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Mountain News: No help from Alberta for part-timers

CANMORE, Alberta – People who own vacation homes in Canmore damaged by the flooding of Cougar Creek in late June are flat-out of luck when it comes to getting provincial aid.
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CANMORE, Alberta – People who own vacation homes in Canmore damaged by the flooding of Cougar Creek in late June are flat-out of luck when it comes to getting provincial aid.

The Rocky Mountain Outlook explains that the last municipal census showed that 37 per cent of residential property is owned by non-permanent residents. But provincial flood-relief funds will only be available to people whose primary residence was damaged.

No tally of the damages has been reported, although the Outlook says 189 families had been issued flood-relief cheques by the end of June.

No homes seem to have been lost in the flood at Canmore, but it was by a cat's whisker of safety.

But damage to the tourism economy of Canmore, located at the east gate to Banff National Park, continues. Hotels should have been full for the long weekend of Canada Day, which corresponds closely with America's Fourth of July celebration. But Tulene Steiestol, director of marketing for Canmore Business and Tourism, said she didn't see a single no-vacancy sign along the Bow Valley Trail. She speculated that some people who might ordinarily be visitors were, in fact, attending to their own flood-related problems at home in Calgary or elsewhere.

In addition, the flood impacted the treatment capacity for Canmore's water supply, yielding a boil water order. That probably influenced some people to stay home or go elsewhere.

Arts boosters see economic gain

MT. CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – A 500-seat auditorium seems to be the price of admission for a major destination mountain resort. That's the conclusion in Mt. Crested Butte, the slope-side municipality next to the ski area of that same name.

"The gold standard is essentially a 500-seat facility," explains Woody Sherwood, executive director of the Mountain Crested Butte Performing Arts Center.

It's small enough for intimacy, he explains to the Crested Butte News, but large enough to draw performers for whom 500 seats is the minimum.

Sherwood and other boosters are trying to raise money, up to $23.5 million. To help that cause, they have released a list of naming opportunities. For example, a donation of $1.5 million will get your name on the performing arts hall. Other naming opportunities can be had for $100,000.

So far, they have raised about half of their goal, if you count the value of the land donated by the ski area operator and the municipality.

The boosters paint the arts center as a key piece of the economic puzzle of the Gunnison Valley. "These buildings are economic engines for communities, and they have been since Lincoln Center in New York City," explains Bud Franks, the lawyer for the capital campaign. "It never fails; it doesn't matter what the size is, they're economic and cultural engines as gathering places for a community."

Just what do other ski towns have for performing arts? A quick scan suggests Sherwood is right that all the big resorts have big centres: Vail's Ford Amphitheater, an outdoor venue, has 1,260 sets covered and 1,300 lawn seats, while Aspen's Wheeler Opera House has 503 seats, and Beaver Creek's Vilar Center has 538 seats.

In Wyoming, Jackson's Performing Arts Pavilion has 500 seats, and out at the base of the big ski mountain there's the 740-seat Walk Festival Hall.

Telluride's Sheridan Opera House seems to attract no end of talent with just 238 seats. Up on the mountain at Telluride, however, is a much bigger and newer conference hall, which has 500 seats.

Suit and tie flop in Aspen

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen is no different than other ski towns in that nobody, but nobody, wears a tie unless for a wedding or a funeral, and often not then.

Eric Cantor, one of the leading conservatives in the U.S. Congress, apparently didn't know this when he showed up for his initial appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival. A correspondent for Slate, the online magazine, says Cantor, the House majority leader, was comfortably out of place.

"His audience, wealthy people in colorful shorts, was largely happy that Barack Obama was president, largely convinced that climate change was the reason the greater Southwest was melting this week, and pretty well convinced that Congress needed to pass the Simpson-Bowles plan to save America. Some of them had been convinced of this by Simpson and Bowles themselves when they showed up in Aspen, sans ties," reports Slate's David Weigel.

Apparently, the suit and tie impressed more people than his politics, and not favourably.

"It's tricky to read 2,000 minds at a conference, and there was no pollster stopping people... but the elites weren't blown away by Cantor," says Slate. "Honestly, multiple people mentioned that he'd worn a full suit, and a subset of these people had expected to be more impressed."

Slate notes that Cantor dressed down for his second appearance, doffing the tie. But he told Slate that the Aspen Ideas Festival needed to change, too.

"My whole takeaway here is that they've gotta have more balance in Aspen," he said. "If they're really going to have an impact on the greater political environment across the country, they need to. This is a bit like an echo chamber."

Dams reduce risk of floods

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – The floods in Alberta in late June have people in Revelstoke wondering whether the same fate could befall them. The answer seems to be yes, but for the elaborate systems of dams and levies put in place along the Columbia River's headwaters in the latter half of the 20th century.

Revelstoke had several major floods prior to the dams. The Revelstoke Times-Review points to a report that identified flooding from the Columbia River in 1894 of parts of the city and a large areas of farmland.

A 1948 flood reached a similar level, and a 1961 flood was just a bit lower, notes the Times-Review.

By 1961, however, several dykes had been built. Pumping stations were installed to prevent the rise of groundwater and flooding of basements.

A provincial study forecast a 200-year flood higher than any of these. But, there are now the dykes, pumps and dams.

Hotel closes for mud season

MOUNTAIN VILLAGE, Colo. – If mud itself is increasingly a rare sight in the increasingly ornate ski towns, mud season itself remains.

That's the lesson to be drawn from Mountain Village, the town located next to the ski slopes of Telluride. There, a high-end lodge called Hotel Madeline is formally being allowed to close during the slow weeks of April and May. Kai Ringenson, chief executive of Ektornet, the company that owns the hotel, told the town council recently that closing for the shoulder season was enormously helpful.

The hotel was a source of contention for several years as town residents argued about how high is too high and how large is too large. What emerged from the compromise was an exquisitely crafted structure called Capella Telluride, which promised pampering as you would find in the highest-service hotels, like a Four Seasons resort and spa, except that it was smaller.

"There aren't enough stars in the universe to describe the Capella," said a local editor in Telluride in 2008, shortly after the hotel opened. The community got "hot" hotel beds, ones available to the traveling public, and a stronger footing for competing with the well-heeled customers such as were being drawn to Deer Valley, Beaver Creek, and Aspen.

But it was terrible timing. The developer's business plan depended upon selling hotel rooms as condo units for top dollar. That top dollar had vanished. The original developer lost the hotel through foreclosure by banks.

The Telluride Planet says that town officials, in their agreement with the hotel, have agreed to let the hotel close during the off-season. But the hotel will continue to maintain a ranking of at least four stars or higher. The hotel, says the Planet, currently has a ranking of four diamonds by AAA and four stars by Forbes.