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Banff begins selling itself to China

BANFF, Alberta — A group of Chinese reporters has toured the Banff area in anticipation of the day, probably late this year, when the Chinese government begins allowing Chinese citizens to visit Canada as tourists.

BANFF, Alberta — A group of Chinese reporters has toured the Banff area in anticipation of the day, probably late this year, when the Chinese government begins allowing Chinese citizens to visit Canada as tourists. Only business visits are now allowed.

Among those visiting Banff was the chief editor of Tourism Magazine, Qin Zhijun, who planned a 10-page spread about the Canadian Rockies. Chinese has wealthy people who "want to see the world and have money to spend," she told the Banff Crag & Canyon through an interpreter.

The World Tourism Organization forecasts that China will have 100 million outbound travelers a year by 2020, making it the potential fourth largest source of outbound travel in the world.

Vail considering more activities

VAIL, Colo. — As Whistler contemplates its future, something similar, minus the anxiety, is going on in Vail. There, like many of the ski towns, the reverberations from 2001 caused a great deal of hand-wringing. But for Vail, like a lot of ski towns, things had begun to go south more than a decade before. The ski market had flattened, sales tax collections were flattening, and real estate was becoming the economy.

Now, retail sales are on the upswing again in Vail, as in most ski towns, and redevelopment to beat all previous building booms is well underway. It’s even possible that skier days this year might beat the record set a decade ago.

Still, Vail town officials are launching into a new effort to figure out how to use this new infrastructure – the assumption being that little additional growth can be expected in skier days. Instead, the general thought is that Vail must enlarge the offerings of off-slope activities of interest to aging baby boomers. Design Workshop recently inked a $125,000 contract to guide this new discussion.

Winter Parkers jumping again?

WINTER PARK, Colo. — When Intrawest took over at Winter Park several years ago, it reallocated the space devoted to ski jumping to other purposes, mostly beginner instruction. That didn’t set well with many locals in Winter Park, which has its roots in the same ski-jumping tradition that produced Steamboat’s renowned Howlsen Hill.

Now, a proposal has been announced for a new ski jumping facility, this time outside of the ski area, but closer to the commercial core of Winter Park. However, from a report in the Winter Park Manifest, the idea seems to have shaky legs, as it is not clear who would administer the program. Neighbors also find environmental grounds for opposition, not to mention disturbance of their relative peace.

Mine site to be $1 billion development

MINTURN, Colo. — Colorado brims with plans for real estate projects that are high end in elevation and high end in cost. The massive Wolf Creek project, with some 2,800 homes at an elevation of around 10,300 feet, has been the most visible, although a much smaller project near Telluride calls for homes at an even higher elevation.

But the most curious such plan is found near Vail, between the towns of Minturn and Red Cliff, where a Florida-based development firm envisions 1,700 homes on former mining properties. During the last two decades, some of these properties have been reclaimed in a $70 million Superfund cleanup.

Although a long-ago joke in The Vail Trail was that the area where the mine tailings were consolidated would someday become a golf course, that’s exactly what is being planned by the Ginn Co. A resort village is also planned nearby on land that at one time was buried by tailings left from a mine that operated until 1977.

This area along the Eagle River is located at about 8,000 feet in elevation, but other portions of the project extend to about 10,800 feet, and current plans call for two gondolas to help link them. A private ski area is also planned. The project is within a mile of the Vail ski area, but cannot be linked across Forest Service lands.

Total estimated cost of the project is $1 billion.

If the golf course is built on the now-sealed mine wastes, it won’t be a first. In Montana, a golf course has been created atop wastes at the Anaconda mine. For that matter, notes the Vail Daily, the town of Aspen partly occupies a former Superfund site once covered by mine waste.

Hotel to get extreme makeover

MOUNTAIN VILLAGE, Colo. — Sitting close to the ski slopes of Telluride, The Peaks Resort and Spa has been through several names and owners during its 15 years of existence.

