ASPEN, Colo. - An obstetrician and gynecologist who works part-time in Aspen has been ordered to sell his deed-restricted affordable housing because he hasn't spent enough time in Aspen.
Because the house was built through a city-subsidized program intended to provide housing for the local workforce, it must be occupied a minimum of 275 days a year. But the doctor, Kenton Bruice, also worked in Denver and failed to meet that threshold.
The Aspen Times reports that directors of the municipal agency that oversee the housing program said he must try to sell the house. However, it's possible that the doctor may come into compliance while the house is on the market by shifting his work commitments or by putting the house in the name of his wife, who does spend more time in Aspen.
The deed restriction caps the amount of appreciation, keeping it relatively affordable - if, as in this case, what is affordable to a doctor is very different from what might be affordable to a bookkeeper or chef. The cap in this case is $1.4 million. However, the doctor may not be able to sell it immediately. Demand for deed-restricted housing, like all real estate, remains soft.
The Times reports that the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority spends $145,000 annually investigating complaints that people have abused the system. Tom McCabe, the director, denies the perception that the program is "rife with abuse."
During the last three years, 88 allegations of infractions were filed, resulting in 25 owners of deed-restricted housing and 14 renters being ordered to sell or vacate.
Vail Resorts finishes strong
BROOMFIELD, Colo. - Vail Resorts, with four ski areas in Colorado and one in California, reports increased revenues during the ski season. Chief executive Rob Katz said the company saw lots of lucrative destination visitors, especially during spring break and at Easter.
As a result, lift ticket revenue increased 4.6 per cent, ski school revenues rose 8.3 per cent, and rental and retail revenue was 8.1 per cent greater. Overall, skier visits were up 2.3 per cent at the five resorts.
Because of the improvement in revenue, said Katz, the company has reinstated some of the wages and benefits that had been cut last year. Year-round employees got a 2 per cent wage increase plus partial reinstatement of 401(k) matches.
Park City's economy picks up
PARK CITY, Utah - Business picked up in Park City this winter, with city officials estimating gross receipts growing 5.8 per cent compared to the last ski season.
Bookseller Liza Simpson told the Salt Lake Tribune that she did even better. "The store was busy all winter. Overall, it wasn't anything to start a parade about, but it's moving in the right direction."
Ski season proved more lucrative than most people had feared. But there has been a change. Visitors on ski vacations continue to buy lift tickets, but they haven't been spending as freely on eating and shopping, explained Bill Malone, executive director of the Park City Chamber of Commerce.
"The (rebounding stock) market has helped, but there is still a little bit of a gut-check when it comes to vacation spending," he said.
As in other ski towns, hoteliers reported improved occupancies but at lower prices. "The net came out pretty much on a par with last year," Malone told the Tribune .
Canmore to grow tourism 10 per cent
CANMORE, Alberta - Canmore's municipal government has issued a report calling for a 10 per cent growth in tourism by 2015. Among the drivers identified in the report is the often-mentioned, loosely defined health and wellness sector. The report also sees business growth based on knowledge-based and arts sector specialists. But the report did not identify a link between sports-recreation and increased tourism. City officials identified this absence as a crucial omission, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook .
Jackson real estate sales on rise
JACKSON, Wyo. - More evidence has arrived of the modest growth in real-estate sales. The Jackson Hole Report , a quarterly real-estate analysis for Teton County and adjoining areas, reports 137 per cent more sales for January, February and March as compared with 2009.
Report authors David Viehman and his daughter, Devon Wheeldon, warn against too much excitement. The 67 sales this year compared with 29 last year for the same period. But before the market tumble, there were up to 219 sales.
Moreover, increased sales don't immediately mean increased prices. Some prices are back to 2004 levels, according to their report. They also note the most dramatic improvement was in the market for condos and townhomes. But they also observe that many sales were for distressed properties, meaning the properties were sold for less than owners owed the bank, were foreclosures, or were bank owned.
Sales improved in March
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Real estate sales improved during March in Steamboat Springs and Routt County. Sales doubled, owing largely to entry-level and move-up sales, Land Title Guarantee Co. reported. The Steamboat Pilot also notes some sales in the higher-end market of $2.5 million and higher.
