It’s beginning to sound like a broken record -- another developer claiming his transformation of a working ranch into an exclusive second-home enclave for the very rich is a good thing.
Now a developer in Park County is asking the state to sell him two square-mile sections of public land. The acquisition will allow him to finish the “environmentally friendly” subdivision he plans there.
Wade Dokken touts his proposed Ameya Preserve in “the vast wilderness of Montana’s Paradise Valley” as “a bold new vision where nature meets culture.”
State wildlife officials disagree.
Tom Lemke, a biologist with the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks wrote that the project “would result in loss of important wildlife habitat, reduced wildlife use of the area, and new and complicated wildlife-human conflicts associated with subdivision.”
Lemke says selling the public land to Dokken will only make the problems worse.
But Dokken, who quit his day job on Wall Street as CEO of American Skandia, is offering $3.8 million for the two state-owned sections.
Guess who’s going to win? The wildlife biologist whose priority is the land and the animals or the developer who hopes to sell home sites there for up to $1.7 million.
I’ll put my money on Dokken.
If you believe everything on his Web page, Dokken is simply doing this for the good of us all.
Like an executive for the logging industry, he writes: “Our human presence can measurably add to the health of the wilderness and the majestic fauna that depend on the land.”
Make that “wealthy human presence.”
This will be another gated community.
Kind of like it used to be.
But the gate was always open when the place was the Bullis Creek Ranch. The three generations of ranchers who lived there gave anyone permission to hunt the place as long as they walked or rode horseback.
Then the land became more valuable than the cows and the ranch sold.
First to a wealthy Texan who built a mansion high on a windswept ridge where everyone could see it and then to Dokken.
His plans include a general store, spa, art center, 39 custom-designed homes along with their accompanying roads, driveways and parking lots. All for the good of the environment, of course.
And it will be built entirely up the remote drainage instead of on the valley floor on the already-established county road where the ranch families lived.
There’s certainly no better way to preserve the land than to build smack-dab in the middle of it.
Just ask Dokken.
After all, his is a bold, new vision.
Even if it does sound like we’ve heard it before.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net