Something in the way we move

American Demographics, Nov, 1999 by Glenn Thrush

"It's always sunny here," says Gotcher, assessing her life. "But I'm also making a lot less than I used to. And I worry about where I am in my life. I'm 32 and I'm working as a secretary." All of her friends have similar relocation stories, she adds, and a similar sense of ambivalence. In fact, they've coined a slogan for their predicament. They call it "poverty with a view."

YOU CAN'T EAT SCENERY

And so it may remain, for the foreseeable future anyway. Beautiful Bend is just too far away from a major technology hub or education center to attract the kinds of large, high-tech employers that can offer higher-wage jobs. There are a handful of small computer firms, but the county's one institution of higher learning is Central Oregon Community College.

That's why it's the non-metro counties in the second tier of McGranahan's amenities scale - mostly those at the edge of large population centers with better access to jobs, education, and other non-natural resources - that have accounted for the largest percentage of the non-metro population growth. Meanwhile, top-tier rural counties have been great at attracting relatively low-wage, low-tech jobs.

That's not the way it was supposed to happen, at least not according to researchers at the Center for a New West, a think-tank based in Denver. In the early 1990s, CNW coined the name "Lone Eagle" to describe the prototypical "new Westerner" of the 21st century: a high-tech professional with a laptop, a cellular phone, and a fiberoptic line who makes $250,000 a year working out of a converted garage in his or her mountaintop aerie. At three in the afternoon, said Lone Eagle clicks on the "shut down" icon, grabs an energy bar, and climbs a mountain. Nice work, if you can get it.

The problem is that the eagles haven't landed. In fact, some are flying away. Take Peter Starkel, a 30-year-old Michigan native who moved out to Leadville, Colorado, three years ago to start his own business producing radio jingles and on-hold music. Leadville, population 2,700, is located in Lake County, which is beautiful enough to earn the No. 4 slot on McGranahan's list of natural amenities standouts. Perched near the Continental Divide, Lake County is over 90 percent parkland and has one of the best municipally run ski slopes in the country. "From a recreation standpoint, it's got everything," Starkel says.

But like some other high-amenity counties that are lagging in population and job growth, Lake has its share of disadvantages. It's remote, it hasn't recovered from massive job loss in the '80s, and it lacks adequate connections to the outside world. Starkel had to wait a month to get a business phone line run out to his house in the country. "That was the first curve ball," he says. Then, when he was setting up a Web site to attract business, he was in for another surprise: His phone line carried a sluggish modem speed of 14.4 bps, instead of the much faster 56.6.

When the local phone company finally installed high-speed fiberoptic lines out to his house, there was just one glitch: The cable didn't run to a main "trunk" line. Instead it sent information by microwave transmission - a slower and inefficient way of moving data. "It was like owning a Ferrari without having a road to drive it on," Starkel says. As a result, his business lagged and his spirits flagged.