--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Annie Minoff: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff.
--:-- Jim Carlton: If you've driven through Texas, you may have stopped at a Bucky's. It's a gas station chain. But it is so, so much more than that.
--:-- Annie Minoff: For its superfans, Bucky's isn't just a stop along the journey. It's the destination.
--:-- Jim Carlton: We finna go to Bucky's! We finna go to Bucky's! Money can't buy happiness, but Bucky's sure can rent it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: A build-your-own coffee bar with literally, like, all the fixings you could ever want. This was my dream.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And then the barbecue. I drove four hours to a Buc-ee's, and it's 4 a.m. because I wanted a brisket sandwich.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I love Buc-ee's! Buc-ee's are huge, with dozens of gas pumps, and stores filled with food and merch featuring the chain's mascot, a smiling beaver in a red baseball cap.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Our colleague Jim Carlton recently visited the Buc-ee's for the first time. You know, for research.
--:-- Annie Minoff: What's it look like when you first drive up?
--:-- Jim Carlton: I was driving up by 25, and you can kind of see it from a distance. You can see the beaver logo, a greening beaver with the big teeth.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You get off, and you're usually following a lot of other people.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Inside, I discovered what draws people into the cult of Buc-ee's. They might come for the clean bathrooms, but they stay for the beaver nuggets, which are sweet, crunchy corn puffs, and for the brisket sandwiches.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Did you try the brisket sandwich?
--:-- Jim Carlton: I did try the brisket sandwich. It was pretty legit, actually.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I'm from Texas early on, and it was Texas style, and it's kind of hard to get that, so I thought they nailed it, yeah.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Then there's all the beaver merch. There's, like, kids with, like, beaver costumes. There's beaver dolls.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Everything's like this big, happy, like a theme park. It's like a gas station theme park. Like a road stop Chuck E. Cheese.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Exactly. That's a good way of putting it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Jim gets the beaver fever. But recently, he's been talking to a lot of people who are decidedly not fans of Bucky's.
--:-- Jim Carlton: He's been reporting on a showdown, one that's pitting the rest stop and its dreams of westward expansion against one small rural town.
--:-- Annie Minoff: We don't want your Buc-ee's. We don't need your Buc-ee's. We don't desire your people.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minhoff. It's Tuesday, July 22nd.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Coming up on the show, a fight over Buc-ee's and for the soul of the American West.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Most Buc-ee's locations are in Texas, where the company's based. But lately, Buc-ee's has been moving westward.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Last year, it opened its first location in Colorado, north of Denver. Now, Buc-ee's wants to expand to a second location in the state.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And it's got its eyes on a spot along I-25, between Denver and Colorado Springs.
--:-- Annie Minoff: What are the plans? What would this Buc-ee's look like?
--:-- Jim Carlton: So I took a walking tour of the property. It's been zoned commercial since 1955, surprisingly, and nothing's ever been built on it because the development's just reached there.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It's a few pine trees, some sage. There's a gate there.
--:-- Jim Carlton: The proposed Buckees would be built on 41 acres.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The problem? The area is so rural, it's not even part of a town.
--:-- Jim Carlton: In order for the Buckees to get hooked up to municipal services like water, it would need to get annexed, meaning a town in the area would need to expand its limits to include the new Buckees in its services.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So last year, Buckees reached out to a local, Mark Waller, a lawyer and political lobbyist.
--:-- Jim Carlton: The company wanted to see if any local towns might be interested.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He had a meeting with the Buc people A place called Rosie Diner
--:-- Jim Carlton: And then they took out a map in the meeting It was over breakfast
--:-- Annie Minoff: And you could see that Palmer Lake is two miles away
--:-- Jim Carlton: So that's how Palmer Lake got on the map on this story.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Palmer Lake is a town of 2,500 people.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And unlike other nearby towns, which have embraced cookie-cutter subdivisions and big-box stores, Palmer Lake has preserved its rural character.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Some of its roads aren't even paved.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's right at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The foothills of the Rockies really start right there.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I was driving around, and you're in the forest.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You can see out over the prairies starting to the east.
--:-- Jim Carlton: You can see some buttes and sagebrush and that kind of thing, but it's very rugged.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And how did Buc-ee's approach city officials in Palmer Lake?
--:-- Jim Carlton: So Buc-ee's did a presentation to the Palmer Lake Town Board of Trustees.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And they basically showed how much traffic would go through that store.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And they said, you'll get about a million dollars a year in extra tax revenues for this town.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And that's significant.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Palmer Lake has been struggling with its budget like a lot of other small cities.
--:-- Annie Minoff: They have a water system which is outmoded.
--:-- Jim Carlton: They need to upgrade it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And they need millions for that and other infrastructure work.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And so the officials in Palmer Lake were very excited about this.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Very excited.
--:-- Jim Carlton: While town officials were excited about the new Buc-ee's, some locals were less than enthused.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Buc-ee's are huge, Texas-sized, and they run 24-7.