Revelstoke building perking along
REVELSTOKE, B.C. - Construction continues to hold up well in Revelstoke, unlike in many places. Last year's totals were similar to those of 2004-2006. But construction of the Revelstoke Mountain Resort in 2006 caused numbers to spike, and city officials think the greater construction activity will resume this year after just a brief lull. "I think it's looking pretty healthy," said Alan Mason, the city's director of economic development. "Construction is really going to make a big impact this year."
Work advances on some housing
VAIL, Colo. - While construction activity continues to recede in most ski towns, the building of affordable housing continues. Aspen, Breckenridge, and Frisco are all moving forward on municipal-sponsored projects, and Vail Resorts is breaking ground on a project in Vail called First Chair, which will produce 144 beds. Other projects in Vail now being reviewed could produce even more employee housing.
Dusty snowpack a concern
DURANGO, Colo. - The dust-on-snow phenomenon seems to be a bit like halitosis. That's the name created in 1921 by manufacturers of the mouthwash Listerine for what people for many millennia surely must have called bad breath.
Similarly, dust has always been blowing up from the deserts of the American Southwest during winter and spring months. But until scientist Tom Painter, now of Park City, Utah, began studying the phenomenon in 2003, nobody paid all that much attention except for backcountry skiers, who were inclined to note it as a curiosity. But newspapers in recent weeks have brimmed with stories about dust on snow.
With Painter, several scientists have cobbled together evidence that, taken together, represent an interesting and possibly compelling theory. Jayne Belnap, a soils scientists based in Moab, Utah, has done work that reveals that disturbed soil can be carried a lot more easily aloft by spring storms.
And then a third scientist, Jason Neff, studied sediments from an above-timberline lake in the San Juan Mountains. The dust in that and other lakes can be linked by isotopic signature to sources in the deserts of the Southwest. His research concluded that deposition had increased during the late 1880s at five times the rate of the previous 5,000 years. This was after railroads had arrived in the Southwest, expediting broader livestock grazing.
Dust deposition dropped after the U.S. government imposed regulations on livestock grazing in the 1930s, but levels have spiked again in recent years, this time three or four times higher than the background. Neff tells the Durango Telegraph that livestock, off-road vehicles, human development, dirt roads, and weather have all been factors.
The dust seems to be a problem in that it absorbs solar radiation, causing the snow on which it is deposited to melt more rapidly. Painter, working with Chris Landry of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies at Silverton, Colo., has concluded that the dust-on-snow expedites runoff by several weeks. The earlier runoff means less water remains later in summer, when it is needed so badly.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has cited this as a good reason to designate 1.3 million acres of public lands in that area as wilderness. Included are some areas well known to ski-town backpackers: Grand Gulch and Dark Canyon, plus large swathes of Canyonlands National Park.
Dust depositions in Colorado's mountains so far this spring lag last year, when the phenomenon got national attention. Still, the Crested Butte News says many peaks look like they're draped with dirty blankets.
Coal plants part of a tangled web
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Oh, what a tangled web even something as simple as clean air can be. Consider the new law in Colorado that seeks to curb coal-fired generation at several plants in the Denver-Boulder area.
The law provides a framework that allows Xcel Energy the latitude to switch out two or three aging coal-fired power plants with natural gas.
Natural gas, when burned, produces fewer pollutants such as nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide, mercury, and particulate matter. Further, it produces carbon dioxide, but about 40 to 50 per cent less than coal for an equivalent amount of energy.
Everybody should love this, right?
The web, however, gyrates in distant places. Much of the coal for the power plants comes from a mine near Steamboat Springs at Twentymile Park. Company officials say that the reduced demand will cause anywhere from 125 to 200 employees to be laid off, and those employees make $90,000 to $100,000 a year, when benefits are included.
Conversion of the plants may cause an increase in drilling for natural gas - conceivably in the San Juan Basin near Durango, the Piceance Basin west of Vail and Aspen, and even in Wyoming's Jonah Field south of Jackson Hole. None of this is ever simple.
Little trash from Rotary bash
TRUCKEE, Calif. - One of Truckee's larger annual events is the Rotary Club's crab feed and auction. This year 450 people attended. And, had it been like last year's event, a big dumpster would have been needed for all the trash.
This year, they did things differently. Writing in the Sierra Sun, a town official explains that compostable eating utensils were purchased and volunteers staffed zero-waste stations.
Partygoers sorted their trash into 36 bags for composting, 18 for recycling, and three for trash. Only the latter will go to the landfill.
