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Mountain News: Ski towns battening down the hatches

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – Ski towns and resorts continue to batten down the hatches, preparing for a rough go of it after a number of years on easy street.

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – Ski towns and resorts continue to batten down the hatches, preparing for a rough go of it after a number of years on easy street.

In Breckenridge, bookings for winter through the Breckenridge Resort Chamber are down 17 to 20 per cent. Collections from the real estate transfer tax are also down — something that didn’t happen even after the slowdown of 2001-2002. Even then, notes the Summit Daily News, the real estate economy remained somewhat strong.

Real estate construction has slowed, and in cases stopped. A year ago planning for 1,700 new housing units on former mining lands in a triangle between the towns of Minturn, Red Cliff, and Vail were hurtling forward. Now, things can wait.

“There isn’t any urgency,” said Bill Weber, senior vice president for the Ginn Co., the developer. The land was annexed into Minturn earlier this year, and now the company has three years to submit final development plans. Also proposed are a ski area, a golf course, and a gondola connecting the two.

Go-slow is also the story in Steamboat Springs. There, commercial development at the base of the ski area built during the 1970s is in the process of redevelopment. Several buildings have been demolished with the expectation of new shops and condominiums plus a street design that is both more pleasing and functional.

But an agency of city government has postponed its planned issuance of $20 million in bonds to pay for new pedestrian area walkways and other public infrastructure improvements to complement the private sector work. Without that bond issue, city officials tell The Steamboat Pilot & Today, nothing is likely to happen next year in upgrading public areas.

What will happen in the private-sector work remains to be seen. A major developer, The Atira Group, admits uncertainty, but retains hope that high-end real estate will not be as deeply affected.

“We’re definitely in a challenging time for the next few months… But it’s not as much of a concern with a higher-end project,” said Mark Matthews, a vice-president with Atira.

But Lou Antonnucci, the president of the Steamboat Springs City Council, said he fears the original timetable for a completed redevelopment within three to five years might be impossible.

“It’s almost like our worst nightmare came true,” he said. “The fact is, we’ve got a wasteland up there.”

Steamboat’s improved future, he continued, “really depends on there being buyers out there who are willing to buy a second home in Steamboat.”

“Make no mistake — this is big, it’s bad, and it’s broad-based,” Nariman Behravesh, the chief economist for Global Insight, told an Eagle County gathering. At a conference held at Beaver Creek, he said he expects the effects of the government rescue program could be felt in the next four to six months.

James Chung, president of Research Advisors, which monitors resort economies, told the same gathering that the Vail-Beaver Creek area may suffer, but not as much as some other resort areas.

Vail and the Eagle Valley have a 12-month backlog of unsold homes. The national average is 41 months, he said. And one unnamed resort area has an 112-month backlog.

Chung makes the argument that most ski areas should not expect a continued demand for second homes, such as has been experienced during the last 20 years. People tend to be less interested in winter sports starting at about age 47, he noted. That, he added, is also the prime age for buying vacation homes.

Ski areas are also steeling themselves for fewer visits. A stock market analyst for JMP Security told the Vail Daily that he expects Vail Resorts will see a 9 per cent drop in skier visits and a 7 per cent decline in mountain revenue at the company’s five ski areas.

The good news, as always, will be good snow. Snow still counts more than all else. However, a bad snow year on top of a struggling economy could spell disaster.

In Vail, a group of business people formed an action group that was scheduled to meet this week with the Vail Town Council to provide what Kent Logan described as a “strategic direction during what we perceive is going to be a different next 12 months.”

Logan, a retired investment banker who also formerly sat on the town council, said he expects winter will be bad, but that Vail need not be passive. Logan described the plans as “our version of an economic stimulus,” and said the measures must be a collaborative effort between the town, Vail Resorts, and the wider business community.