The latest owner, a well-heeled private investment firm called The Blackstone Group, is ready to pour money into The Peaks to make it a "trophy asset," in the words of John Tolbert, a vice president in the LXR Luxury Resorts, a chain of properties established by the Blackstone.

The 174 hotel rooms and all else are to get redone. And cost? "Thirty, forty, fifty million dollars?" guessed Russ Flicker, the president of development, in an interview with The Telluride Watch. "I don’t know."

One key change: the hotel’s Great Room will be less great itself, with ceilings lowered but windows expanded. "In a mountain setting like this," explained Flicker, "it’s all about the views."

Architects for the makeover project are Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill, whose credits include the Sears and John Hancock Towers in Chicago and the Bank of America headquarters in San Francisco. The firm has also designed the Freedom Tower proposed for the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City.

Condo-hotel finally sells out

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — With the real estate runup of the last few years, it’s hard to conceive of a base-area housing project that has taken years to sell out. But that was the case at an $80 million condo-hotel in Steamboat Springs.

There, the ski area operator, American Skiing, had a 480-room hotel called the Steamboat Grand Resort Hotel. The AAA-rated four-star hotel opened in 2000, but then sales lagged. All of that slow motion ended on a recent Saturday when a third of the remaining whole-ownership and one-eighth share units were sold at an auction.

The Steamboat Pilot & Today reports that the cheapest studio units sold for $14,500 for a one-eighth share; a full-ownership one-bedroom condo went for $230,000. The newspaper says many people thought the best deal of the day was a 3,656-square-foot penthouse. Listed for $1.6 million, it sold for $680,000. However, purchase price is only part of the story in all these. The association fees run $59,000 annually.

Big summer for construction

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. — It’s shaping up as a busy, busy summer for Crested Butte, but also Gunnison, where a good many construction workers would ordinarily be expected to live. Some 800 new jobs are expected at the base of the Crested Butte ski area in a major new housing project, and another 200 workers are to be toiling in construction at Western State College in Gunnison.

Where will they all live? Everything from temporary trailers to Club Med, which isn’t open in the summer, has been discussed. The Crested Butte News also reports that county officials, working in tandem with the towns and others, are also examining a broad variety of other options for a long-term answer to the growing need for affordable housing. Among the ideas still on the table is inclusionary zoning, which would require that at least 30 per cent of all new subdivisions in the rural part of Gunnison County be available for lower- and moderate-income buyers.

Cloud-seeding alarms group

STOCKTON, Calif. — An environmental group is questioning plans to expand cloud-seeding in the Sierra Nevada. Some 12 different cloud-seeding operations are currently under way, and this new proposal calls for a portion of the Stanislaus River watershed to be seeded in an effort to induce more snow. Increased snow in turn provides more water for generation of electricity in hydroelectric plants.

The most commonly used seeding agent is silver iodide, which is spewed into the wind of oncoming storms. Snowflakes form around the tiny particles. But John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, says the silver iodide could be harming amphibians and fish.

"It may not be that a single year’s worth of silver iodide application immediately causes frogs to float belly up," Buckley told the Stockton Record. "But it’s just an additional harmful effect."

Other environmentalists are less alarmed. "On a list of a hundred environmental problems in my community, this would probably be somewhere around 98," said Michael Jackson, an environmental attorney based in the California town of Quincy.

"It’s a potential problem when you add any sort of metal to the ground," he added. "But I would worry a whole hell of a lot more about agricultural chemicals in Stockton than silver iodide in the Sierra."

A small club

KETCHUM, Idaho — At least in Idaho, all billionaires are ski area owners. Earl Holding, who owns Sun Valley Resort with his wife, Carole, ranks No. 606 on the list of world billionaires with assets estimated at $1.3 billion. Holding, 79, is a part-time resident of Sun Valley. He also owns Utah’s Snowbasin ski area.

The only other Idahoan on the Forbes list of billionaires is 97-year-old J.R. Simplot, the Boise-based potato tycoon who supplies the french fries used at McDonald's restaurants and who also provided the startup capital for Micron Technology. Simplot, who owns the Brundage ski area near McCall, has an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion. Topping the list is Bill Gates, 50, who is worth an estimated $50 billion. He’s an annual visitor to Sun Valley.

