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Mountain News: Skiing subsidizes real estate, in CB

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Tim and Diane Mueller were hailed as heroes when they arrived in Crested Butte as the new owners of the ski area in 2003. Crested Butte had been languishing for several years.

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Tim and Diane Mueller were hailed as heroes when they arrived in Crested Butte as the new owners of the ski area in 2003. Crested Butte had been languishing for several years. The previous owners had lost interest in the ski area and were either unwilling or unable to invest money in upgrades. The consolidation that had swept the ski industry in the 1990s had also left Crested Butte, already more than four hours away from the nearest major population center, even more isolated.

The Muellers, with a successful history in New England, promised investment that would allow Crested Butte to thrive again, and planned anew to build both base-area real estate and create new intermediate-level ski trails.

Earlier this month, the couple announced the sale of a substantial share of their holdings at Crested Butte to a real-estate investment trust called CNL. The company also owns Northstar at Tahoe, Sierra at Tahoe, the Cooper Mountain base area village, and other properties.

The Muellers will continue to operate the ski area. Also, uninvolved in the sale is undeveloped property, although they are likely to sell that to CNL once the development occurs.

Tim Mueller told the Crested Butte News that the public mostly misunderstands the financing of operations at ski areas. It is the skiing that pulls the weight, he said, and not real estate.

“We want the real estate aspect of the business to be able to stand on its own, rather than be supported by ski operations, which is what is happening now — despite what everyone thinks,” he told the newspaper.

The Muellers said that CNL will provide financing for ski area improvements that banks might not. One immediate repercussion of this new, deeper pocket will be plans to go forward next summer with a new mid-mountain restaurant, to be called the Red Lady Lodge.

Tim Mueller said other enhancements, such as resort and retail operations, are more likely.

For development of residential real estate, however, the Muellers will still be on their own. However, they have always made the case that an improved bed base is needed at Crested Butte if the resort is to reach a critical mass of 500,000 to 600,000 skier days. The other part of the equation, they argue, is an expansion of the existing ski area onto Snodgrass Mountain, which would produce the intermediate terrain that is mostly lacking on existing ski runs.

The Muellers began looking to refinance Crested Butte soon after buying the property, and began discussions with CNL two years ago.

Ken Stone, the ski area manager (a position he formerly held at Telluride), boasted that Crested Butte is now “the envy of the rest of the ski areas…The downturn in the economy compounds the fact they’re all looking at ways to restructure until the real estate recovers. Plus, the clock is ticking on loans. What they face is much more challenging.”

 

Tenor of times showing

CARBONDALE, Colo. – Two years ago, with The Home Depot and other big-box stories knocking on the door, Carbondale was being picky about what businesses it was willing to let in. Now, with the economic slowdown, it’s concerned about what businesses it may lose.

The Carbondale Valley Journal reports that a gathering of financial analysts at a recent meeting urged a shop-local outlook. But businesses, they said, may have to adjust, too, and figure out better how to meet needs of customers.

“One of the things we can do is keep things local, and work together to encourage people to shop local and focus on our local economy,” said Farrah Roberts, senior vice president of Alpine Bank.

 

Regulations work in reverse

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s efforts to control the commercial mix in its dynamic downtown district has had unintended consequences, interfering with the creation of the unique mom-and-pop businesses that were the intended beneficiaries.

The story goes back to 2006. At the time, some long-standing commercial businesses — a locals’ lower-cost eatery, a theater, and a bookstore — were all threatened with replacement by other uses, possibly of the chain-store variety.

In response, the city council adopted a moratorium on remodels. Landlords were permitted to allow different businesses, but not the remodels that might allow different uses — a retail store, for example, as opposed to a restaurant — to operate.

But Chris Bendon, the city’s planning director, concedes that the freeze has had the opposite effect. One case cited to illustrate the folly was of a new coffee shop, called Parallel 15, which was ordered to shut down because it had painted the walls, in violation of the remodeling moratorium.

Bendon told the City Council he couldn’t explain the cause for the moratorium with a straight face.

“It’s getting weird,” he told The Aspen Times. “Regulation is not a tool of creation; it’s a limitation. There is no bright, gleaming purpose at this point.”

The council, by a 4-to-1 vote, agreed. Instead of a stick, the city staff is talking about offering carrots, in the form of public-private partnerships, to keep unique stores owned by locals and often catering to locals in the commercial mix.

 

Scam artists hit seasonal workers

PARK CITY, Utah – It’s scam time in Park City. At least two groups of South Americans have lost major sums of money after placing deposits on what they believed would be housing needed during their winter employment.

In one case, a couple of Peruvians were apparently fleeced by Columbians, who sent a key to a house and gave an address. But alas, when the Peruvians tried the key, it didn’t work, and the person who answered the door knew nothing about the deal.

In the other case, 13 Uruguayans lost $5,000. The Park Record indicates no suspects in that case.

 

Woman dies in in-bounds slide

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah –- Several early in-bound avalanches have occurred in the last week, including one at Snowbird that claimed the life of 26-year-old Heather Gross.

Gross was buried for nearly an hour by a slide in the Eye of the Needle, described by guidebook author Brad Asmus as one of Snowbird’s most distinctive chutes. He rates it as being 9.3 on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the hardest.