--:-- Jim Carlton: For many, it seemed like a blight on the idyllic Western landscape.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So I moved here to get away from the crowd a little bit.
--:-- Jim Carlton: That's Buc-ee's opponent, Jonathan Flanner.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Jim spoke to him and his wife, Cheryl.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And so now when they put a Buc-ee's there, at night, all I'm going to see is this glowing white light.
--:-- Annie Minoff: There's going to be a lot of traffic.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's just going to change the flavor of the community.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, in their minds, it's like a very garish theme park.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And then there's some residents of Palmer Lake who are also thinking, wait a second, okay, it's going to be two miles away, but we're going to see like this giant alien spaceship.
--:-- Annie Minoff: We're going to see the glow.
--:-- Jim Carlton: The glowing light of the Buc-ee's in the distance at night.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And this is a place cherished for its night stars.
--:-- Jim Carlton: You know, they're worried about the traffic.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It's going to ruin the whole area, and it's going to bring in more stores, more development.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I just think there's some areas that should be left alone for recreation, for people to have a little more peace and get away from the city and enjoy the wilderness, as I think most people here enjoy the quietness and the scenery.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Buc-ee's would eventually hire Mark Waller, that lawyer that the company met with at the diner, to represent them.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Waller said that the lights at the new Buc-ee's would point downward to minimize the glow.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So the residents kind of banded together, and they actually started a resistance group.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's kind of like, hell no, we don't want Buc-ee's. Move it somewhere else.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And then the word spread in Palmer Lake.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Several residents of the Palmer Lake area near Monument, not too happy about a new location being proposed there.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The Buc-ee's resistance grew.
--:-- Jim Carlton: People started holding protests and speaking at town hall meetings.
--:-- Annie Minoff: At one meeting in December, Buc-ee's developers laid out their plans for the new location.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Hundreds of people came out.
--:-- Annie Minoff: People want you to come in here to get in your face and talk down to you and tell you what your community needs.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Am I right?
--:-- Annie Minoff: Nevertheless, in May, Palmer Lake's board of trustees voted to allow the Buc-ee's annexation to move forward.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Prompting even more backlash from residents.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And voting against the people is not just bad leadership, it's betrayal of our democracy.
--:-- Jim Carlton: You were elected to serve us, not to serve your own special interests.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Things got increasingly ugly.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Insults flew on social media.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Some city officials alleged that their car tires had been slashed.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And then there was the texting scandal.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Palmer Lake Mayor Glanthavenar is resigning from her post effective tomorrow.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Palmer Lake mayor resigned after it was discovered that she disparaged some anti residents over text calling them quote fat ass and terrorists
--:-- Annie Minoff: Were you surprised by the level of vitriol?
--:-- Jim Carlton: I mean, we're talking about a rest stop.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think my jaw is on the ground.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Like, I just couldn't—when I started to do this story, I knew it was going to be controversial, but I've done a lot of stories.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But this one, the level of just, like, personal insults and fighting like this, you know, took the cake.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I think part of it is a lot of people say things on text that aren't meant for public, and, you know, this became public.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The fight in Palmer Lake might have gotten unusually vicious, but the issues at play aren't unique.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Fights over land development have been cropping up across the West.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I've seen this play out in many other parts of the West.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I was in Moab, Utah. Earlier this year, there was a fight about development in the Colorado River floodplain, for example.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The West is this storied mythical place of grand landscapes and values, and it's getting smaller.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Across the West, wide open spaces that used to be devoted to ranching or farming are being developed.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Between 2017 and 2022, the American West lost 6.6 million acres of farm and ranch land.
--:-- Jim Carlton: That's an area the size of Massachusetts.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And no state has lost more of that land than Colorado.
--:-- Jim Carlton: This is a story about buckies, a fight over buckies, but it's really about land development in the American West.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Colorado is one of the fastest growing states.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And along the Colorado Front Range.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It's just, you know, the land that used to be wide open is being covered by shopping malls, outlet malls, gas stations, homes, subdivisions.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's this urban sprawl.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So, yeah, I mean, what was triggered by Buc-ee's is a familiar battle, but it was kind of larger than life.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And in this battle, anti-Buc-ee's residents have a local hero, someone who's vowed to fight for them.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The Cable Cowboy.
--:-- Jim Carlton: That's next.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The Cable Cowboy is actually from Connecticut.
--:-- Jim Carlton: His name is John Malone, and he's a billionaire telecommunications magnate.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He found it in co-chairs Liberty Media, which owns Sirius XM, Live Nation Entertainment, and Formula One Racing.
--:-- Jim Carlton: You can hear him on CNBC talking about stuff like streaming profits.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Streaming just isn't working for most of the players that are trying it.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's not being the successor, profitable, cash-flowing service for most of the players that they were hoping it would be.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But Malone also has another passion.
--:-- Jim Carlton: You talked to the cable cowboy for this story. What's he like?
--:-- Annie Minoff: Very folksy.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I talked to him over Zoom.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I was in San Francisco in my home.
