April 2012 - Parks & Recreation - 47

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By Phil hayward

ith budgets straining at every level of government these days, approaches
and remedies are being offered with increasing frequency. Some may work
and others not. Few will be popular with everyone, and among those, controversy is sure to arise. Depending on whom you speak with, public-private
partnerships represent a spectrum of outcomes for cash-strapped parks-from godsend to the abdication of public responsibility. Interspersed is no small amount of confusion and misperception. The lightning rod for many of these issues is a businessman
from Phoenix, Arizona, Warren Meyer, president of Recreation Resource Management.
Over the last 10 years Meyer has increasingly expanded his work with the U.S. Forest
Service into other public sectors. With more than 150 locations in 11 states, 400 employees, and annual revenues of $10 million, Meyer has become the genie that many people
do not want out of the bottle. Meyer, who serves as head of the National Forest Recreation Association, has been a virtual public relations machine for his field. Via blogs,
speeches, debates, and interviews, he has become the public face of the private
side of the public-private partnership business model. In this article, Meyer and
other players in the field of park operations discuss their views on the merits
of public-private partnerships.

Meyer grew up in Texas where his
fi rst exposure to parks came with
annual summer RV trips with his
grandparents to a variety of states.
Annual trips to Rocky Mountain
National Park with his parents
and siblings became Meyer's favorite excursion. To this day, he
remembers how he and his siblings had the audio trail guidebooks memorized. From high
school he entered Princeton University where a degree in mechanical engineering prepared
him for a stint in the oil industry.
Meyer returned to college to obtain an M.B.A. from Harvard University which led to a five-year job
with the consulting firm McKinsey &
Company. " I learned a ton about how
organizations work and a lot about how
they fail-they failed in a relatively consistent manner. "
Meyer developed an expertise in industrial marketing for large corporations-electronics,
aerospace, and technology. Working in the 1990s at
the height of the tech bubble for internet start-ups, including one founded by Microsoft's Paul Allen, was " fascinating, but weird for someone who came from a corporate/
industrial environment where there is cost control. I

was working with people who are running
through millions of dollars to no result. You had sales forces that
weren't selling anything. "
But the Pacific Northwest climate managed to
revive Meyer's love of
sunshine, which only
Meyer
the Southwest could
satisfy. So, he picked
up his growing family and located in Phoenix. Working in 2002 for
a vendor to the National
Park Service, Recreation
Resource Management, introduced Meyer to outdoor
recreation. He eventually bought
out the principals and set about gradually expanding its role as a private operator of Forest
Service campgrounds.
" The Forest Service was really innovative in this respect, " Meyer says. " But as I learned the business I
became convinced that the things that had driven the
Forest Service to need to seek private operators to help
keep recreation parks open and well maintained were
the same things driving other government institutions.
" It took a while for that to catch on, " Meyer continues.
" It was only in the last several years that the pressure
has become so intense on a lot of government budgets.

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