TRUCKEE, Calif. - Last week's announcement of a ski-area takeover at Lake Tahoe really can be seen as competition between two recreational empires based in metropolitan Denver-Boulder.
The owners of Squaw Valley are taking over operation of nearby Alpine Meadows. Although not directly connected, the two resorts collectively will have 6,000 acres. The two resorts are just 10 minutes apart, with just one privately owned acreage separating them.
The deal had been rumored for months and talked about for years.
Squaw Valley was purchased last year by KSL Capital Partners, which is led by several former executives of Vail Resorts, among them Mike Shannon, who directed operations at Vail and Beaver Creek in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and Eric Resnick, who worked at the same company, but a decade later. KSL is now based in Denver.
Vail Resorts also has a strong California presence, with ownership of Heavenly and Northstar-at-Tahoe. Several years ago it moved its corporate headquarters from the Vail area to a suburb of Boulder.
Owning multiple ski areas allows companies to leverage their assets in marketing and in season passes. Vail Resorts has various iterations of its Epic Pass, including one that costs $649 and is good at its two California resorts, its four Colorado Resorts, plus Arapahoe Basin. KSL, with its new purchase, is offering a $799 pass good at both of its California resorts.
At stake are not just the 7.5 million people in the San Francisco metropolitan area, but also the potential to peel away domestic - and perhaps international - skiers from other destination resorts, including those in Colorado, Utah and probably British Columbia.
Ralf Garrison, who has been tracking ski tourism for 30-plus years from his headquarters in Denver, used the metaphor of a magnet in an interview with the Sacramento Bee .
"Tahoe's challenge is to build a big enough magnet," he said. "It needs to attract guests who come farther and stay longer."
Squaw Valley hosted the Winter Olympics in 1960, but until the last decade not all that much had changed. Colorado investors, however, have been remaking the region. And the Sacramento Bee correctly notices that it's not just about skiing any more. "It's more about developing full-service resorts with shopping, restaurants, high-end lodging and other amenities."
The Bee also portrays the merger of Squaw and Alpine as enhancing Lake Tahoe's possible bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Colorado is also considering whether to make a run at the same target.
Some seemed to think the Bee's coverage was a little hyper, making out the merger to be "the biggest thing to hit the regional economy since the 1960 Olympics," as one public official in Truckee, Calif. That public official said he is taking a more measured wait-and-see attitude.
Ski areas linked
PARK CITY, Utah - Operators of Canyon, the ski area near Park City, say they hope to link with the Solitude ski area, using a lift or tram for the one-mile traverse across the crest of the Wasatch Range.
The Wasatch Range, like the Tetons in Wyoming, is steep, narrow and relatively high. On the east side are Deer Valley, Park City and The Canyon. A few miles away are Alta, Snowbird, Brighton and Solitude.
Connections among the ski areas have been talked about for years, but with no concrete steps. Talisker, owner of The Canyon, says it has no timeline for the project. It would need to get approval from the U.S. Forest Service and several other agencies.
Opposition was immediate. A group called Save our Canyon wants to keep the spine of the range reserved for the self-propelled. "They have a long road filled with controversy and conflict," said Carl Fisher, executive director of the group.
"There would be no backcountry," he said. "It becomes the lift-served backcountry."
Buses create connection
PARK CITY, Utah - Bus service between Park City and Salt Lake City has started, and it's expected to draw commuting employees, students, and shoppers - plus skiers.
The drive between Park City and downtown Salt Lake City takes no more than 40 minutes, except in heavy congestion. The bus will take more than twice as long and will cost $5.50.
However, employers, such as ski areas, see the bus service as being useful in attracting employees who don't have cars, reports The Park Record .
Traffic still less than in '93
ASPEN, Colo. - Traffic at the entrance to Aspen remains down from before the recession - and 23 per cent less than in 1993, when city officials decided that congestion had reached a breaking point.
After that, the city instituted paid parking and improved bus service in the valley, hoping to permanently reduce traffic. So far, it seems to have worked, says The Aspen Times .
Keith Richards of affordable housing
AVON, Colo. - "Dilapidated" is the word that Eagle County Commissioner Jon Stavney used to describe an affordable housing project from the 1970s.
But Vail Daily staff writer Randy Wyrick used a more frightening image: "If Riverview had been a rock star," he wrote of the housing project in Eagle-Vail, on the outskirts of Avon, "it would have been Keith Richards' less careful older brother."
The project is craggy no more, however, after $17 million in grants, all of the money coming from the federal government, putting carpenters back to work.
Bag issue continues
BASALT, Colo. - Mayor Rusty Duroux reported that he found 18 reusable bags in his house, and 14 were made in China, with only two of them clearly identified as being from the United States.
