T HIS IS A STORYso filled with ironies that if it weren't so serious, it would almost certainly be funny. In broadest terms, it is a story about how the cultural identity of two river towns -- and, indeed, of an Upper Mississippi River valley region dotted with river towns -- is going to be defined for generations to come, and about who is going to be allowed to define it. C I N MORE NARROW terms, the story goes like this: River Bluffs Resort, LLC, under the apparent leadership of West Coast developer Jim Daughtry, is proposing to build a golf course and residential development, a hotel, and a water park near the small river towns of McGregor and Marquette, in rural Clayton County, IA -- and is finding itself stalled by a thorny citizens' group (Concerned Citizens of Clayton County) who is arguing, based on its reading of documentary evidence going back almost a decade, that this development project is a very bad idea. ONCERNED Citizens for Clayton County say that the River Bluffs Resort development project began its life over er with the Isle of Capri in Marquette in 2001, solicited support from municipal, county, state, and federal leaders for this Legacy Project -- which, as envisioned at the time, would have included a hotel and water park, a conference center, a gated housing development and 18-hole golf course, and construction of a sidewalk/bike path between Marquette and McGregor dubbed the `Trail of Two Cities.' By August, 2001, the Isle of Capri Casino had awarded the MarquetteMc Gr egor Legacy project $10,000 toward the writing of an application for funding from Vision Iowa, a state development fund comprised of gambling revenues; and Kolbach was announcing that "a Wisconsin developer" had been recruited for the project. "We are living in an undeveloped destination park area," Kolbach wrote in an e-mail (8/01) to participants in the Vision Iowa Legacy Project, "that will actually be developed into a destination with modern facilities" ( see illustration, this page). The tourism industry defines destination as "the place to which a traveler is going; or any city, area, region or country being marketed as a single entity to tourists." The question, first of all, of perspective is a question that should be considered here, when long-term plans for economic and cultural development and land use are being discussed. To wit: a place in which "we are living" can only be considered a "destination" if we're looking at it from a distance. Such a perspective may be a useful one to adopt, under certain circumstances, where economic development is concerned (The Des Moines Register reported in November that "[s]tatewide, Page 28The Tapestry magazineJanuary 2005 Paradise, Please see PARADISE, LLC, page 29 four years ago, as a plan for a Super Destination Park known as the `Legacy Project' -- and was introduced by the marketing department of the Isle of Capri casino, which operates a riverboat gambling operation in Marquette. (Despite the occasional public denial of this claim on the parts of public officials in the county -- and of any connection between the casino and the resort development project -- no one has been able to dispute the documentary evidence of this connection that Concerned Citizens of Clayton County has collected. Furthermore, city records indicate that the casino -- formerly owned by Gambler's Supply, Inc. -- was interested in developing a golf course/subdivision development as long ago as 1995. Steve Kolbach, public relations managthe travel industry generated $4.6 billion in expenditures [sic] last year, according to the Iowa Department of Economic Development... Tourism is Iowa's newest cash crop"); but a perspective from afar should never be allowed to eclipse the perspective of the people who call a place home. It's fine to think of ourselves as a `recreation destination' -- we do, after all, live along the banks of the most beautiful section of the Father of Rivers; and it would be unwisely shortsighted (and selfish) to resist opening our home to the rest of the world. But we do still have to live here. Whether we are talking about how to increase tourism to our area, how to create jobs in our area, how to "develop" our area for not only our own benefit but for the benefit of future generations, we are talking about how we define ourselves -- as a place with a material history connected to the Mississippi River; as a unique recreation destination that will appeal to other people as they travel throughout the United States; and as a community where we live and work and retire, where our "`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' `The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' `The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.' -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass "Any river is really the summation of the whole valley. To think of it as nothing but water is to ignore the greater part." -- Hal Borland, This Hill, This Valley LLC By Julie Berg-Raymond * issues * Two river towns are struggling with some difficult questions in Clayton County, Iowa; Can we learn something from their experience? %%[Page: 1]%% W January 2005The Tapestry magazinePage 29 children attend school, where we create art and grow food, and where we eat and sleep and raise our young. Before it is a "destination," this region is our home. Gambling (with) and Public Policy The idea that the gambling industry might be in any way involved in discussions about economic development, job growth, land use -- all of which contribute to a definition of a town's (or a region's) sense of itself, and of its cultural identity - - is actually a deeply problematic one, and should be thought about and talked about very carefully and in public forums. In this regard, and regardless of whether one agrees with the group's position on the River Bluffs Resort, LLC development project, Concerned Citizens for Clayton County should at least be given a nod for civic involvement. There is a great deal at stake, here, after all; and this group -- through Freedom of Information Act requests, open records inquiries, legal depositions, on-site reviews of government files, and the subsequent dissemination among citizens of information gathered over four years' time -- has worked hard to make sure that any decisions being made about the economic future of their county at least be made in front of an informed public. The group helped ensure, for example, that the Vision Iowa board got a good, close look at some of the problems with the casino-backed Legacy project. (Vision Iowa is a financial assistance program established in 2000 by the Iowa legislature, intended to "provide financial incentives to communities for the construction of recreational, cultural, educational, or entertainment facilities that enhance the quality of life in Iowa," and which "currently provides that the funds come from gambling revenues" www.visioniowa.org). In the end, and after a due diligence invesPARADISE, LLC: Continued from page 28. Please see PARADISE, LLC, page 30 "... the Higgin's Eye mussel contributes more to earth than I do. The mussel helps stabilize the streambed in which it lives; it filters and clarifies water that passes through it, thus straining out suspended materials and converting tiny organisms to tissue that can be used, in turn, by such higher forms as fish, otters, muskrats, waterfowl, and crawdads. I can't do those things; I tear at the riverbeds, poison the food chain, and corrupt the waters that sustain me. All that is bad enough. But the real blow to my lordly pride is the knowledge that while the mussel can make a pearl, the best I can do is gallstones." -- John Madson, Up On the River (Penguin Books, 1985. Pg. 99) ITH THE railroad running right next to the river ( see photo, below), there is no land upon which to build a sidewalk like that which appears in the artist's rendering ( see drawing, above). The project would have involved depositing tons of limestone landfill along the shore -- home to one of the richest beds of the federally-endangered Higgins Eye Pearly mussel -- and an easement agreement with the ICE railroad (note: the agreement expired on Jan. 1, 2005). This artist's rendition of the "Trail," a mile-long bike and walking path between Marquette and McGregor, IA, was included in a Vision Iowa grant application for MarquetteMcGregor's "Legacy" project. The Legacy project also involved plans for an 18-hole golf course and gated housing community, a hotel and conference center, and a water park. The Isle of Capri casino paid MSA Consultants of Dubuque, IA $10,000 to help draft the grant application for just over $5 million dollars. The grant was awarded, but later reversed after a due diligence investigation revealed problems with the project and its developers. %%[Page: 1]%% A The Tapestry magazineJanuary 2005Page 30 tigation, the board reversed its $5.1 million dollar grant for the project. Nevertheless, the question remains: Is it a good idea to involve institutions and representatives of the gambling industry (like casinos and their public relations managers) and gambling revenue in the planning and funding of community economic development projects? Here is the CEO of the Iowa Lottery, Ed Stanek, in a public relations soundbyte on the website for the Iowa Lottery: "Retaining Iowai's young people and attracting new residents," he says, "are key to the future of the state... Creating tourism destinations will help draw people to Iowa and building and repairing schools will bolster Iowa communities." Well, no one is going to argue with the wisdom of that. But the wisdom of turning to gambling revenues to retain Iowa's young people, attract new residents, create tourism destinations, and repair schools most certainly is open to argument. Gambling has been legal in Iowa for almost 20 years (house file 225 was signed by the Governor in April 1985, and the first lotto game was in place by May 1, 1986; the Iowa Legislature passed the Excursion Gambling Boat Act in March, 1989). Whether considered as entertainment and recreation (the definitions preferred by the gambling industry -- which also prefers to be called the "gaming" industry) or as a source of government revenue, legalized gambling has only been around in Iowa for less than a generation; indeed, until the early 1990s, casino gambling was only available in Nevada, Atlantic City, and Puerto Rico. Until now, it has really been too soon -- historically speaking -- to intelligently evaluate the socio-economic effects of legalized gambling in the United States. That's not to say that studies haven't been done; the problem is that such studies have either been done with explicit agendas (either "pro" or "anti" gambling) attached, or have had their results exaggerated and applied inappropriately in furtherance of one or another agenda, after the fact. In the face of so many as-yet unasked - - let alone unanswered -- questions about the long-term effects of legalized gambling on communities, it is arguably some risky business, turning to gambling revenues to enact economic development and support social programs. Nevertheless, the State of Iowa is engaging in exactly that business. Since 1992, Iowa Lottery proceeds have been directed to the state's General Fund; but lottery revenues are linked to the Vision Iowa program, as well. After "investors indicated... a need to strengthen the Vision Iowa bonds by dedicating $20 million annually in lottery revenues as a backup," legislation was enacted to dedicate "$15 million in lottery revenues to programs for community attractions in Iowa and another $5 million to Vision Iowa Programs to build and repair schools in the state if gambling revenues don't reach that amount" (www.ialottery.com). As long as gambling is legal, the General Fund probably won't be hurting for contributions made by purchases of lottery tickets; but if that is in some way a reassuring idea, it does need to be noted that government revenues raised through lotteries are, in effect, regressive taxes. According to William R. Eadington in "Public Policy Considerations and Challenges and the Spread of Commercial Gambling," "[p]eople who buy lottery tickets probably come disproportionately from lower income groups... the elderly, the unemployed, and the gullible" (Eadington and Cornelius, eds. Gambling and Public Policy: International Perspectives. University of Nevada: Reno, Nevada. pg. 5). The larger question here is whether the government should even be in the gambling business, in the first place; but since it is, and since it is therefore legal (if not especially prudent) for people who probably cannot afford to gamble, to gamble nonetheless, it is at least theoretically possible that the situation become absurd. People living in low-economic communities, suffering from the problems associated with low economic status and most in need of government services to help remedy those problems, might well be among the "disproportionate" buyers of lottery tickets -- the purchase of which is helping to fund the government services that are supposed to be helping the people who most likely cannot afford to be buying lottery tickets in the first place. Through the looking glass, indeed. In any case, as "destination casino" resorts continue to sprout throughout the state, there is no guarantee that revenues from legalized gambling will continue at present levels. It is (ahem) something of a crap shoot. And if revenues should fall, then what? At the very least, this remains a good question. As does this one: Why would a casino company based in Mississippi, one of the ten largest publicly-held gambling operations in the United States, want to get itself involved in a land development project in Clayton County, Iowa in the first place? Obviously, such a project appealed to its self-interested bottom line in some way -- which is a reasonable enough motive for supporting a development project; but the nagging question is begged again: Whose interests should be considered first, when economic developPARADISE, LLC: Continued from page 29. Please see PARADISE, LLC, page 31 Tourism (re)Defined... CCORDING TO industry analysts, two significant travel trends will define the tourism market in the next decade: Mass marketing giving way to one-on-one marketing that tailors travel opportunities to the individual consumer; and a growing number of "special interest travelers" who rank the arts, heritage, and/or other cultural activities as one of their top five reasons for traveling. Cultural Tourism "We need to think about cultural tourism because really there is no other kind of tourism. Iti's what tourism is... People don't come to America for our airports, people don't come to America for our hotels, or the recreation facilities... They come for our culture: high culture, low culture, middle culture, right, left, real or imagined -- they come here to see America." -- Garrison Keillor, address to the 1995 White House Conference on Travel & Tourism On its website, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies defines cultural tourism as tourism "based