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Mountain News: Vail airport up and coming

GYPSUM, Colo. – So much depends upon what you call it. “It,” in this case, is the airport located in the town of Gypsum, 37 miles west of Vail.

GYPSUM, Colo. – So much depends upon what you call it. “It,” in this case, is the airport located in the town of Gypsum, 37 miles west of Vail.

“It” was formally proclaimed the Eagle County Regional Airport in the late 1980s, when it was expanded sufficiently to accommodate major jets, which now routinely deliver passengers for Vail, Beaver Creek and, to a lesser extent, Aspen and Snowmass — but also to the oil and gas industry that is now feverishly at work to the west.

“It” is also called the Vail-Eagle airport by some, or sometimes even Vail’s airport.

But consultants who have been paid $90,000 to create a “brand” suggest something altogether new: Colorado International Airport.

The chief executive of the firm, Jim Adler, said both Vail and Eagle are too limiting. The name Eagle doesn’t mean much beyond Colorado. Much more broadly known is the name Vail, but it is limiting in that the airport serves many other resorts.

Genesis came up with Colorado International Airport because of how “Colorado” among many people evokes images of mountain beauty and outdoor lifestyles. As well, there is the potential for the airport to cater to international flights, with customs officials located at the airport.

The recommendation is not a slam-dunk. Vail, the town, demands that the airport be named Vail. Importantly, so do some of the county commissioners. “The Vail name has huge power and cachet,” said Peter Runyon, a commissioner.

Still at issue is whether the airport deserves to be called international. Less publicly visible, Vail Resorts is working to expand its lucrative business among international travelers who are finding the United States much more affordable than it used to be. Vail does not officially control the airport, but unofficially does so, as it arranges for most of the commercial flights.

The controversy about whether an airport in Gypsum could be called Vail, some local wag suggested a composite: Vail International and Gypsum Regional Airport. If you figure out the acronym of that, you will understand the proposed motto: It’s an up and coming facility.

 

Assisted-care facilities eyed

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen is trying to get a better grip on who would be using an assisted-care living facility in the next few years as the baby boom population becomes what is formally classified as senior citizen age, or 60 and over.

The community already has one such assisted-care facility. However, it accommodates only 15 people. Also, it lacks the ability to give a fuller spectrum of care, such as might be provided by a nursing home, or what are called memory-support services.

By the simple math, assisted living will be a boom industry in Aspen during coming years as baby boomers enter their geriatric years. About 16 per cent of the population of Pitkin County will be over 60 years old by the year 2010.

About 3 per cent of the population, or 550 people, will be 75 or over. This does not include second-home owners, although some of them are expected to also want to live in Aspen permanently as their health and vigor decline.

Unlike earlier generations, who might have been expected to leave for warmer climates, a survey conducted in 2007 showed that many in Aspen’s existing workforce intends to remain in Aspen.

A new survey sent out recently to several thousand residents is now trying to assess the market for assisted care in the next few years.

“We are trying to determine who will use this facility in the next couple of years, not 10 years from now,” said Ken Canfield, a board member of the Senior Council, a citizen advisory group to Pitkin County.

Marty Ames, director of senior services for the county, said the responses will determine the next step, the financial feasibility. A major consideration will be the cost of land, she said.

Nearby, both Eagle and Summit counties are also looking into creating assisted care living facilities. Eagle County had hoped to partner with a private operator, but so far there’s too little money to be made to entice a private operator . However, county officials are now looking at creating an assisted care facility in conjunction with an affordable housing complex, said Justin Finestone, the county’s communications director.

 

Banff composting a success

BANFF, Alberta – The composting program in Banff is being proclaimed a success, with interest growing in the Bow River Valley.

In Banff, about half the trash is food waste. Of that food waste, nearly 70 per cent can be composted. Not all restaurants are participating, but seven are, using dedicated bins that are then collected by the town’s garbage crews, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.

 

Recycling lags in West

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen city officials are calculating how they can nudge the recycling rate upward. About 16 per cent of solid waste is diverted into recycling, which is far higher than the rate in Colorado, but well below the national rate of 30 per cent.

Why is the land of Denver and John Denver so so-so? The Aspen Daily News explains that it is, relatively speaking, a place of wide-open spaces, which means that it costs less to dump trash. Even in the Roaring Fork Valley, one of Colorado’s priciest neighbourhoods, the cost is $50 a ton at the landfill. It can be three times as high along the East Coast.

In the neighbouring Eagle Valley, nobody keeps track of the recycling rate from Vail and outlying towns, although one knowledgeable figure estimates 10 per cent.

In Wyoming, however, the story is much, much higher. Teton County — which his nearly synonymous with Jackson Hole — last year diverted 32 per cent of trash, concrete and construction debris from the landfill.   That’s twice as good as Aspen, probably three times as much as Vail.

