More than a new front door
The Tenney vision (not to be confused with tunnel vision). RENDERING COURTESY LARRY WALKER
By Elizabeth Tenney
The Mammoth Gateway Community Project would provide a truly worthy entrance to this town and its spectacular surroundings, the most accessible high country in the Sierra.
Early Gateway Project supporter Steve Horman recently sent me some national park entrance photos from the Web. Forgive my bias, but the proposed Mammoth Gateway design has them all beat!
Imagine visitors turning off 395, headed for Mammoth. Shoulders relax. Frame of mind shifts in the clear alpine air. At last, they’re here. They’ve arrived at the gateway to Mammoth and likely will celebrate with a photo op in front of the handsome monument with Mammoth Mountain in the background. Images will be sent via social media with “wish you were here” messages to friends and family around the world. Thousands of Mammoth marketing moments and all free! What an economic shot in the arm for the entire East Side.
Juggling
Mammoth specializes in good volunteers, and they all qualify for advanced degrees in juggling now that I’ve seen what it takes to keep numerous balls in the air.
Working out the logistical and legal details of the Gateway Project with seven different government entities, one non-profit, and three private stakeholders has been more involved and complicated than I ever dreamed possible when I began the project last December. Construction industry friends tell me, “Welcome to the world of project development!”
Project doubled
Further complication, but a welcome one. In March, a better idea doubled the project’s size. When I asked for significant Mammoth Mountain support, CEO Rusty Gregory told me, “This is great, Elizabeth, but it’s not grand enough.” He suggested a monument like this on both sides.
More logistics
North of 203 is U.S. Forest Service land, another agency. Together with the Town, USFS is currently reassessing signage on Highway 203 with the goal of reducing visual clutter. Issuance of new sign permits on Forest Service land is suspended until a comprehensive sign strategy is developed.
Also, on the site where the north monument would be built is an existing entrance monument, built by Mammoth Lakes Lions Club ten years ago. It includes service organization and church logos. The Lions Club Board of Directors agreed last week to having their monument rebuilt either in place–bigger and better–or elsewhere, pending agreement on the appropriate location. Most critical to the Lions Club is that the logos remain on 203 and visible to our visitors.
Current status
Design work (Larry Walker), construction drawings (Bruce Woodward), engineering (Ashley & Vance Engineering, Inc.) and grading permit soil analysis (Sierra Geotechnical Services) have been donated for the south monument. It’s ready for permit application. The north monument’s conceptual design is nearing completion.
Snowcreek Resort’s Chuck Lande donated the estimating services of his two long-time project managers, Dan McGregor and Steve Fitts. They determined a “retail” construction cost $250,000 for the south monument. However, only about 20% of that amount will have to be raised for materials and some labor, because of the enthusiastic offers of help from locals and significant in-kind support.
After all materials are obtained and on site, it will take ten weeks to build the south monument. Before breaking ground, adequate funds have to be raised and contracts signed. My original goal, completing the south monument before next winter, was overly optimistic. However, barring any unanticipated calamities, building the entire Gateway Project –both sides—in summer 2012 will result in an even better outcome.
While the Gateway’s value is “priceless”, its completion will depend solely on in-kind support and private donations. Stay tuned.
Elizabeth Tenney is volunteer organizer of the Mammoth Gateway Project
Front door reaching
Given our current lack of Town Leadership in making fiscally responsible and marginally legal priorities/decisions, I am absolutely appalled this was even a feature in this week’s Sheet… Should this effort ever come to pass Tenney, you can rest assured there will absolutely come a day we all regret we’d fund such a wasteful ‘project’ in any sense or manner of allocation of our time, energies and resources.
If I can be so bold; where in Heaven’s name do you propose the people who have obviously arrived to recreate in Mammoth Lakes might park in order to ogle this waste of dollars amid the chain installations, dead traffic, and inclement snow accumulation typical of our unique area?
Are Tenney’s efforts so ignorant to either presume or provide for such spendable (and non-existent) largesse required for basic upkeep? Does the phrase “attractive nuisance proximal to regular public thoroughfare” mean anything to the Town lawyers?
In light of the amazing upkeep/maintenance and logistics suggested by these awfully costly and very unnecessary gateway concepts, I can only offer one word to describe this crippling example of “priceless” myopia: a b s u r d .
To be sure, if this is really what Tenney needs in her heart of hearts, we’re better served paying Walker $100 dollars for his time to create the image in Photoshop, then hire a local printer to create reproduction placards that we could in turn sell to our visitors who absolutely NEED this type of affirmation they’d even arrived (or were here) in the first place. Hint: after a run of say, 1000 you’ve already flooded the market, and you’ve saved yourself hundreds of thousands of dollars, hours, and related hassles.
Absurd, to say the least.