Bechtel Summit Plan from 2007

[RememberSchiff]

Planning For The Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve

Jack Furst 1:55  "...its our hope and dream that will serve somewhere between  fifty and a hundred thousand kids a summer.."

Jack Furst 6:23  "... the model that we want to us for this project is a corporate for-profit model that is a capital investment that will serve us well for the next 100 years. It is going to pay huge dividends we are going to be able to serve kids on this property for the next 100 tears, They're going to come here once every 4 years for a Jamboree. They're going to come here every year for a summer camp. They're going to come here every year for a high adventure experience. We're going to have ...

...we are only limited by our creativity and our own ingenuity. The key to this project is from an operating perspective, once the capital investment has been made, is it will sustain itself economically in perpetuity. We are on the eve of our 100th anniversary. It is time for this generation of scouts to invest in our future...

...we  are going to be able to serve more kids on this site than any other property that we have in the system. This site's utilization will be off the charts with a jamboree, a summer camp, a high adventure, and a leadership center, and much much more..."

Jack Furst is presently a member of the National Executive Committee.

 

Edited March 22 by RememberSchiff

[InquisitiveScouter]

And how's that working out for us?

[yknot]

You have to wonder how anyone responsible for the Summit mess is still serving. He should have resigned.

I'm a little worried Roger Krone will see Summit as a legacy building project and focus his efforts on trying to turn it around vs. addressing some of the more mundane issues that hamper program, like declining volunteerism. National Meeting is coming up. Hopefully we'll hear something about what he has been doing other than making videos for the past six months which, while good, haven't resulted in any visible action so far. 

[skeptic]

Many things that make it more difficult are basically our of the direct control of BSA, or for that matter, any youth serving agencies.  It is our legal system based on greed and the foolish idea that personal responsibility is not first and foremost, and that somehow human nature will NOT intrude too often and make things worse.  Civil cases are built primarily on the foolish idea that it is always someone else's fault, and so anyone remotely connected can be held accountable, with few or no limits.  Add human emotional empathy in many juries, and it explodes.  Meanwhile, we have more and more lawyers beating the bushes for anything that might feed this.  And then allow the media to hype things to extremes, and we have our perfect storm.

The concept of the Summit is not bad, it is the skewing of it over time and I fear some back stage siphoning.  On the other hand, the same concept on smaller scale might have been applied to regional summer camps that simply need financial help, but had or have volunteer support locally.  Then the youth served would have been more realistic, and also less expensive over all, or so it would appear to me.  

[yknot]

9 minutes ago, skeptic said:

Many things that make it more difficult are basically our of the direct control of BSA, or for that matter, any youth serving agencies.  It is our legal system based on greed and the foolish idea that personal responsibility is not first and foremost, and that somehow human nature will NOT intrude too often and make things worse.  Civil cases are built primarily on the foolish idea that it is always someone else's fault, and so anyone remotely connected can be held accountable, with few or no limits.  Add human emotional empathy in many juries, and it explodes.  Meanwhile, we have more and more lawyers beating the bushes for anything that might feed this.  And then allow the media to hype things to extremes, and we have our perfect storm.

The concept of the Summit is not bad, it is the skewing of it over time and I fear some back stage siphoning.  On the other hand, the same concept on smaller scale might have been applied to regional summer camps that simply need financial help, but had or have volunteer support locally.  Then the youth served would have been more realistic, and also less expensive over all, or so it would appear to me.  

I think it was poor forecasting more than anything else. They started it when scouting had already experienced significant declines and hit an almost 50% drop by the time they closed. The declines were influenced largely by changing demographics and not Covid or bankruptcy; at that point its financial problems were many and unrelated to those things. It was also pointed out it made no sense to try to build local membership with an expensive national center. I'm not aware what market research was done on its scout appeal, but it was never on the list for our units -- they wanted Philmont or Sea Base for exotic high adventure. For a lot of people in the eastern US, that kind of Appalachian terrain is beautiful but already accessible locally. 

[HashTagScouts]

Poor forecasting is an understatement. A big problem is location. Not near a major airport, so using it for training opportunities is pretty darn tough. We've got municipal airports in the northeast that dwarf Raleigh County Memorial Airport, and you can't get flights to it without zig-zagging around the US from some destinations. I suspect that is why things like the annual meeting, OA national committee meetings, etc. are not often making the rounds to be held there. There is limited onsite hotel accommodations at the Summit, but to me, we are in a camping-oriented program, so use it for NOAC and tent like is done for Jambo. Why pay huge sums to universities for their campus? i can say the easy answer to that- for many Lodges, it's the additional activities packed on either side of 4 days at NOAC that are the "attraction" (as well as the air conditioned dorms and dining halls). BSA should also look in the mirror- when moving things out of TX, they could have put them at Summit, but they chose Philmont. Why? People actually want to go to Philmont.

[Jameson76]

Vanity project pure and simple.

4 hours ago, yknot said:

Hopefully we'll hear something about what he has been doing other than making videos for the past six months which, while good, haven't resulted in any visible action so far. 

The videos seem to be all consuming.  At the end of the day we (The BSA) needs to either 1) Get more members 2) Right size the service / council end.

The main issue with the BSA and lack of membership was visible when the decision was made to allow girls into the Scouts BSA / Cubs.  During the Townhall video Michael Surbaugh (CSE at the time) basically said they needed members, they were out of ideas on how to grow membership, so this was the plan.  That was an incredibly telling admission.  That those that run and lead the program have NO IDEA how to get youth into the program.  Plenty of ways to lay blame, but NO IDEA on how to grow the organization.

That admission is really the crux and seems to be playing out.  I suspect that membership for 2023, when presented, will be down under 850K.  Last one out remember to extinguish the campfire

Edited March 22 by Jameson76

[RememberSchiff]

As many local Councils have in the past ten years, National needs to re-evaluate the financial viability of their assets and program delivery solutions.

Let questions be asked: Rebuild local camps? Can we afford Summit or will annual membership fees continue to rise to cover mortgage payments? Do we need a permanent, large Jamboree site? Have any Jamborees held there been self-sustaining financially? ...

Another $0.02,

Edited March 23 by RememberSchiff

[InquisitiveScouter]

2 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

As many local Councils have in the past ten years, National needs to re-evaluate the financial viability of their assets and program delivery solutions.

Let questions be asked: Rebuild local camps? Can we afford Summit or will annual membership fees continue to rise to cover mortgage payments? Do we need a permanent, large Jamboree site? Have any Jamborees held there been self-sustaining financially? ...

Another $0.02,

Heretic!