The Salt Lake Tribune, citing National Weather Service statistics, said Gross was the first woman killed by an avalanche while skiing inbounds in the past half-century in Utah. However, seven lives have been claimed overall, including that of a Colorado man just a year ago at Park City’s The Canyons.

In Colorado, an avalanche in Vail’s Blue Sky Basin buried a skier to his waist but left the man unharmed. The slide was about three feet deep and started at the ground. Scott Teopfer of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center told the Vail Daily that ski patrollers had set off avalanche explosives on the same slope about two hours before the slide occurred.

In Telluride, skiers triggered an in-bounds avalanche, but in an area where ski patrollers were still conducting avalanche control operations. To access the area, reports The Telluride Watch, they ducked ropes. There was no evidence of injuries to anybody.

 

Bagging a winner

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – Last summer Aspen engaged in a friendly competition with Telluride and its sister slope-side town, Mountain Village, about which could do the best job of getting grocery-store shoppers to reduce the number of plastic bags used for grocery shopping. Patrons were asked to reuse plastic bags or perhaps use cloth bags.

Telluride and Mountain Village won the challenge, but the three towns altogether eliminated 140,000 plastic bags during the three-month contest.

Other towns in the tribe of Colorado ski towns — but also Jackson, Wyo; Ketchum, Idaho; and Park City, Utah — have been invited to join in a more extended rivalry called BYOB, for Bring Your Own Bag. The year-long contest is set to begin Jan. 1.

Breckenridge has been among the first to enlist in the contest. “It’s the right thing to be doing,” Mayor John Warner told the Summit Daily News.

Town officials are approaching the town’s two grocery stores to ask if they will contribute 5 cents per bag toward a community fund for providing bag handouts and educational documents.

Frisco, Dillon and Silverthorne were also considering being in the contest. The facilitator of the contest is the Colorado Association of Ski Towns, which counts 18 ski towns in Colorado as members.

 

Canmore editor calls time

CANMORE, Alberta – Carole Picard is leaving the Rocky Mountain Outlook as editor. She’s been there most of the seven years of the paper’s existence, but has 30 years exactly tied up in the newspaper business.

She professes to “still love the thrill of the case, the adrenalin of a good story, the satisfaction of the perfect headline and the inherent, unshakable knowledge that ours is an indispensable pillar of a free, just and democratic society. When done well and right, it is one of the finest ways in which to make one’s living, upholding the unwritten creed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It is the perfect profession for idealists, aging and otherwise.”

But — as is always the case, for those aging and otherwise — newspapering is draining. “Fifteen-hour days chained to a computer and desk can be exhausting as manual labor, but rather than enhance one’s musculature, they deplete it. Fifteen-hour days of hunting down (sometimes successfully) dangling participles, misplaced commas and errant, meandering thoughts leave little brain space for other, equally important tasks.”

At long last, she confides, she came to see her position as a newspaper editor as a chore rather than a privilege. As such, it’s time to move on and sign her column with a big – 30 –, the editing symbol of old used to mark “the end.”

 

Solar array nearing completion

JACKSON, Wyo. – An array of solar collectors is nearing completion on the outskirts of Jackson. Town officials had originally thought to install the solar collectors on top of a new three-storey parking garage. But neighbours objected, and putting the solar panels atop the parking garage would have boosted construction costs appreciably, given the prices even a year ago of concrete and steel. Instead, just a token panel was installed on the parking garage, with the bulk of the panels moved to the sewage treatment plant. There, land was available for free-standing panels. But there’s another reason for the treatment plant, in that sewage treatment is a major consumer of electricity, some 5.4 million kilowatt-hours per year, more than any other town building. The sewage panels may help the town meet its goal of reducing its nonrenewable energy use 10 per cent by 2010, city officials tell the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

 

Miners not to blame

OURAY, Colo. – The highway from Ouray to Silverton is a famous one, and not just because of the avalanches that have claimed so many lives in just the last half-century. Nor is it entirely because of the precipices just a few mere feet beyond the edge of the pavement, unrestrained even by guardrails.

There’s also the matter of the water in the Uncompaghre River below, which despite a major remediation mining project still tends to run the colour of Kool-Aid.

But don’t just blame the miners, says geologist Bob Larson, Speaking at a recent community forum, Larson said that about half of the high metal content in the river is natural, the result of the highly mineralized content of soils in that portion of the San Juan Mountains.

“This is the way it was formed. The minerals are here because of hydrothermal activity and volcanism,” he said.

An apologist for the mining industry? Larson suggests skeptics consult the official diaries of the Escalante and Dominguez Expedition, which traveled through the area in 1776. The Uncompahgre, said the expedition’s scribe, was red in colour, hot and ill tasting.

The Telluride Watch said the lecture was part of a six-part series designed to help participants in developing a watershed plan.

 

Gorge a magnet for suicides

TAOS, N.M. – San Francisco has its Golden Gate Bridge, and Taos has its Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, a place where those who see no reason for tomorrow make sure that they don’t. The latest person to choose suicide was identified as a 44-year-old man from Albuquerque who indicated in notes that he was “pretty much tired of being unemployed and living off his girlfriend.” The Taos News said his body landed 600 feet below in the river.