Elsewhere in Steamboat, in the town’s original downtown, the tightened credit has caused one major new project to delay work until next year. Bankers are reportedly requiring increased amounts of capital down on their projects. Instead of 25 per cent of total project costs, developers are required to come up with 35, 40 or even 50 per cent of total costs from other sources.

But one of the major developers, Jim Cook, is guardedly optimistic. “It’ll change,” he told the Pilot & Today. “All these things change. I’ve been through about six or seven of these downturns. Some are larger and more painful than others, but by and large, they pass.”

The show will also go on in city governments, if somewhat modified. From Telluride to Vail, there is discussion of minimizing pay increases and trimming special projects. Curb and gutter in one area of Aspen will have to wait.

Unaffected, so far, are plans in Breckenridge to celebrate the 150 th anniversary of the settlement’s origins as a gold-panning camp. For the record, those gold-miners were very much a part-time bunch.

 

A long-timer’s lament

CANMORE, B. C. – Bob Sanford is lamenting the changes in his hometown of Canmore, located at the gateway to Banff National Park, and other mountain towns set amid beautiful surroundings in the North American West.

His new book, “The Weekender Effect,” describes what has been going on at Canmore. It has more amenities, from brewpubs to golf courses, and perhaps better newspapers and, no doubt, bicycle races, hiking paths and all the rest. But with these recreational and other amenities are accompanied by what the late historian Hal Rothman called the “Devil’s Bargains.”

“Terms like ‘amenity migration’ do not describe what happened in my town,” writes Sanford. “In my estimation, it is an outrage to characterize what is happening to the West in such egregiously simple terms. We did not experience ‘amenity migration’ in the town I live in. What was experienced was downright dispossession.”

Canmore is located an hour west of Calgary, a boom town now because of Alberta’s fabulously rich economy of oil and gas. It is located at the eastern entrance to Banff National Park.

While the population of Canmore has doubled since 1990, most significant has been the increase of part-timers, who now compose 30 per cent of the total population.

Sanford maintains that “when a mountain town approaches 40 per cent part-time residency, the sense of community begins to implode.” What is now underway is “nothing less than a complete transformation of landscape and culture.”

The Rocky Mountain Outlook, in reviewing Sanford’s book, believes that changes must be moderated, that local communities must exert their powers to dictate what changes are unacceptable. Complete surrender is not acceptable, he says. For example, he favours “small, locally owned businesses rather than big operations owned by outside interests that have targeted where you live as a profitable outpost of globalization.”

Ironically, Canmore’s economy long has been based on broad and non-local forces. It is located along the Canadian Pacific Railway and the TransCanada Highway. For its first century, it was a coal-mining town. A host of the 1988 Winter Olympics, Canmore has become a major international destination that draws from both the Pacific Rim countries and the European Union, as well as Canada and the United States. The demand for weekend homes has been fueled by the oil boom of Alberta’s tar sands.

Sanford does point to the oft-observed difference between land development and community creation.

“No matter how you promote it, no matter how much spin the developers put on it, a city of wealthy weekenders will never feel or function like a mountain town,” Sanford writes. “In many ways, it is far easier to build houses and streets than it is to build the kind of local associations and cultural traditions that make it worthwhile living in those houses and pleasurable to walk those streets.”

Fleeing to new outposts — the next, best thing, which in Canmore’s case would be across the Continental Divide to towns in the British Columbia interior — is not an option, Sanford insists. “We have to stay and stand up for where we live.”

 

Can offsets pay for forests?

TRUCKEE, Calif. – Can people with forests make money from the emerging market for carbon offsets?

That has been a tantalizing prospect for the U.S. Forest Service, which has lots of forests to manage and not much money anymore. Wildfire expenses are up, timber revenues down, and the federal budget squeezed by the two wars in Asia.

Forests have lots of carbon in them, and younger, growing forests actually suck in carbon dioxide — a major greenhouse gas — from the atmosphere. The thinking is that forests can be managed in ways that ultimately result in trees diverting more C02 from the atmosphere.

