Early vision for Cape ignored realities
Published on Sunday, December 07, 2008
From Cape Cod Online - Click here for full story
By Patrick Cassidy
If Norman Cook could see Cape Cod today, he would likely be both delighted and disappointed.
Cook, who led the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce for two decades that spanned the middle of the 20th century, had a vision for the peninsula.
"Cape Cod can become America's most beautiful and desirable rural suburb, an area that Americans will look upon as one of the rewards of a successful life," Cook wrote in a 1962 newspaper column.
At the time, Cook predicted that the region's year-round population — then less than 100,000 — could reach 200,000 without "destroying the charms that make our real estate desirable."
But growth would require jobs. Cook, who died in 1987, saw the building of second homes and retirement homes as a crucial source of employment.
At the time, it made economic sense that the building trades would provide good jobs for young people, said Michael Frucci, who succeeded Cook as the head of the chamber.
But, he said, those jobs would not be enough. The Cape's economic base would have to be broadened as well, as Cook and other planners realized.
"We were always trying to expand the economy," Frucci, 70, said from his home in South Yarmouth. "I don't mean just grow it, I mean expand it and make it more diverse."
Instead, as one part of Cook's vision became a reality and the Cape became a premier destination for visitors and retirees, the economic base remained stubbornly reliant on the lower-paying tourism and service industries.
Young workers were unable to afford the high-priced homes they were hired to build and service.
"Unfortunately, people living and working on Cape Cod have to compete for real estate with people coming from off Cape Cod," said Jim O'Connell, the author of "Becoming Cape Cod" and a former planner at the Cape Cod Commission. "It seems to have become exacerbated more in recent years."
Cook had more success on the managing-development front.
Looking every bit like the Madison Avenue advertising executives of "Mad Men," Cook pushed for both Cape businesses and the environment from Beacon Hill to town meeting.
The Cape Cod Planning and Economic Development Commission, an idea Cook had promoted, was formed. Organizations like the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod were created. Planning and an ethic of environmental protection became the norm during Cook's lifetime.
Village open space bylaws proposed by Cook were adopted in 10 towns in the last year of his three-year tenure as the executive director of the planning commission.
Despite Cook's simultaneous call for a $500,000 water resources management study and the establishment of a jobs development council and finance authority, the two measures were defeated at town meeting across the Cape. The water question would come up again under Cook's successor and pass. The jobs council never materialized.
The Cape's is very much a resort economy, O'Connell said, and geographic isolation makes it difficult to accommodate many other industries.
"The place was really created and shaped by people who wanted to create a resort," he said.
In the long run, that's not good news for young families and may be devastating for the region's future, planners past and present said.
"We lose the young people, and I don't think we have much left," Frucci said, adding that care is necessary in making dramatic changes to the Cape's economy. "What you don't want to do is fix one problem and cause three."
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