This ski area makes a profit

MONARCH PASS, Colo. — Do ski areas have to hawk real estate in order to make money? Nope, says Bob Nicolls, who knows something about both real estate and skiing.

Nicolls’s Denver-based real estate company, First Pacific Investments, owns about 5,000 apartment units in the West. He’s also a part owner of the Monarch ski area, between Salida and Gunnison. He tells The Denver Post that Monarch expects to top $1.4 million in net income this year, up from $905,000 four years ago.

"When you’re just selling lift tickets, you do have to have tight control on your expenses," he said. "But I guarantee we’re more profitable than any of the bigger resorts on a pound-for-pound basis."

Monarch doesn’t try to compete for Denver-area skiers, but does play hard for Oklahoma and Texas church groups. Given New Mexico’s drought and Monarch’s surprisingly generous snow pack this year, it has done well.

Various improvements, including new base-area buildings and more steep terrain, are being delivered. Monarch’s success, says Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, is typical in that small and medium ski areas have been doing as well as they ever have.

Mountain living boom continues

PONCHA SPRINGS, Colo. — While ski towns and communities at the gateway to national parks have seen the greatest population growth during the last 15 years, there is evidence that other small mountain towns are similarly getting ready to roar. One such place is the upper Arkansas Valley.

At Poncha Springs, which is located near Salida, developer Richard Chick is planning a $225 million golf community that is to include 600 homes. Another project will see 84 homes. The Denver Post says both developers are going after retirees and double-nesters. The one thing they all have in common is that they love recreation," explained Steve Faber, general manager of Land Properties, the developer of the 84-home project.

Several months ago The Post similarly reported plans for a lifestyle-based real estate development at Buena Vista, located about 20 miles upstream. Although enjoying generally warmer and drier conditions than is found in most ski towns, the valley is lined with 14,000-foot peaks.

Air quality improving

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Several Colorado ski towns were bumping up against federal air quality standards in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Aspen, Telluride, Crested Butte, and Steamboat Springs all had violated the standards for particulates called PM-10, or particles of 10 microns or less suspended in the air. Ten microns is about the width of a human hair.

But the air in all these towns, including Steamboat Springs, is now much improved. The Steamboat Pilot & Today explains the problem there was created, in part, by the volcanic rock used to sand the streets. While the sharp edges of the rocks provided traction for tires, those tires crushed the rocks and then kicked up the dust into the air. Too, residents depended heavily on wood-burning stoves and fireplaces, and many of the tourist condominiums included fireplaces and wood-burning stoves.

"Gazing down Lincoln Avenue from the ski slopes on a late-March afternoon in 1990, it was possible to see a brown haze over Old Town Steamboat," notes the newspaper’s Tom Ross, who even then was a long-time veteran in Steamboat.

The city had begun addressing the problem in 1986. Multi-family residential projects were required to begin burning natural gas, instead of wood, in fireplaces. Those with permission to continue using wood-burning stoves were required to retrofit their appliances with catalytic converters.

As in other ski towns, street crews began to more religiously sweep up the cinders after snowstorms, so that they couldn’t be kicked into the air. And, finally, the efforts to reduce emissions from the coal-burning power plants located west of Steamboat Springs have also benefited the valley’s air quality. Steamboat has not violated air quality standards since 1996.

Avalanche count low so far

SILVERTON, Colo. — Despite the arrival of spring, avalanches remain very much a possibility as was evidenced by the recent death of a snowboarder in the backcountry east of Ogden, Utah. As of March 21, the U.S. death toll this winter was 18, and the Canadian toll six.

While all those deaths are unfortunate, the death toll among the mining camps of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains was much, much higher a century ago. The Silverton Standard recalls those bad times with excerpts of a book in progress by Patrick M. Swonger, who is telling of an avalanche on St. Patrick’s Day in 1906. The avalanche killed 12 men who were at a remote mine.

