It was the quality of the debrief questions posed by Park City Leadership administrator Myles Rademan that captured the spirit of the program and how it benefits the community.
Our group of enthusiastic Parkites (Leadership Class 30) was concluding a five-day fact-finding tour last week of Telluride and Durango/Mountain Village/Ridgway, Colorado, mountain towns carefully chosen by Myles that mirror Park City’s familiar challenges and opportunities: tourism-based economies heavy on outdoor recreation and stunning scenery, all of them grappling with pressures on housing affordability, transportation and traffic, preservation of community identity and history, and environmental sustainability.
Our group of 65 is well positioned to act on what we learned — chamber partners and board members, Summit County and Park City elected officials, planning commissioners, key government management staff, community members and nonprofit leaders.
In Durango, a half-dozen rapid-fire workshops kept us on our toes as we learned about the area’s livability issues, approaches to child care, housing affordability, water management and sustainable economic development. Telluride, Mountain Village and San Miguel County featured tours of affordable housing, open spaces, and art and history locales, including preservation.
Now, about those debrief questions. Our newly informed (and tired out) group gathered to share impressions on Saturday. The guidance questions Myles composed focused on our learnings and what we might (and might not) want to bring back with us to Summit County.
We discussed how these communities work together on issues that cross institutional layers of government, business, and nonprofits. We were pressed to share innovations and ideas we’d seen and how they might apply to the Park City area.
Each community’s hospitality was also on the table — how do visitors (like us, for example) feel about the atmosphere and warmth of each place? We reviewed our hosts’ approach to the complexities of funding their proposed solutions. More broadly, we shared opinions on whether their efforts at wrestling with growth were meaningful, i.e., producing results aligned with what their communities want to see.
Aside from the tremendous learning experience, making new connections with peers in similar circumstances is deeply welcome to those of us grappling with these issues in our town. It is stimulating to hear fresh ideas in towns that in many ways are just like us.
However, Park City will always be unique, with one-of-a-kind attributes and personalities, and Myles Rademan is undoubtedly one of them. His decades-long guidance of Park City Leadership has been masterful, ensuring that each year, a new group of leaders is informed, challenged and inspired to up our game.
This tour, Park City Leadership’s 30th, was Myles’s last. He will retire in October once he gets the class to the finish line of a year-long experience.
There will be many tributes to Myles in the months ahead as he prepares to bid farewell to the institution he founded. Let me be the first to express my gratitude for his guidance, mentorship, long-view perspective and direct, honest, spot-on observations.
Though I’ve never known Park City life without Myles at the helm of Leadership, I am thankful I can count on many more conversations, consultations and Myles Rademan Hospitality Award presentations with him in the months and years ahead.
Jennifer Wesselhoff is the president and CEO of the Park City Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau.