Jordan Lutz is a rodeo queen sponsored this year by Save the Rodeo Jackson Hole, which is part of the Save the Fairgrounds movement.
Town council candidate Kat Reuckert smiles and reaches out to Teton County GOP Chair Mary Martin when Martin appears in the Save the Fairgrounds documentary.
Lawyer Mark Jackowski tells the audience that he’s not pursuing legal action against the town for the Flat Creek Apartments project. When informed that the town doesn’t plan to seek a zone change for the project, which would prevent a delay by referendum, Jackowski said he had no comment other than: “I was right.”
Lawn signs for gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien, town council candidate Kat Rueckert, U.S. Rep Harriet Hageman and Secretary of State candidate Chuck Gray line the Exhibit Hall.
David Scheurn gives a stump speech for Town Council. He said he is running first on public safety and second on keeping the fairgrounds where they are.
Elizabeth Hutchings and Clare Stumpf were some of the Shelter JH members who distributed fliers about who the low-income Flat Creek Apartments would serve, where the Exhibit Hall would be relocated, and the possible benefits of a “bigger, better” fair and 4-H facility.
Jordan Lutz is a rodeo queen sponsored this year by Save the Rodeo Jackson Hole, which is part of the Save the Fairgrounds movement.
A premiere screening of a documentary from the Save the Fairgrounds and Rodeo group drew about 130 people to the Exhibit Hall last Thursday with an encore screening set for the same venue at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug 12.
The 38-minute film, produced and directed by 24-year-old Jackson native Peter Prestrud, has been in the works for nearly as long as the Save the Fairgrounds and Rodeo group has been publicly active — about a year and a half — group leader Rebecca Bextel said.
The film highlights the cultural significance of the rodeo and fairgrounds and includes interviews with rodeo legends like Hal Johnson, Skip Wright-Clark and Phil Wilson, and 4-H participants who use the fairgrounds year-round for animal projects.
Clips of group leaders Bextel and Blair Maus making public comment at meetings mixes in an urgent tone for keeping the high-value property in the center of town as-is, despite rapid changes in Jackson.
Save the Fairgrounds leaders Bextel and Maus have called out several projects as threatening the “Western heritage” of Jackson, saying they encroach on or potentially chip away at the 12 acres currently used for the fair and rodeo.
Town council candidate Kat Reuckert smiles and reaches out to Teton County GOP Chair Mary Martin when Martin appears in the Save the Fairgrounds documentary.
The first is a $40 million application from the Teton County Fair Board for specific purpose excise tax dollars to help purchase and relocate the Teton County Fairgrounds, which includes the arena where the private Jackson Hole Rodeo operates during the summer.
Fair Board member Marybeth Hansen has spoken publicly about the difficulty of operating a quality fair on the remaining 12 acres and the board voted unanimously on the item.
The film doesn’t get into any gripes that the Fair Board has with its current space.
In the film, Bextel says that cutting into the 12 acres, which the town originally purchased as a 26-acre rodeo grounds in 1941, would only make matters worse.
The $40 million SPET proposal to buy land to create a new fairgrounds was the first to be knocked out of the running for the upcoming November general election. Town councilors and county commissioners voted not to pursue the SPET funding.
What would go in place of the fairgrounds has been informally debated for decades, town Councilor Arne Jorgensen told the News&Guide.
Lawn signs for gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien, town council candidate Kat Rueckert, U.S. Rep Harriet Hageman and Secretary of State candidate Chuck Gray line the Exhibit Hall.
In the film Teton County GOP Chair Mary Martin is shown saying that people will come to Jackson because they like it the way it is, then suggests a “botanical garden” or a “swimming pool” would be “perfect” for the fairgrounds.
The location has been most seriously talked about for housing given its proximity to town and the goal of the community’s 2012 comprehensive plan to keep growth concentrated in town.
Discussions about moving the fairgrounds have hinged on first finding a new home for the rodeo or constitutionally required county fair. Fair Board members and housing advocates, like Shelter JH, have acknowledged there’s no 35 acres in the county that’s now suitable, affordable or available.
Planning alternatives for the current fairgrounds location have stayed surface-level for decades, several politicians told the News&Guide, because there’s never been another place to put the fair and rodeo grounds.
One project, however, is imminent and considered an “existential threat” in the movie. The Flat Creek Apartments at 400 W. Snow King Ave., where the Exhibit Hall and neighboring grassy area are located, are slated to break ground either this fall or next spring.
The grassy patch and corrugated metal hall have been in the housing plan for four years because those areas are “underutilized,” Town Planning Director Paul Anthony said. The housing would be a more “efficient” use of the space, he said.
The green Exhibit Hall has “been maintained as best we can maintain it, but the building has reached the end of its useful life,” Anthony said. And the grassy area “barely gets used.”
Fair, 4-H and community activities will be relocated to a “bigger, newer, better space” across the street where the newly renovated temporary Fire Station 1 building was, he said.
The town is donating the land appraised at $5 million to the joint housing department for a 48-unit apartment complex, which is being funded by at least $12.9 million in federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.
Lawyer Mark Jackowski tells the audience that he’s not pursuing legal action against the town for the Flat Creek Apartments project. When informed that the town doesn’t plan to seek a zone change for the project, which would prevent a delay by referendum, Jackowski said he had no comment other than: “I was right.”
The apartments will house people earning 30% to 60% of median family income, or less than $66,420 for a family of three.
While the film focused on the Flat Creek Apartments project, speakers afterward challenged government-supported affordable housing in general.
“Is there any piece of property in Jackson, Wyoming, that you will not try to take and turn into affordable housing?” Save the Fairgrounds lawyer Mark Jackowski said after the screening. “Does everyone who lives or chooses to come to Jackson, Wyoming, are they entitled to a home on the government dole?”
Jackowski said his group wasn’t pursuing legal action against the Flat Creek Apartments development but told the audience that if the town pursued a rezone, Jackson residents could undo the move with a referendum.
As Jackowski said he feared, though, the town recently withdrew an application for a zoning change and, according to Anthony, the plan is to pursue development under the property’s current Public/Semi-Public zoning.
That logic was what helped a new development on the hospital’s Hitching Post property move forward, Anthony said, to allow for employee housing as “accessory residential units.” Public housing can be considered “accessory” so long as its square footage makes up less than 50% of the total “primary” use of property, in this case the entire 26 acres of the fairgrounds that now has many uses, including tennis courts, a softball field and Snow King Avenue, Anthony said.
Any logic used to take away a piece of the original 26 acres, or the current 12 acres, doesn’t sit well with Bextel, who said after the film that “if someone is in office right now, they’re lying to you.”
Elizabeth Hutchings and Clare Stumpf were some of the Shelter JH members who distributed fliers about who the low-income Flat Creek Apartments would serve, where the Exhibit Hall would be relocated, and the possible benefits of a “bigger, better” fair and 4-H facility.
“Noah Webster wanted to establish what every word means so that the British couldn’t change the definition on us,” Bextel said, referring to an American lexicographer known for his American spelling book and dictionary. “That’s what’s happening right now in this town. We have a defined fairgrounds and now the town is changing the definition of the fairgrounds.”
The film also touches on a third planning project — which has not begun but is still disturbing to Save the Fairgrounds supporters — called the “Fairgrounds Neighborhood Plan.”
The item was included in the town’s draft fiscal year 2022 Implementation Work Plan but punted indefinitely so that town staff could focus on the upcoming Northern South Park Neighborhood Plan.
That means the matter has a chance of coming up two election cycles from now, but town staff would need to be directed by the Town Council to commence work on it. Planning Director Paul Anthony confirmed “nothing has been started” on the Fairgrounds Neighborhood Plan.
Town Councilor Jim Rooks is quoted in the film saying that he doesn’t think the fairgrounds is under “existential threat” but also that he wants to see the Fairgrounds Neighborhood Plan become a priority after a few election cycles.
The film portrayed both statements as antagonistic, but Rooks said after the screening that he was glad those clips were included.
“This ‘death by 1,000 cuts,’ ” Rooks said, referencing a common tagline used by Bextel and Save the Fairgrounds co-leader Blair Maus, “that’s just rhetoric that says … this is part of some, you know, conspiracy that there’s 10 things more coming your way.”
Rooks said that is not the case and it’s a narrative that detracts from worthwhile discussions about housing in the valley, where it should go and who should live in it. Still, he praised the film and said he was impressed with the young filmmaker and audience members’ dedication to civic issues.
Even talking about thinking of other uses for the fairgrounds is not what advocates featured in the film say they want, and that’s inspired them to get political.
Bextel said her group reached out to everyone holding local office to see if they wanted to be in the documentary and to all candidates offering endorsements if they aligned with the group’s priorities.
Four political candidates, all conservatives, have been endorsed by the Save the Fairgrounds PAC: Kat Rueckert and David Scheurn, running for Town Council, and Peter Long and Alex Muromcew for county commission.
David Scheurn gives a stump speech for Town Council. He said he is running first on public safety and second on keeping the fairgrounds where they are.
Before the screening, some board members from Shelter JH handed out card-sized fliers and tried to intercept people before they watched the film.
Shelter JH’s fliers promoted the Fair Board’s perspective that the fairgrounds could use a better space and said the “outdated” Exhibit Hall “will be replaced with homes reserved for local workers earning under $68k/year.”
Before the screening Bextel suggested the apartments wouldn’t serve the audience before her.
“Who’s earning under $68,000 a year?” she asked through the microphone.
About nine people raised their hands, many who looked to be near or over retirement age, which Bextel pointed out wouldn’t qualify if they weren’t already in the housing department system.
There are 860 one-to-four-person households earning less than 60% of median family income that have completed the Jackson/Teton County Housing Department intake forms. The 2022 Regional Housing Needs Assessment and Nexus study show 13% of renters in Teton County and 17% of renters in the region earn 30%-60% of area median income.
Bextel and Muromcew also labeled as unrealistic things the Fair Board would like to accommodate — if the fairgrounds could move to a new, larger area — like a livestock pavilion and covered, open-air vendor area.
“This dream of the new fairgrounds honestly reminded me of, like, a 5-year-old’s Christmas wish list,” Muromcew said. “Is it really realistic? And how are we going to pay for it?”
Though there was a diversity of opinions in the audience about government-supported housing and how the town should approach the land north and south of Snow King Avenue, all audience members who spoke with the News&Guide following the screening said they thought the film was well-made.
Jackson resident Sherri Vance, who recently moved from the Los Angeles area, called it “revelatory.”
She was one of many attendees who said they would vote for the Save the Fairgrounds PAC-endorsed political candidates.
Contact Sophia Boyd-Fliegel at county@jhnewsandguide or 307-732-7063.
Sophia covers county politics, housing, and workforce issues. A Pacific Coast devotee, she grew up in Washington, studied in California and has worked in Oregon and Alaska.
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