July 18, 2001

Exuberance in Salt Lake and roadblocks in Pacifica

I wish I knew why there are so many IMBY'S in Utah, and so few NIMBYS. Lydia and I recently returned from several days back there celebrating some happy events in her family. Lydia's cousin and her husband were commemorating sixty years of happy marriage. Concurrently, he celebrated his eightieth birthday. Most of those who gathered round the longlived couple were their descendants and inlaws. The family includes 17 great grandchildren. Kin gathered from Denver, CO, Rexburg, ID, a number of California points, as well as various parts of Utah.

While family events had priority, I took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy my first real visit to Salt Lake City. I'd passed through only once before, thirty years ago. That involved an overnight stay at a KOA before heading for Colorado. My memories of that previous visit centered mainly on the large number of Salt Lake City's hidden chuckholes that threatened to do in the axles on my car.

What I saw this time made me very jealous. I kept comparing metropolitan Salt Lake to Pacifica. Pacifica came up short. It isn't the scenery. While the Wasatch mountains are spectacular, so is Pacifica. What I saw was Salt Lake City booming. Of course, the 2002 Winter Olympics have done a lot to energize the whole inter-mountain west. Every other store in Salt Lake would like to sell you a sweatshirt, a pin, a T-Shirt, or some other souvenir of the great event.

Highways and streets are being widened, repaved and renewed. Hotels are refurbishing and modernizing. Thousands of fine new homes and apartments are being built. It was an education to see the inside of one spectacular new home, which would sell for 1.5 to 2 million on the Peninsula, but which in the foothills of the Wasatch had been built for about the same money that in Pacifica will buy you only a 45 year old, one bath, 1040 square foot Linda Mar Rancher. The particular large hillside home in question looks down on a rocky creek bed that adds to its beauty and character. Salt Lake City, of course, was built with rare foresight. Streets are so wide pedestrians have to carry red flags to cross. The street grid is so well laid out I almost didn't need a map. When it came time to return to our hotel, I simply headed north and west. It would have been almost impossible to miss our target. The street numbering system is at once hard to explain and spectacularly easy to navigate.

It seemed to me downtown Salt Lake City had more little kids (and parents) than Disneyland. They're all ages and everywhere you look. I was reminded of Pacifica in the sixties, when Laguna Salada schools were on double sessions and the school board's main goals were to build more schools and hire more teachers.

The exuberant pattern of growth I saw has to be the result of large numbers of the local folk saying to each other, "put it in our back yard." If those IMBYS had been Pacifica style NIMBYS (Not In My Back Yard) there would be no 2002 Winter Olympics, and the large, new, flourishing growth patterns I saw would have been stymied at every term. In Pacifica we can't even get one beautiful new home built on a five acre lot without a bunch of distant neighbors using hypothetically endangered caterpillars, hillside ordinance redtape, and any other vaguely plausible excuse as they work very hard in their efforts to torpedo any really worthwhile project. I can't figure out if it's jealousy, envy or just cussedness.

Pacificans could take a few lessons from the good folk of Utah, and I don't mean just for their genealogical expertise. While for the most part, Pacifica stagnates, Salt Lake's suburbs are really enjoying life. If we put our mind and our will to it, so could we.

Reach Paul Azevedo at thereactor@earthlink.net