--:-- Jim Carlton: He was in one of his homes in Ireland, and he was just talking about his love of the West.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Malone loves the open range, so much so that he's been buying it up on a massive scale.
--:-- Jim Carlton: He's currently the second largest private landowner in the country, with ranches in Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Right now, he owns 2.2 million acres in the United States.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And he wants to see it preserved.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He said he especially wants to preserve the Western rustic lifestyle, you know, where you've got the ranch or farm, and then you've got the little town that depends on the ranch that sells the, you know, the John Deere tractors and the horse feed.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And he just loves that part of the American Western culture.
--:-- Annie Minoff: When you go north of Denver toward Boulder and Fort Collins, there really is no open space left.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's all developed, so there's not even a hint of what we moved to Colorado for.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Malone owns 17 acres near Palmer Lake the town debating the new Buc His land is flush with greenery and wildlife and still managed by cowboys
--:-- Jim Carlton: I rode with a cowboy named Josh.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You got on a horse for this story?
--:-- Jim Carlton: No, I was in his pickup truck.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But we were on the range.
--:-- Jim Carlton: We saw a herd of elk.
--:-- Annie Minoff: There are bighorn sheep here.
--:-- Jim Carlton: They actually have big game hunting. You can go big game hunting on this ranch.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So Malone really wanted to preserve all this.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And as we drove to the side of the ranch where you can see Bucky's, you can see the place where it'd be.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And so Malone's people were saying, you know, just imagine a spaceship there, just this giant mall right there.
--:-- Jim Carlton: It's just going to ruin the whole look and feel of this place.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It is really like these two visions of the West are just cheek by jowl here.
--:-- Jim Carlton: The part of it that's developing and growing and the part of it that wants that kind of old feel, that old West to remain.
--:-- Annie Minoff: They're right up next to each other.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Exactly.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And that's the problem.
--:-- Jim Carlton: That's the problem.
--:-- Annie Minoff: We have two competing views of the Old West.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Malone really didn't want the new Buc-ee's.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He co-wrote a newspaper editorial which called the Buc-ee's beaver, quote, an invasive species from Texas.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And he didn't stop there.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Malone, he's got a guy named Rye Austin, is his head of land preservation.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And Rye called, actually, Mark Waller.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Waller, the lawyer hired by Buc-ee's.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And said, we want to let you know that Mr. Malone doesn't like the development.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And there's some dispute about exactly what happened next.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Waller says that Rye kind of semi-threatened said, and he's prepared to use his vast resources to stop it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: In other words, this town ain't big enough for the both of us?
--:-- Jim Carlton: Pretty much, pretty much.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And so Rice said that's not the way it happened.
--:-- Jim Carlton: You know, he did convey Malone's displeasure, but he didn't say there was any threat.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So anyway, that's in dispute right now.
--:-- Jim Carlton: So anyway, now we've got John Malone, the cable cowboy involved in the fight.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So now we're really off to the races.
--:-- Jim Carlton: How could Malone prevent this development?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, what can he kind of tangibly do to support the anti-Bucky's effort?
--:-- Jim Carlton: Well, what he told me is that he's already offered to buy that land.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So the land, the 41 acres, is under contract to Buc-ee's.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I mean, Buc-ee's doesn't actually own it yet. It's under contract.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And so Malone said, I'll buy it.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And he said, and I'm prepared to help back a legal battle.
--:-- Annie Minoff: He'll help support a lawsuit.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Is the anti-Buc-ee's camp kind of fighting the inevitable?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, places change. You know, more people want to live out west. the population is growing.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Can you roll that back?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I was actually surprised at the intensity of opposition because you're right.
--:-- Jim Carlton: I mean, the interesting thing about this fight is this is on Interstate 25.
--:-- Annie Minoff: There's so many people, millions of people on that highway.
--:-- Jim Carlton: And if you're going towards Colorado Springs, the very next exit is like a strip shopping center.
--:-- Annie Minoff: There's a McDonald's.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Suburbia's right there.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It's right around the corner.
--:-- Jim Carlton: After Palmer Lake's Board of Trustees voted to move forward with annexation last May, the town's planning commission began preparing a report on what it would take to build the new Buc-ee's.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Officials are now waiting for that report and expect to vote later this summer on whether or not to move forward.
--:-- Jim Carlton: The new mayor said they plan to probably take a vote fairly quickly after that report.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So things are kind of coming to a head on Buc-ee's.
--:-- Jim Carlton: But with all the guns in this fight, I have no idea whether it's going to be built or not.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I have this mental image of, like, you know, the Cowboys, like, emerging from all the saloons, guns drawn, and who's going to be left standing at the end of the shootout.
--:-- Jim Carlton: We have a high noon showdown coming, Annie.
--:-- Annie Minoff: High noon showdown.
--:-- Jim Carlton: That's all for today Tuesday July 22nd.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Jim Carlton: If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Annie Minoff: We're out every weekday afternoon.
--:-- Jim Carlton: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Annie Minoff: See you tomorrow.