on the mosaic of places, traditions, art forms, celebrations, and experiences that portray this nation and its people, reflecting the diversity and character of the United States." Eco-Tourism The International Eco-Tourism Society defines eco-tourism as "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people." Principles of implementing and participating in eco-tourism: * Minimize impact * Build environmental and cultural awareness and respect * Provide positive experiences for both visitors and hosts * Provide direct financial benefits for conservation * Provide financial benefits and empowerment for local people Photo by Jay Hisel %%[Page: 1]%% January 2005The Tapestry magazinePage 31 ment plans are being discussed in the region we call home? "Whoever tells the best story wins." -- John Quincy Adams ("Amistad") With the Vision Iowa grant reversed, River Bluffs Resort, LLC was re-shuffled a bit. From this point on, Daughtry was the man in charge -- the first developer brought on board by the casino, Conrad Seymour, was left retaining a minority stake; the "Trail of Two Cities" sidewalk/bike path was tabled, the DNR and the railroad having taken a closer look at the situation (the "Trail" controversy became moot on Jan. 1, 2005, when an easement agreement with the ICE railroad expired); and the Clayton County Board of Supervisors approved issuance of a $20 million dollar tax increment financing (TIF) bond to River Bluffs Resort, LLC. Concerned Citizens for Clayton County sued the Board, contending that some of the actions the Board took in approving that TIF agreement were illegal. The Concerned Citizens' lawsuit was dismissed, but is being appealed in the Iowa Supreme Court. Meanwhile, River Bluffs Resort, LLC is suing Concerned Citizens for Clayton County for illegally interfering with its development plans. Concerned Citizens has launched a counter-suit, denying that lawsuit's claim and re-asserting its right to petition the government. Supporters of the River Bluffs Resort, LLC development project have accused Concerned Citizens of Clayton County of standing in the way of progress, and of irresponsibly compelling the situation to languish in the court system for years. If the history of this development project can serve as any kind of indicator, though, then a little more time spent looking into the larger and long-reaching implications of what is being proposed here is probably not such a bad idea. Location, Location, Location Ironically enough, while River Bluffs Resort, LLC and Concerned Citizens for Clayton County were struggling over the former's plan to build a new 18-hole golf course in conjunction with a residential development in Northeast Iowa, Sports Illustrated magazine was busy preparing a story entitled, "If You Build It, They May Not Necessarily Come" ( SI, Nov. 2004). In the piece, E.M. Swift looked at the question of resort golf courses from a larger, industry-wide context: "Egged on by industry cheerleaders and promises of a golf boom," Swift writes, "developers have over-saturated the U.S. with courses and driven each other to financial ruin." The Sports Illustrated piece found some room for optimism. This, mainly on the parts of the more prosperous developers who look forward to buying out and decomissioning the courses that fail, redeveloping them for housing for aging baby boomers, and then "mak[ing] arrangements to send our clients to courses nearby that are hurting for lack of demand" (SI, Nov. 2004). In fact, according to a real estate developer quoted in the SI piece, Gregg Logan, `It doesn't matter that there's excess supply. Courses are being built to sell real estate, not because of a demand for rounds'" (SI, Nov. 2004). "They paved Paradise & put up a..." ... a Water Park? A water park is conventionally defined as "a large area containing several different pools with equipment and activities for swimmers, which visitors pay to use." Are water parks fun to play in? Sure. Are they PARADISE, LLC: Continued from page 30. Please see PARADISE, LLC, page 32 A production of @GB FILMS LTD A BBC documentary film part of the Natural World series Andrew Graham-Brown,Producer Neil Rettig,Photography Kenny Salwey,Narrator @ GB Films LTD 38 Somerset Street,Kingsdown,Bristol,England BS2 8LY Tel:(0) 117 9248844 Email:agbfilms@btconnect.com "River rats are too stubborn to freeze to death, too full of hot air to drown,and too damn independent to call anyone boss." NATIONAL PREMIER The quaint Mississippi River town of Alma,WI invites nature and river enthusiasts to attend a gala event: the North American debut of Mississippi:Tales of the Last River Rat on Sunday,March 6,2005 . Alma High School Auditorium (3 miles north of city of Alma on Highway 35) Following the film,the Alma Rod and Gun Club will host "A Taste of the Mississippi,"a buffet of savory appetizers featuring wild game,fish, and native plants from the Upper Mississippi River region. Original acoustic river music performed by The Halbergs,Harpers Ferry,IA Admission:$10,individual;$5,children 10 & under Proceeds exceeding expenses will be donated to the local Library and Public School for nature books and nature education programs,and to the Fire Department. Four of Concerned Citizens of Clayton County's most active members are ( left to right ) Greg Koether, Tim Mason, Harlan Dettman, and Shawn Klienow. Not pictured are Jerry and Stan Thomas; in addition, some two dozen supporters can be called upon when they're needed, to volunteer time and effort. The group's website is www.mhtc.net/~bloodyrun %%[Page: 1]%% K Page 32The Tapestry magazineJanuary 2005 PARADISE, LLC: Continued from page 31. The Last River Rat: Kenny Salwey's Lifein the Wild. Bestul, J. Scott and Kenny Salwey. Voyageur Press: Stillwater, MN.255 pp. $19.95. ISBN 0-89658-547-7. ENNY SALWEYis an honest-to-goodness "river rat," having lived his entire adult life, (except for a stretch in the U.S.Army) in Whitman Swamp -- a 6,000-acre swampland situated south of Buffalo City,WI in the backwaters of the Upper Mississippi River. Shut off from the so-called "modern" world, Kenny has roamed the swampland for over forty years; as aresult, he in knows the swamp almost asintimately as any of the creatures livingthere. The Last River Rat:Kenny Salwey's Life in the Wild was co-writ-ten by J. Scott Bestul, regional editor forField and Stream, and takes a seasonal lookat Kenny's life, month by month: alife of hunting, trapping, and living offthe land. Each chapter details a month inthe year, and ends with one of Kenny'sown "Rat Tales" -- in each of which heshares his personal stories and reflectionsabout life as a "river rat." Kenny recounts, in detail, many excit-ing stories of his adventures in Whitman Swamp. It takes a hardy person to live offthe river: Hunting for turtles and trapping beaver, mink, and muskrats in Januaryand February is not for the weak of heart. Neither is accidentally sleeping withsnakes, or getting trapped in a beaver lodge with an irate beaver and a dog fight-ing tooth and nail. For that matter, neither is hunting snapping turtles and rat-tlesnakes, by hand. Kenny tells many humorous andpoignant stories of life in the swamp and its inhabitants. Kenny's tale of two giantCanada geese is especially heartwarming. His experience with Big Boy and Beauty,as he named them, led him to no longer hunt geese. You will learn that huntingswamp deer is much different than hunting field deer. In one of Kenny's "RatTales," he relates the story of his efforts hunting a huge buckdeer for several years. Kenny called him"The Monarch of the Swamp." Many of Kenny's stories are informative.For those of you who don't know what a"goat prairie" is, Kenny provides anexcellent description. In addition, after read-ing this book you will be able to recognize"frog tears" and "rabbit coffee." Something Ifound very informative, just in case Idecide to venture into a swamp someday, is arecipe for bug repellant -- as mosquitoes anddeerflies own the swamp. (By the way, Kenny's bug repellantis not recommended for use among friends in your back yard.) As well as being a hunter, trapper, outdoor guide, and self-sufficient woodsman,Kenny is a good storyteller. His hope is that this book will inspire its readers tolearn to love and respect nature, as he does. -- Lyle Ernst popular tourist attractions? Undoubtedly. Are they the only thing we can come up with, to attract tourists to our region? Good question. Indeed, a plan to build a water park next to the Upper Mississippi River outside Marquette, IA (meant to draw visitors, presumably, from other water parks) seems, at first ponder, like a plan that could only have sprung from the mind of someone who hasn't spent a whole lot of time around our part of the river. Certainly it would seem a strange idea to a young couple, Trapper and Mandy Haskins, who two years ago traveled the Mississippi from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico in a handmade canoe. Having grown up on the lower Mississippi, in Memphis, Tennessee -- where the river is a mile wide and the current is fast moving and the barges are very, very big -- Trapper noticed immediately the difference about our region. "`[The lower Mississippi] is an industrial waterway; it's not somewhere that people play on the weekends,' he said. `This is amazing up here because it's such a recreational heaven. You've got all these beautiful bluffs, and the current's not too swift for people to play in. And then you've got sandbars that people can camp on, free of charge'" ("Going With the Flow," The Tapestry magazine , Vol. 1, No. 4, Sept. 2002. pg. 43). Possibly, though, the opinion of a man who would travel the entire Mississippi River, 26 miles a day on average, in a boat he made himself isn't entirely relevant when the surface ironies of this story have been scratched away, and some of the underlying issues it raises have become clear. We probably aren't really talking here about the Mississippi River as a recreation destination; in fact, we may not really be talking about the Mississippi River, at all. And if the irony of