With that as his reason, Duroux was the lone dissenter as the Basalt council approved a 20-cent fee on both paper and plastic shopping bags.
"It's hypocritical to discourage use of single-use bags, but ship reusable bags from overseas," he said, according to an account in the Aspen Times.
Aspen, Basalt and Carbondale are all contemplating restrictions designed to move consumers to reusable bags. However, after taking the first action to adopt fees, some members of the city council thought maybe an outright ban would make more sense.
Action is also being contemplated in at least two other mountain towns. In Steamboat Springs, any decision has been delayed until next year, although the Steamboat Pilot reports city council candidates are debating the issue. In Hailey, Idaho, voters will decide the fate of disposable bags in November. But there, as in Basalt, the source of reusable bags seems to have become an issue.
In Aspen, one irreverent local wag Carl Heck had this to say: "Too bad we can't ban plastic people in Aspen along with plastic bags."
Fewer carpenters, but more students
VAIL, Colo. - With the thud of real estate construction, it was predicted that there would be a mass exodus from the Eagle Valley, if not necessarily Vail, Beaver Creek or the other high-end resort communities.
The population growth has indeed flattened, with some evidence of decline. Not so school enrollment. The Vail Daily reports 5,823 students, an increase of three per cent from last year.
People flocked to mountain towns
MT. CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. - It was a good summer for ski towns, big and small.
Mt. Crested Butte reported a record July for sales tax collections, more than $200,000. The tally was 34 per cent above an 11-year average.
Vail also had a record in July, nearly $1.5 million. It also set a record in December, $3 million.
Joe Fitzpatrick, Mt. Crested Butte's town manager, attributed the strong uptick to a new zip line on the lower slopes of the ski area, more weddings and increased mountain biking opportunity. Plus, he said, people in Colorado travelled in Colorado.
In Vail, there were specific reasons, too. But Ralf Garrison, a long-standing expert in tourism economics, cautioned against crediting any one thing. "Some are flying above the economic storm and are not impacted, and others, who are tangled up in a depressed market, are feeling sorry for themselves, and they want to go to their happy places," he told the Vail Daily.
However, Garrison warned against too-lofty expectations. Winter reservations look good, but "it really is an uncertain economic time," he told the Vail Daily .
That cautious view seems to be shared in Steamboat Springs. Deb Hinsvark, the finance director, told the Steamboat Pilot that the city assumes no economic progress during the next five years, and maybe deterioration.
Real estate market slows
VAIL, Colo. - The real estate market has slowed from last year in Vail and the Eagle Valley, according to new sales figures through August.
A report from Land Title shows sales, as measured by total dollar volume, at 80 per cent of last year. The firm's Trevor Theelke says total sales for the year should still top $1 billion. But this compares with nearly $1.5 billion for Eagle County last year and $2.2 billion in 2008. But there is still some loose change at the very high end, as the $7.1 million sale of a unit in a condominium project in Vail demonstrated.
Uranium mill blocked
TELLURIDE, Colo. - Elected officials in Telluride are trying to block licensing of a uranium-processing mill about 80 kilometres west, in the sandstone country near the Utah border. The town council has retained the legal services of a national public interest law firm, Public Justice.
Through the firm, reports The Telluride Watch , the local government will argue that the proposed Pinion Ridge Uranium Mill poses a threat of significant environmental and socioeconomic damage to Telluride and the surrounding region, including the toxic and radioactive contamination of the region's air and water.
Can ski areas survive sans commercial jets?
HAILEY, Idaho - Will North America's first destination ski resort remain a destination for all but the select few? That's the fundamental issue as the Ketchum and Sun Valley community wrangles with its airport limitations.
Sun Valley's first ski lifts were erected as a way to draw more passengers to J.J. Harriman's Union Pacific Railroad, but those railroad tracks long ago were torn out. The airport at Hailey, 32 kilometres from the ski area, is too small to handle the big planes that fly into airports serving Vail, Steamboat and even Aspen.
Now, after several years of looking at potential for a new airport outside the mountains, farther yet from Sun Valley, the Federal Aviation Administration has called a halt, because of rapidly escalating costs and also incursions into the habitat of sage grouse.
The Idaho Mountain Express reports that public officials in Hailey are now contemplating the prospect of an expanded airport - something they had stoutly opposed. But there's still an option of doing nothing, with the airport continuing to operate under a special waiver from the FAA.
Doing nothing means that Sun Valley and Ketchum could eventually lose commercial air service as the Q-400 becomes obsolete, and carriers move to using larger planes.