Why so much better in Jackson Hole? The landfill tipping fee is only $50, but it is located 90 miles south of Jackson, near Pinedale. That adds on transportation costs, although it may speak to a greater environmental ethic in Jackson Hole,

In Colorado’s Grand County, meanwhile, officials are unsure of what to do next. Although it’s closer to Denver, ironically it’s also more geographically isolated. As such, the cost of getting bottles, cans, and newspapers to market caused the recycling operation to shut down operations in the Fraser-Winter Park area. The Sky-Hi Daily News reports it would take a $306,000 subsidy to continue recycling in four towns.

However, operating the landfill also involves a huge subsidy. Last year, the county swallowed a $5.5 million debt.

 

Affordable housing required

AVON, Colo. – Town officials in Avon, located at the foot of Beaver Creek, have adopted regulations that require affordable housing as part of all new residential and commercial projects. Increases in median housing costs, up 81 per cent between 2000 and 2006, have far outpaced increases in median incomes, up only 17 per cent, notes the Vail Daily.

 

Growth debate turning noisy

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Jackson Hole is engaged in a noisy debate about population growth and development. Change the names and the numbers, and it’s a story that could be about almost any mountain valley of the West.

Jackson, the city of 10,000 people, is contained on the north by public lands, and on the east and west by mountains. The logical place for the city to grow is southward, into ranch country called South Park.

There, basically as an extension of the city, two major projects already exist. Called Melody Ranch and Rafter J, they are almost entirely of low-density and somewhat ample homes, most of them occupied full time. In other words, this is home to Jackson’s upper middle class.

But given the economics of land in Jackson Hole, the great growth areas are now more distant, to a place called the Starr Valley, about an hour away, or even across Teton Pass into Idaho, near the communities of Driggs and Victor.

Into this situation came a developer from Chicago who has proposed a mixture of fair-market and a healthy dose of deed-restricted affordable housing — 500 housing units in all — to appeal to the middle class, at least as it is defined by the economics of Jackson Hole.

Called Teton Meadows Ranch, the project would offer homes ranging in cost from $400,000 to$740,000. Houses would be smaller than 2,000 square feet, with the largest lots no more than a quarter-acre in size — considerably smaller than is the norm in the area.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide has had spirited letters on the proposal for months. Most writers despise the continued urbanization of the bucolic neighbourhood. “Let’s have the courage to absolutely cap growth…” said one writer, Nancy Shea, who argues that the greater ethical obligation is to the “elk, the moose, the bear, and the mountain lion.”

Another letter-writer, Yves R.H. Desgouttes, sees this and other arguments as phony. The moral obligation is to the working class needed to service those who have flocked to Jackson Hole in its new phase as a world centre for recreation and leisure. “We should treat them well,” he says.

Meanwhile, other development proposals have also descended onto the county officials, causing county officials to consider a moratorium until Teton County’s master plan is revised.

 

Damper put on Gaper Day

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. – Business and government leaders in Breckenridge were taking steps to dampen too much enthusiasm for an end-of-season celebration called Gaper Day. The event has gotten out of hand in recent years, with snowballs and obscenities alike being thrown, usually accompanied by two-fisted drinking. Neither music nor free barbecues are being offered this year, reports the Summit Daily News.

 

Balancing big boxes

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Steamboat Springs continues its efforts to reconcile somewhat contrary realities. On one hand, it’s growing in population — and rapidly. That is creating a market for the sorts of goods commonly sold across North America at lower prices by big-box retailers like The Home Depot and Target. But a good many people would rather not live in a place that is too much like the rest of America.

The background issue is that plenty of people from Steamboat are driving long distances anyway to buy at the big-box stores — to Silverthorne, 81 miles away, or Avon, 89 miles away. There, local governments are skimming off sales taxes to be used for transportation, bike paths, and other community amenities.

To sort out its future, Steamboat city leaders have retained Economic and Planning Systems, a Denver-based firm. A survey distributed by the firm found Steamboat is mixed about whether big-box chain stores should be allowed within the city.

But some officials, such as City Councilwoman Cari Hermancinski, say that a large-format retail store somewhere in the Yampa Valley is inevitable. “If there’s to be a big box in the west of Steamboat,” she said, describing an area likely to be annexed, “there’s going to be one down-valley, and we’re all going to be driving to it anyway.”

The city, notes the Steamboat Pilot & Today, already has an ordinance that holds any commercial development larger than 12,000 square feet to higher design standards.

Loui Antonucci, the council president, said the growth in retail development can be allowed to happen haphazardly, “or you can try to engineer what you want and try to attract some of those businesses.” A healthy mix of retailers, he added, would stop some of the leakage of money now being spent in other towns.