that possibility isn't clear to everyone who calls this river valley home, then we've got ourselves a problem. "What was Paradise? but a garden, an orchard of trees and herbs, full of pleasure and nothing there but delights." -- William Lawson It should be obvious by now that this story takes in a good deal more than the struggle, significant as it is in its own right, between a citizens' group and its supporters, and an out-of-state land developer and his supporters, in one Northeast Iowa county. One of the larger questions raised here was asked by Big River magazine of Winona, MN in its Nov-Dec 2004 issue. In "A Troubled Legacy," an article about the Clayton County struggle but suggesting implications for river towns throughout the region, writers Trudy Balcom and Pamela Eyden put the larger question this way: " How do you generate jobs without selling off Paradise?" And indeed, this tendency to use the word, "paradise," to describe the Upper Mississippi River valley has a long history in the region. Call it marketing ("Old Style -- Pure Brewed in God's Country" ) call it civic pride, or call it ethnocentrism; in any case, the reference to paradise is clearly intended as a reference to "unspoiled" beauty, to "natural" surroundings, to an "innocent" and uncorrupted landscape and lifestyle. Understood within the sort of framework these terms set up, land development for profit necessarily takes on a patina of corruption -- the serpent in the garden, so to speak -- which is arguably a problem, in that such a broad conception makes it too easy to avoid understanding the ways in which capitalist development can be an appropriate response to a community's problems and can, in fact, enhance its life and wellbeing. On the one hand, such a broad conception of "development-as-corruption" reveals a failure to think historically. Capitalism's roots are in the "country," not in the "city" -- in the emergence and development of agriculture. The Industrial Revolution may have obscured these roots in our 21st century minds; but the fact remains that any wholesale attempt to define "capitalist development" against a romanticized notion of the rural as a "natural," "innocent," "unspoiled," pastoral ideal is an attempt that will fail to yield any useful, productive solutions to the questions we face now, in the 21st century. Bottom line: Capitalist development is not synonymous with "corruption"; and "rural" is not synonymous with a "natural, innocent, unspoiled landscape and lifestyle." Consider some of the un-"natural" aspects of a rural lifestyle and of the soPlease see PARADISE, LLC, page 33 With this book, Kenny Salwey -- storyteller, environmental educator, "river rat" -- hopes to inspire his audiences to protect this precious and fragile river ecosystem... the great Mississippi River The Center for Earth Relations and The Channel Cat gallery of Lansing, Iowa are pleased to present A Sneak Preview: "Mississippi: Tales of the Last River Rat" a production of @GB FILMS LTD A BBC documentary film part of the Natural World series Andrew Graham-Brown, Producer * Neil Rettig, Photography Kenny Salwey, NarratorSunday, January 16 * 4 pm at the Channel Cat gallery 266 Main St. * Lansing, IA 563-538-9212 or 563-538-4397 a plan to build a water park next to the Upper Mississippi River outside Marquette, IA seems, at first ponder, like a plan that could only have sprung from the mind of someone who hasn't spent a whole lot of time around our part of the river. %%[Page: 1]%% U T January 2005The Tapestry magazinePage 33 We need good jobs. For more information, see Revitalizing American Manufacturing: A State and Local Agenda, compiled by the Industrial Union Council in November 2004. Visit http://www.aflcio.org "States and communities can do a great deal to address the manufacturing crisis, even though the forces of globalization may appear to overwhelm their efforts to retain or create new manufacturing jobs. Alleviating the manufacturing crisis on Main Street will require a mix of federal, state, and local policies and programs, as well as practical strategies involving state and local officials, employers, unions, and community groups. "State and local initiatives to retain and revitalize manufacturing can be combined into a three-part agenda. Specifically, these initiatives should: 1. Support federal policies, such as those advanced by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, that discourage companies from exporting American manufacturing jobs; 2. Promote the retention and creation of good manufacturing jobs at the state and local levels; 3. Help U.S. manufacturing workers remain competitive in the global economy." * American Manufacturing in Crisis * Despite signs that the U.S. economy is recovering from the recession of 2001, American manufacturing remains in the doldrums. In January 2004, U.S. manufacturing employment fell to its lowest level since 1950. called "natural" landscape: Farmers routinely apply herbicides and pesticides to their fields, and the effects of this practice