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"Distant Horizons" "I anticipate a recreation explosion
by the mid-1970's sparked by more people with more money and
more time to spend it." So spoke Hayward's Tony Wise at
a Midwest conclave of the Central Ski Area's Association at East
Troy's Alpine Valley near Milwaukee. Embracing all of Wisconsin,
Wise looks for a few really big operators running resorts with
year around recreation, Miami Beach style, including expert instruction
in every type of sport, heated swimming pools on the lake shores,
golf courses, Las Vegas type entertainment, and national reputations
a la Vegas and Sun Valley. "Each region will have one big nationally
famous resort," said Wise, "That will go out beyond
Chicago in advertising." "In our area we'll advertise
the Apostle Islands' image nationally." He sees the state
as one big Wisconsin Dells providing many attractions,
something to do every minute of the day and night, with a highly
mobile vacationer traveling from one activity to another. Wise
stated: "Instead of fragmented advertising like we have
now, we'll need a bigger promotion budget and national advertising." In northern Wisconsin, Wise has under construction
a 75 mile recreation corridor from Hayward to Bayfield and the
Apostle Islands. His newly purchased railroad will one day haul
tourists along the route and, if he has his way, there'll be
something going on in Hayward all the time. Wise sees Hayward
as the anchor point of the strip. For the Indian Head country
he looks for promotion of Indian lore, voyageur history, lumbering
heritage and natural scenic woods and superior beauty as nation-
wide attractions. Duluth-Superior could form the point of a triangle
with an "old town" harbor area making it the San Francisco
of the northern Great Lakes. Wise pictures the government's role in all
this as that of policing the natural resources to preserve them
with pollution and despoiling with zoning, parks and wild rivers
type legislation. In his opinion, government also has a duty
to provide airports and good roads for the traveling public. Wise's crystal ball comments before this large
group of resort operators from a number of Midwestern states
also touched another side. He said: "I shudder at the future
of the Wisconsin resort industry as it stands today. The state
and federal governments have got to save us from ourselves. We
can no longer take our natural setting for granted, and local
politics cannot preserve this setting." "By the mid 1970's," said Wise,
"millions of people will pollute the waters and litter the
countryside. Honky tonks and pizza joints will hide the very
things they come to see." He predicted that population pressure
will push lake property from the present $30 a running foot to
$50 by 1970. "You'll see no shacks on $5,000 lake lots.
We're having a big change from the northwoods slums we once worried
about." Wise noted that "1965 summer cottages
are year around homes and used for summer fun, winter skiing
and snowmobiling, fall hunting and spring fishing-a second home."
This second home boom and the death throes of the small resorts
which dot northern lakes today mean that in the 70's the public
will have to rely more and more on public access to lake beaches.
"People coming to the north woods will be squeezed in giant
campsites or huge roadside motels. The few resorts left will
be too expensive for the average person." Wise said: "Already much lake property
is too valuable to justify its use as the site of a small resort."
He feels that many resort owners in the next few years will sell
to developers who will either tear down or move off the obsolete
buildings now found on the premises. The lake frontage will then
be subdivided and sold off for leisure home sites. Wise added:
"Fortunately, even though the resort being sold is obsolete
in today's market, the owner will be able to make a profit on
its sale because of the high price lake frontage now commands." Members of the association know Tony Wise as a "swinger" in the recreation industry of Wisconsin. It took him twenty years to build a $5,000 investment in a wooded hill at Cable into Mount Telemark, a ski hill currently valued at a million dollars by would-be buyers. In building Telemark, Wise set the pattern for dozens of Wisconsin ski areas which have developed into a multi-million dollar winter income for the state. Whether it's Historyland or Telemark, Wise believes that for each dollar the public spends it should get a two dollar value in fun. He considers each spender on a customer, but a guest. It's true what they say about Hayward's Tony Wise: "He's a man with a mission and he's in a hurry." |
Sawyer County Historical Society for this contribution. www.sawyercountyhist.org |