If so, that has consequences in California, which leads the North American continent in trying to create a market-based framework for carbon emissions and work that reduces emissions.

Now, a group called the Sierra Business Council has launched a co-operative that attempts to funnel money to forest management. The Sierra Nevada Carbon Cooperative will, according to one official with the project, allow owners of various properties to pool resources in earning revenue for forest management that is considered effective in reduction of atmospheric carbon.

A test case, reports the Sierra Sun, is a 1,500-acre ranch in the Martis Valley between Truckee and Lake Tahoe. The land was originally projected for real estate development. Instead, it is to be conserved. But that requires money. The hope is that at least a little money can be earned in the carbon-offset program.

Just how good is the science behind all this? Forest Magazine in its spring issue probed the question of carbon offsets for forest management, studying research projects in both Colorado and California. It’s clear, one scientist told the magazine, that reforesting areas that had been previously logged or burned contributes to a reduction in atmospheric carbon. However, the evidence is “squishy” that forests can be managed in other ways to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

 

Vail plan cuts energy use

VAIL, Colo. – After several years of talking about getting after a greener agenda, the Vail town government earlier this year hired a person to mastermind environmental initiatives. Now, a draft plan is out.

The plan proposes six goals, including reduced energy use of 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020. Another goal is stepped up recycling, to reduce the trash going to the landfill by 10 per cent in five years. Additionally, another is to reduce the total vehicle-miles traveled by 20 per cent, again with a target date of 2020.

The town has not substantially revamped its building codes. However, ski area operator Vail Resorts, a major developer of real estate in Vail, is proposing to build a major new base village west of the existing ski lifts and aim for a platinum certification under the LEED program. Platinum is the highest of four LEED levels.

Also, ski company chief executive officer Rob Katz earlier this year announced stepped-up company-wide energy reduction goals for its operations in Vail . It also operates four other ski areas and a resort in Jackson Hole.

 

Natural gas needed

KETCHUM, Idaho – Deliveries of natural gas to still-growing resort mountain valleys have become problematic. The alternative is electricity, which is generally much more expensive, or propane, which must be hauled in by truck and which is also marginally more expensive for heating purposes.

In Wyoming’s Jackson Hole, the problem is being solved by installation of a major new pipeline from the prolific wells of the Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline, located just to the south.

In Idaho’s Ketchum and Sun Valley resort areas, there are no such plans yet. A new line, reports the Idaho Mountain Express, would cost $2 million to $3 million.

“There is essentially a moratorium on building in Ketchum right now until someone figures out how to pay for the new line,” said Michael Doty, a member of the Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission.

New snow-melting pavers are helping drive additional demand.

“There have been a number of large condo complexes built, and snowmelt has added a significant load that wasn’t there two years ago,” Rick Moore, a spokesman for Intermountain Gas Co., told the newspaper.

A developer, David Hutchinson, said he expects a solution to emerge within a few months. More natural gas will inevitably be needed as Ketchum is only 50 per cent built-out, he noted.

Already approved is a major new hotel, and an even larger hotel and resort complex is now before city planning officials.

There has been no mention in either the Idaho or Jackson Hole newspapers about how expansion of natural gas pipelines may affect vows by governments in the respective areas to shrink their carbon footprints.

However, a blogger on the Mountain Express website does take note of the lack of mention of tighter building codes for energy performance and potential renewable energy options. “Clueless fools out of control,” opined the blogger, identified only as “Kevin.”

Meanwhile, natural gas prices are rising in resorts of the Rocky Mountains, the result of new pipelines to distribute the natural gas. While lines extend to the west, in California, a newer pipeline called the Rockies Express is now in Indiana, with the potential of someday distributing gas as far as Pennsylvania. This gas line originates near Meeker, southwest of Steamboat Springs.