That slaughter followed an even more grisly winter in which dozens of miners died in avalanches near Telluride. In 1899, a dozen miners and their families, mostly of Italian origin, died near Silver Plume. In 1885, 10 men from Leadville out to seek their fortunes in a mine at timberline died in an avalanche.

Lynx spotted

ASPEN, Colo. — Lynx have been seen in two Colorado ski towns this winter, first at Telluride and its companion town, Mountain Village, and then more recently at Aspen.

At Telluride, state wildlife officials felt provoked to tell people not to feed the lynx. In Aspen, a female lynx soon died after she was spotted. She had suffered a leg injury. "In all likelihood, the reason people saw it and the reason a person was able to snap a picture is because the animal was hurt and hungry," Randy Hampton, a spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, told The Aspen Times.

Some 204 lynx have been released in Colorado since the reintroduction program began in 1999. Before that, the last confirmed lynx was near Vail, in 1973, although state wildlife biologists reported strong evidence of lynx even in the early 1990s.

Parents like two-week break

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — School officials in Jackson are trying to decide whether to retain the two-week spring break that was introduced years ago to overlap with the closing of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and the start of the shoulder-season.

Because Jackson Hole is the gateway to two major national parks, Teton and Yellowstone, it is much busier in summer than in winter. As such, most parents appreciate a longer spring break for family vacations.

A recent poll found that 51 per cent of parents want to stay the course, although nearly as many would prefer to reduce the spring break. But an overwhelming majority wants to delay the opening of the school year until after Labour Day. How all this will be possible along with the mandate by state officials for more school days has yet to be resolved, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

Some old problems

SILVERTON, Colo. — The Silverton Mountain Ski Area, when it debuted several years ago, was portrayed as what was entirely right about skiing – unlike other, mostly destination, ski resorts that cater to the extremely wealthy.

But the first murmurs of discontent are showing up in the Silverton Standard even as the ski area prepares to host potentially hundreds of skiers per day. Parking is becoming an issue, and county road officials are grousing about the speed of skiers driving up the county road to reach the ski area. "It’s worse than when the mine was running," said Louie Girodo, the San Juan County road supervisor.

Green Building Expo returns

LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — For the second year, the Tahoe Green Building Expo was conducted with the intention of pushing renewable energy and environmentally sound construction.

Cheryl Murakami, a real estate agent, said green building and renewable energy are not yet mainstream ideas, although she believes they are getting closer to broad acceptance. "We’ll know we’ve reached a turning point when we hear more discussion of the financial benefits and less discussion of the philosophical or political aspects."

The Tahoe Daily Tribune notes a report that the spending on "green" goods and services increased 37 per cent from 2003 to 2004.

Aspen teacher refuses tests

ASPEN, Colo. — A Spanish teacher in Aspen, Sam Esmiol, has refused to give the annual standardized tests required in all Colorado school districts because, he says, those tests do not test Latinos fairly.

He told The Aspen Times that the format of the tests is unfair because teachers are expected to translate multiple-choice questions to Spanish-speaking students. In effect, he is saying that this slows the group down, because individual students cannot move at their own paces. He also said teachers are not adequately prepared to administer the tests when called upon to translate.

The school district reduced Esmiol’s pay and hours, eliciting a protest from him that his freedom of speech was being violated. Nonsense, said the school district.

Composting annoys neighbors

ASPEN, Colo. — In Squamish, neighbors are objecting to the lingering and sometimes overpowering odors coming from a composting operation. Something similar is going on near Aspen, where a sewage-like smell coming from a composting site set up near the Pitkin County landfill has been annoying neighbors.

The composting operation mixes biosolids from the sewage plant with wood debris collected at the landfill. The end result, after further microbial work, is soil used for landscaping. The landfill operator, Chris Hoofnagle, promises to fix it or remove it. One thing neighbors can rest assured about, he told The Aspen Times, is that he’s one of them. He lives near the landfill.