Elections matter as we noticed last week and now everyone seems to be trying to figure out "where do we go from here?". Although most of these questions are above my pay grade, I do have some thoughts about a few real estate related issues. Its been awhile, or maybe never, since we had a President whose favorite asset class is real estate.
Back in October of 2015 I wrote an uncategorized post entitled "The Richest Small Town in America" where I discussed how Park City, Utah moved from an almost ghost town to being selected by Bloomberg News as the richest small town in America. This 55 year journey started with a federal program to fight rural poverty which allowed Park City to start it's ski industry. Lots of small steps followed like our first stop light and larger steps like starting a film festival that grew to be the Sundance Film Festival and building infrastructure to host many of the 2002 Winter Olympics events. Today's news is is all about the amazing results of that journey, but forgets the process that made them possible. It's a process that Donald Trump as a developer does understand and most politicians don't based on their short term focus on reelection. I'm talking about rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure in our inner cities and rural areas. In a recent WIRED article by Alex Davies - https://www.wired.com/2016/11/trumps-plan-american-infrastructure-get-people-spend-trillion-dollars/ the author reports that the American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. infrastructure a D+ and estimates the country would have to invest $3.6 trillion to patch it all by 2020, The article goes on to discuss the returns possible for undertaking projects needed for roads, bridges, waterways and cites an interesting Oct 27, 2016 paper by Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro (Trump policy advisers) entitled "Trump Versus Clinton On Infrastructure". If you are a policy wonk you might enjoy some in depth reading on the subject, but it struck me that building and rebuilding our infrastructure here in Park City and surrounding areas over many years while infrastructure in most locations was deteriorating , was what got us to where we are today. We always saw our yearly snowfall as the most important contributor to our economy, but it was really the road construction and other infrastructure work that we complained about while stuck in traffic glaring at the well paid road crew. I submit that we are a very small example of, and proof that this idea works. In addition to what we have experienced in the Park City area, we see many more examples throughout Utah where much larger road, light rail and our new $1.8 billion airport project now underway have led Utah to it's state economy being ranked number 1. Yes, I know President Obama ran into stiff resistance from a Republican Congress in his efforts to rebuild infrastructure and I know Mitch McConnell has said rebuilding the nations infrastructure is not a high priority, but maybe doubters will be in for an attitude adjustment.