Also looking into the future, Noreen Moore stressed again the evolving nature of Steamboat’s economy. She noted that 10 per cent of local job-holders are location neutral, meaning that their incomes are not tied to local tourism or agriculture. Instead, they are tied into broader regional, national or international economies.

“Before, if you wanted to do economic development, you asked, ‘How do we get tourists in here?’” said Moore, the business resource director at the Routt County Economic Development Cooperative.   “Now you might add to that, ‘How do we take care of families here and children and safety — and make it possible for people to be able to talk to each other.’”

The city, said Alan Lanning, the manager, is starting a conversation that is expected to yield a three- to five-year economic plan.   

 

CB debates ski area expansion

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – If the sentiments expressed at a recent meeting in Crested Butte are a reliable measure, the coming debate about the proposed expansion of the ski area onto Snodgrass Mountain will be another donnybrook. The Crested Butte News reports that most of the speakers at the meeting, which was attended by 150 people, had little good to say about the expansion.

Speakers had a general point of view that expansion will make Crested Butte too much like other ski areas, what Margo Levy, a former town council member described as “plain Vail-nilla.” The need for expansion is not yet imperative, she said. “We don’t have to do this now. If we rush into something like this now, we can never go back.”

Others saw the expansion area as just plain silly. Nancy Wicks said putting a ski area on a south-facing slope was inappropriate. “Maybe they could put greenhouses there.”

Too, there were echoes of wildlife conservation leader Dave Foreman, the Albuquerque-based proponent of the concept of rewilding the Rockies, who had spoken in nearby Gunnison.

“We should stop tearing down what we can protect and protect the wild heart of the Rockies,” said Kiki Dotzler.

But a dissenting point of view was offered by John Nichols, a local property owner. “We have a shortage of intermediate terrain,” he said, noting that 11,145-foot Snodgrass Mountain will offer mostly just that.   He said locals and visitors have plenty of alternatives to Snodgrass for backcountry skiing. “We’re focusing on this like it’s New York City and there’s nowhere else to go,” he said.

The idea of expansion was first broached in 1982, then shelved first because of community opposition and then later, in the 1990s, because of the financial wobbliness of the ownership group, the Calloway and Walton families.

In 2002, as Crested Butte’s economy sagged to perhaps its lowest ebb in the town’s modern incarnation as a resort, the ski area owners began talking up the expansion once again. The idea, then continued under the newer ownership of Tim and Diane Mueller, is that Crested Butte has too little intermediate terrain to hold the interest of destination visitors more than a few days, and very few of them are able to ski the XX-terrain for which Crested Butte is known.

 

Clean air hard to find

PINEDALE, Wyo. – People want to move to rural areas, because the air quality is good. But the tide of news stories suggests that air quality, because of natural gas wells and gold mines, can be bad even in rural areas.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that an air quality warning was issued in Sublette County, about 80 miles south, site of the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline oil and natural gas fields. Children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems were advised to stay indoors because of the ozone pollution.

Ozone pollution has also been a problem in the hot-spots for natural gas drilling in Colorado. One of those gas fields is located west of Glenwood Springs. The Rocky Mountain News, a Denver newspaper, notes that those high ozone levels are partly to blame for high ozone levels in Denver. Between the two are many of Colorado’s ski areas.

In Idaho, the issue is mercury. Ketchum’s Idaho Mountain Express suggests mercury contamination of a local waterway, Silver Creek, from a mine several hundred miles south in Nevada. The Jerritt Canyon Mine has operated for 20 years, and during that time mercury emissions have exceeded 10,000 pounds per year, according to the Idaho Conservation League, as compared to 125 pounds of mercury per year from an average-sized coal mine.

Unlike other gold mines, the Jerritt Canyon Mine uses ore roasters to superheat gold-bearing ore to several thousand degrees. In the process, mercury that occurs naturally in the rock is converted from its normal liquid state into vapor, and becomes airborne. The prevailing winds in that area carry the mercury vapor northward into Idaho.

 

Academics assess possible futures

TELLURIDE, Colo. – The Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaming up with local governments in the Telluride area to imagine potential futures.

The goal of the collaboration is to use advanced computer modeling techniques to project the 20- to 30-year economic, ecological and community impacts of various decisions that will be made during the next few years.

Unlike some other such studies, this one sets out to view Telluride in the context of its bedroom communities, including Norwood and Ridgway.

 

Yet another way to die on slopes

DILLON, Colo. – There are many ways to die in skiing and snowboarding, with smacking into trees being the most common. A 28-year-old snowboarder from Indianapolis, however, died in a freakishly uncommon way. The woman, a pharmacist, fell on her buttocks, which created a “shockwave” up her spine and caused a stroke. She died seven days later in a Denver hospital. It was the seventh death on a ski slope in Summit County this year, and the 14 th overall in Colorado.