 

Resorts are pockets of blue

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who maintains his permanent home in Jackson Hole, defended the tax cuts of 2002 against criticism that it would result in major deficits and eventual harm to the U.S. economy. Ronald Reagan, under whose presidency the U.S. national debt grew at a staggering pace, proved that “deficits don’t matter,” said Cheney.

Jonathan Schechter, who writes for the Jackson Hole News & Guide, points out that the tax cuts for the rich of the Bush administration have positively benefited Jackson Hole’s economy — although, in fairness, the boom began well before George W. Bush gained the White House.

Teton County, which is where Jackson Hole is, ranked third in the country for the first five full years of the Bush administration in terms of income generated from investments. The result was “extraordinary amounts of money being invested into the community in the form of charitable donations, new infrastructure, improved services, and the like,” Schechter says.

Going forward as a nation, Schechter foresees stormy weather. But locally, he sees continued good fortune — so long as panic does not set in.

“As long as we don’t gut our land-use policies to stimulate our soon-to-be-suffering construction economy, we should continue to be a preferred primary-residence, second-home and tourism destination for people of all ilks, especially the well-to-do,” he writes.

 

Utah hopes for Tokyo flights

PARK CITY, Utah – A flight from Paris, France, to Salt Lake City has done well for the destination resorts of Utah. With that in mind, Utah tourism officials are eagerly supporting a potential flight from Tokyo. As in Europe, the North American West is a hot commodity in Asia, tourism officials tell The Park Record. But important is whether the U.S. dollar remains low relative to the Japanese yen.

 

House runs with just a click

PARK CITY, Utah – Automation is found increasingly in homes. At a 13,000-square-foot home in Park City’s Deer Crest neighbourhood, there is little that cannot be controlled with a computer panel.

A firm called S3 Entertainment has installed tough-panel interfaces that can control everything from the movie library, which has 1,000 titles, to the air conditioner, heater and probably even the dishwasher.

“Everything you see on the ‘Jetsons’ we put into this house,” joked Arthur Mayor, sales manager for the company, referring to a 1960s cartoon series about a space-age family of the distant future.

With a house that big, it might take a lot of walking to make sure all the lights are off and the doors locked, notes The Park Record. Here, it can be done from one place — and it can even be off-premises.

The future, technicians say, are homes in which clothes driers can be turned on remotely, or ovens can be switched on as somebody drives down the highway with a take-and-bake pizza.

 

Park City studies wind potential

PARK CITY, Utah – Park City officials continue to investigate how they can shrink their carbon footprint, as they have vowed to do by signing onto the Mayors’ Climate Change Agreement. The latest effort is to test the wind potential at a place called Quinn’s Junction. In the 1980s, the area was too windy for a proposed airport. Now, there’s an ice rink maintained by the city nearby, and a Park City official says early tests suggest there may be enough electrical production from a turbine to meet one-third the annuals needs of an ice-resurfacing machine. Tests via a 66-foot-tall tower this winter, reports The Park Record, should better determine how accurate this estimate is.

 

Energy story changes in increments

OURAY, Colo. – Sometimes noisily, sometimes quietly, the energy transition continues to be the major story of the early 21st century.

In Ouray, on the flanks of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, city officials are looking to replace the existing mercury-vapor lights in streetlights with newer so-called induction lights. These new lights are extremely expensive, at $270 for a 100-watt unit. However, they use only one-quarter of the electricity and have to be replaced only once every 30 years. Cost savings from the retrofit are estimated at $100,000, reports the Ouray Watch.

Durango, meanwhile, is preparing to host Danish energy pioneer Soren Hermansen, who in the last decade weaned his home island of Samso, Denmark, from fossil fuels. His work in developing the island’s abundant wind resources was recently profiled in The New Yorker.

An article in the Durango Herald notes that wind is not abundant in Southwestern Colorado, but claims that “our solar resources are unmatched.” However, solar experts disagree. While there is much sunshine, flat ground is in short supply in places around Durango. Much better are places with flat ground, such as the San Luis Valley and, better yet, the Mojave Desert.