’ve lived or worked, it ranks pretty high.
I just can’t see the downfall of an entire city’s culture and lifestyle based on the national chains it attracts or the irritation of the afternoon commute—or even the number of new residents who show up. Given the alternative—which many a shrinking Montana town can demonstrate—I’ll take the growth.
I’d much rather witness the debate over whether a new high school should be built with or without a performing arts space than take sides in the divisive rancor over which undersubscribed neighborhood school should be closed. Or which rural schools should be consolidated.
I’ll take a few downtown stores that fall squarely outside of my income bracket, if it means that part of Bozeman continues to thrive. I’d rather have to hunt for parking spots there than face the acres of free parking—is there anything sadder?—in a dying downtown like the ones you can see in far too many communities in Montana.
Even the traffic doesn’t ruffle me unduly. The worst traffic in Bozeman is no match for some of the places I’ve called home, and at least here I can look at the mountains while I idle.
I understand the fears of longtime Bozemanites that their town could become a place they don’t recognize in 10 years—it may be a place that they will say they don’t recognize now. Nobody wants Bozeman to become Denver or Salt Lake or Spokane. As a lifelong Montanan who took a decade-long break from Big Sky Country before moving back, I agree. I don’t want Montana to become Colorado.
But I also don’t want it to be the place that everyone has to leave when they graduate high school or college because there are no decent jobs, a situation for which Montana has long been known. Growth can’t guarantee good jobs, but neither can a lack of it guarantee that a place won’t change. Towns that aren’t retaining their residents and aren’t attracting any new ones must endure shuttered stores and schools and the decline of needed services such as medical care.
If it’s a choice between growth and slow demise, I’d rather fight with traffic and contend with a battery store any day. Besides, no one can say Bozeman is completely yuppified at this point. At the very least we’ll need that stand-alone Starbucks and some Indian takeout to make that claim.