Land is getting scarcer by the day, and the growth of the world’s population is not slowing down. What can we do? Every one needs a place to live, but in some areas it is harder to come across than others. I bring this point up because I came across an
article which featured a story about motels being converted into housing in
Big Sky, Montana. While the idea is nothing new, I found the article interesting because it was about converting a motel to housing for employees of ski resorts. Housing is established here out of need for workers, rather than profit. Of course this is not the first time that motels or hotels have been converted to housing; but it is a nice of example of how a business tried to help out their employees rather than take money solely from tourists at a higher rate.
Big Sky Resort is no small resort. Big Sky Resort employs about 900 people. Big Sky, Montana is an area just north of Yellowstone National Park, with its next biggest city being Bozeman, a thirty two mile drive from Big Sky. Thirty two miles is not that long of a commute; however, when the road one drives on is a two lane highway covered in ice, the closer alternative to work is not only safer, but probably more economical in the end.
Big Sky is not a big town, but with land prices being high as they are, Big Sky employees needed an affordable solution to their housing needs during their peak season, which happens to be winter. Their solution came in the form of an old Comfort Inn motel. The Whitewater Inn is now the new incarnation of the old Comfort Inn. The Whitewater Inn still serves its function as an affordable alternative for lodging for the numerous tourists who flock to Big Sky every winter, but Big Sky’s primary intention for the purchase was to house employees. According to the Whitewater Inn’s website, nightly rates start at $115 and go as high as $160.
Four workers from Brazil at the Whitewater Inn share a room for just under $1000 a month, which would be about two nights stay worth of rent per worker at the regular nightly rate for tourists. Sounds like a steal in comparison doesn’t it? Rates do differ based on an employee’s duties at the resorts.
The Yellowstone Club, a private Ski and Golf community, also purchased a motel to house their employees. The Yellowstone Club has both summer and winter attractions, so staff are
constantly on hand throughout the year. The Yellowstone Club is now the new owner of Buck’s T-4 Lodge which is close to the Whitewater Inn. Buck’s T-4 Lodge has 74 rooms available to their employees.
Both companies did an excellent job by taking a proactive role in finding housing for their employees. While it is not mandatory that employees rent from their companies, it is a smart move. At the same time, the companies are not obligated to rent the rooms to employees since both motels still operate as tourist lodging. Unfortunately, rent is not the same for everyone. Both companies decide their rent based on what position the future renter holds at the resorts. The criteria for establishing rent prices was not mentioned in the article, but either way, it is meant to serve as an affordable and safer alternative to renting in Bozeman. Employees are valuable, and with the high numbers of deaths reported on the two lane pass every winter, it is pleasant to see that companies take an interest in their employee’s livelihood by trying to accommodate them closer to the workplace.
Although as mentioned above, the idea is not ground breaking to buy a motel near the resort to house employees, but there is a small element of sustainability involved here. Neither resort built dormitories for their employees. While it would be costly to do so since property values are always on the rise, it was certainly a possibility, but instead both resorts opted to occupy buildings that were already built.
Big Sky is not a big town, but with land prices being high as they are, Big Sky employees needed an affordable solution to their housing needs during their peak season, which happens to be winter. Their solution came in the form of an old Comfort Inn motel. The Whitewater Inn is now the new incarnation of the old Comfort Inn. The Whitewater Inn still serves its function as an affordable alternative for lodging for the numerous tourists who flock to Big Sky every winter, but Big Sky’s primary intention for the purchase was to house employees. According to the Whitewater Inn’s website, nightly rates start at $115 and go as high as $160. 
constantly on hand throughout the year. The Yellowstone Club is now the new owner of Buck’s T-4 Lodge which is close to the Whitewater Inn. Buck’s T-4 Lodge has 74 rooms available to their employees.
2 comments:
You wrote:
Employees are valuable, and with the high numbers of deaths reported on the two lane pass every winter, it is pleasant to see that companies take an interest in their employee’s livelihood by trying to accommodate them closer to the workplace.
I have written previously in support of employees being housed in motels in Big Sky, and yet I found myself not agreeing with the gist of what you are saying because I don't believe that the Yellowstone Club really cares about its employees. It needs its employees, there's a general labor shortage in the area, and so the best it can do is crowd a lot of people in motel rooms for more than one should ever pay to be crowded into closets and couches. The market rate of the room would mean absolutely nothing without the labor to make those rooms so pricy, and so the least that the Yellowstone Club could do was provide these rooms in this motel. It's not a nice gesture; in fact, they should be doing more. In a place where the world's most expensive house, $155 million, is for sale, the Yellowstone Club needs labor in order to create the world's most lavish ivory towers.
In that the Yellowstone region is celebrated because humans don't always come first, why is it that the richest humans are here celebrated as performing some kind of grand gesture here when the cheaply gotten labor will only help to make them that much wealthier? It was an economic necessity for them, and it's too bad the workers don't recognize just how much they are needed, but that's hard when charmed by the most beautiful place on the planet and the fact that most of them are seasonal workers, which seem easily replaced (though, as this shows, are getting harder to come by).
I am glad you haven't spoken out against the motels the way a couple of the residents of the Big Sky area have; at the same time, I wish you had not assumed that the employers are kind benefactors for providing this housing.
Cheers,
Jim
P.S. I also wrote another piece related to class in Yellowstone that relates to the above.
I need to clarify a few things.
First off, There are no rooms at Buck's T-4 Lodge being occupied by Yellowstone Club employees. The motivation for the purchase was primarily as an investment in a cash-positive operation, but did include the added benefit of having the use of rooms. However, they have not been used for "long-term" occupation.
In the past 6 years, the contractor segment of our hotel business has grown to 30% annually. Many of those contractors are working at the Yellowstone Club. Being able to change the price structure for those contractors represents a cost savings to the club. However, they are pretty much the same people who have been occupying those rooms all along. They also do use rooms from time to time for employees coming in from out of town home offices or YC employees working long hours for special events. The situation described at the Whitewater Inn by the NY Times simply does not exist here.
As far as future plans, all I can point to is that I've got an extremely busy summer on the books with weddings, meeting groups and tourists. I don't have the rooms to spare for seasonal employees. I can also tell you that I've been given some ambitious forecasts and goals by my new employers that would be impossible to hit if we took rooms out of inventory.
The purchase did include up to 7 acres of developable land, which may evdntually include apartments or town homes geared toward year-round residents, families, etc. That's the same thing we planned to do before the sale.
What the club is doing for employees is providing a shuttle bus from Bozeman several times a day. On a given day, as many as 100 cars can be found parked at the Ice Garden pickup location, meaning that that many more cars are off the highway.
You stated that "neither resort built dormitories", and, in Big Sky's case, this is incorrect. Big Sky Resort utilizes three sites to house its employees. The Mountain Lodge is on resort property and houses the bulk of Big Sky's employees who live in company housing, and has been in such use for 15 or so years. The Whitewater Inn and Meadow Village-based Golden Eagle Lodge were acquired to replace the ancient dormitories the resort demolished in 2004, and provide accommodations in a wider variety of locations.
Not to be a champion for the uber-wealthy, I should also point out that YC employees are paid higher than corresponding employers. They are the only large employer in Big Sky to offer health insurance to every employee. Say what you want about development in mountain states, but "cheap labor" is inaccurate. Traffic measurement devices in the Gallatin Canyon measure over 7,000 vehicles per day. People aren't making 50 mile commutes for low pay.
-David O'Connor
General Manager (of 8 years)
Buck's T-4 Lodge
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