make it virtually impossible to produce completely chemical-free food, "certified organic," or no; the Mississippi River is no longer actually a geographically-defined "river" at all -- but rather, a series of controlled navigational pools; many of our trout streams yield fish only thanks to having been stocked with them. If the market would reward venture capitalists who invested in the development of alternative sources of energy -- if, say, more of us demanded this sort of development and slowed our consumption of non-renewable sources of energy -- we could probably rest assured that this is exactly what venture capitalists would do. And where this sort of development is being engaged, all of our communities -- "rural" and "urban" -- are the better for it. On the other hand, the employment of a paradise v. corruption analytic framework allows "development" to become synonymously associated with an idea far less pejorative than "corruption." When held against the pastoral, Edenic ideal, development is allowed to become synonymously associated with progress -- when, in fact, this association is a deeply suspect one. Consider the development project, for example, in question in Clayton County - - and the ways in which terms like "paradise" and "corruption" actually apply. Originally involving an additional plan to construct a landfill-and-concrete "trail" for walking/biking the one-mile stretch between Marquette and McGregor, the project still involves a plan for an 18-hole golf course and a residential development, a water park, and a hotel/conference center. (Note: Opponents of the "Trail" project have suggested that a larger context bears noticing here, as well. Were this proposed biking/walking trail part of an explicit plan for, they argue, a larger national or state trail -- one that involved more than a sidewalk between two towns - - perhaps the ecological and economic costs of the project would not have seemed so out of proportion to the plan's purpose.) In any case, we're talking here about a place where the earth is always freshly mown, the air is always climate controlled, and "the water's (always) fine." Paradise -- right? Or, anyway, some marketing firm's definition of it? Meanwhile, one of the agents of "corruption" in this Eden-inspired landscape is, for example, the Higgin's Eye Pearly Mussel. The stretch of river in question here is home to one of the richest beds of this federally endangered species -- a species that helps ensure the river's good health. Because construction of the "trail" proposed by the Legacy project's developers would have buried the mussel's home by requiring tons of limestone to be deposited into the river, protection of the mussel's habitat posed a threat to the illfated "Trail of Two Cities" -- and to a development project's plan for its Edenic landscape. Destroying the mussel's habitat in favor of this development project, though, would in effect have helped to push back some of the real progress we've made in restoring the health of the river that sustains our communities. HE ST OR Y of "River Bluffs Resort, LLC (and its supporters) v. Concerned Citizens for Clayton County (and its supporters)" is most emphatically not a story about "Tree-Hugging Idealists v. Economic Development and Progress" -- although the story could end up reading that way, when the terms of public debate are constrained by falsely dichotomous thinking. Instead, this story is actually about the ways in which capitalist development can, in fact, impede progress. The question, then -- "How do you generate jobs without selling off Paradise?" -- might more appropriately be asked like this: "How do we effect economic development without compromising our own future?" Concerned Citizens of Clayton County (and their supporters) might suggest that a first step needs to involve more careful and thorough consideration of plans like the River Bluffs Resort, LLC development project. Ultimately, sound economic development and real progress might well need to involve a refusal to simply buy the latest commodity being touted to cure all our ills, a sort of "`Paradise'-in-a-can" -- or, at any rate, in a golf course/water park. RBAN/RURAL; natural/un-natural; unspoiled/developed -- maybe these dichotomies, assuming they ever really held, have fallen away entirely and left us with more to figure out than simply which "side" we are on in situations, like that in Clayton County, Iowa, where divisiveness can exact a heavy and painful toll. Maybe, in the end, "Paradise" is just another word for home. * "I believe that we must slow down and ask ourselves exactly what it is we want our homes to become... This corner of the world -- Northeast Iowa, Southwest Wisconsin, Southeast Minnesota -- is very unique. A world treasure. Even in my short fifty years, I have been witness to a great deal of destruction of our landscape. If we can slow this down the next generation will thank us all. -- Tim Mason, of Concerned Citizens of Clayton County PARADISE, LLC: Continued from page 32. %%[Page: 1]%%