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Discount airline likely to service resorts

By Allen Best DENVER, Colo. – The cost of flying between Denver and the various resorts of Colorado, but even Jackson Hole and Red Lodge, could become cheaper next year.

By Allen Best

DENVER, Colo. – The cost of flying between Denver and the various resorts of Colorado, but even Jackson Hole and Red Lodge, could become cheaper next year.

Denver-based Frontier Airlines, a discount carrier known for its marketing theme that features talking bears, lynx and other critters, is getting 10 new regional airplanes at a cost of roughly $26 million each. Built by Bombardier, the 74-passenger turboprop planes can fly distances of 650 to 700 miles.

The planes are also far more energy efficient than similar-sized planes. That, say analysts, will allow Frontier a greater margin to reduce fares while still remaining profitable.

“When you draw a 650- to 700-mile circle around Denver, what we see is a lot of opportunity, but we didn’t necessarily have the right aircraft,” Frontier chief executive Jeff Potter told The Denver Post. “It gives us the flexibility to serve some of the Colorado mountain destinations that we couldn’t otherwise do,” he added.

“It’s very exciting news, no matter how you slice it,” says Bill Tomcich, president of Stay Aspen Snowmass and an authority on airlines. He noted that United Airlines, which is the lone provider of Denver-Aspen shuttles, this week was offering a walk-up fare of $430 for that flight. The walk-up fare for a Denver-Fort Lauderdale flight on Frontier was $139.

While lower fares are not guaranteed, Tomcich indicated they are likely. “There’s plenty of margin available,” he told Mountain Town News.

Also seeing a margin for lower fares is Kent Myers, of Airplanners Inc., a firm that creates flight programs for several resort markets in the West. “It will make United stand up and take notice,” he said.

Frontier has identified 18 potential airports it could fly into, but has not named them. Myers expects Aspen, Vail, Jackson Hole and Steamboat to make the cut, but is less sure about smaller markets such as Crested Butte and Telluride. Other resort markets mentioned in news accounts include Durango and Billings, Mont., which is an hour away from the ski resort of Red Lodge.

Many resort areas in the Rockies have not had more than one airline offering shuttles to Denver since Continental Airlines ended shuttles to Denver in 1994. Among those most severely affected was Aspen, which overnight lost 35 per cent of its available incoming seats. Aspen still hasn’t regained its pre-1994 levels, says Tomcich.

Technology is the key to the Frontier’s initiative. The new turboprop planes use less fuel than similar-sized regional jets, but can match them in speed. That gives them a per-seat costs that are very, very low. Called the Q-400, the Bombardier planes also have a good lift-to-weight ratio, allowing them to work out of airports that are more boxed in by mountains, such as is the case at the airport at Aspen.

 

Regional jets service Mammoth

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. – The Bombardier Q-400 regional jets are also going to get play in Mammoth Lakes beginning next year, with two flights daily from Los Angeles.

The ski area operator and American Airlines in the 1990s had hoped to expand the local airport, overcoming the six-hour drive from Los Angeles and the even longer drive from San Francisco. Environmental opposition and clunky handling of the project dragged that expansion.

Scrapping the idea of bigger jets, the town and the ski area operator have linked with Horizon Air to plan the two flights daily from Los Angeles beginning in the 2007-08 ski season. Successive years are to produce additional flights from Las Vegas, San Diego, and the Bay Area, with eight flights daily by the year 2013, reports The Sheet.

 

Park City studying Reno

PARK CITY, Utah – A delegation of city officials and business leaders from Park City this year is going to the Reno-Lake Tahoe region. The delegation every fall goes to a different resort area because, explains tour organizer Myles Rademan, “Anytime you get out of your own zip code, it opens your eyes.”

Reno is known as a gambling town, but the economy has been shifting, notes The Park Record. Whereas gaming revenues once provided 80 to 90 per cent of the revenues, it’s now down to about 50 per cent.

Rademan suggests that the shift might be instructive for Park City. Because of global warming, skiing might be providing fewer revenues for Park City in the future. Bill Malone, executive director of the Park City Chamber/Bureau, similarly notes that Park City might well learn about how to market summer from the Lake Tahoe area. “They do a spectacular amount of summer business,” he says.

 

Steamboat for sale in pieces

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Two of the biggest pieces of the resort puzzle at Steamboat Springs are now up for play.

Earlier this year, American Skiing Co. announced it was testing the waters for potential sale of the Steamboat ski area, one of its most consistently successful ski areas.

Now, several major components of the base area are being marketed. Those components include the 315-room Sheraton hotel, the Thunderbird Lodge, and a commercial complex called Ski Time Square. Also available for sale are the golf course and Graystone residential subdivision.

The owner is Ski Time Square Enterprises, which is composed of six individuals plus Starwood Hotels.

Denver-based HVS Capital was hired to market the properties, and the firm’s managing director, Mike Sullivan, told The Denver Post that he expects the properties will fetch "well over $100 million." He also said “there is a high probability that whoever buys the base-area properties would also buy the mountain. It makes good sense."

The base area of the ski area has been the target of redevelopment for the last two years. An urban-renewal authority was formed in 2005 to fund more than $18 million in public improvements there.

Suzanne Bott, the town’s senior planner, told The Post that consolidating ownership of the base area and the ski area could yield some “amazing redevelopment."

 

Loss of immigrants felt

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – The labor pinch is becoming more pronounced in the Aspen-Glenwood Springs-Rifle area, reports the Rocky Mountain News, and wages for such jobs as landscapers and painters have been climbing.

The oil-and-gas boom in the Rifle-Parachute area has contributed to that pinch, drawing workers in the Rifle area who might otherwise have gravitated 30 miles upvalley to Glenwood Springs or even 80 miles to Aspen. But the newspaper also reports a secondary cause: some illegal immigrants left last spring when the dialogue about immigration heated up.

The result has been increased wages. One advertisement offered to pay painters-in-training $20 to $30 an hour.

 

Jackson nears worker tipping point

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — You may have noticed that the world of late has been full of “tipping points.” This old figure of speech is being heard in everyday conversation, including those in resort areas.

One tipping point in resort areas seems to be when 40 per cent of the workforce commutes. So says Christine Walker, executive director of the Teton County Housing authority. And if that is correct, Jackson Hole is rapidly moving toward losing its “soul,” to use another currently popular expression.

A study found that only 7 per cent of workers commuted from outside Jackson Hole in 1990. That grew to 20 per cent by the century’s turn, reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide, and now it’s up to 33 per cent.

In the case of Jackson Hole, most workers come from across Teton Pass from the Alta, Driggs, and Victor areas. This is an hour from Jackson Hole, and prices there are lower and the lots (given the same price) much bigger and the mountain backdrop just as magnificent.

 

Winter housing crunch starts

ASPEN, Colo. — Seasonal housing is tightening up rapidly in Aspen. The largest employer, the Aspen Skiing Co., which employees 2,000 during winter, has already filled up its 300 available beds and is scouting out locations down-valley 20 miles.

Seasonal housing complexes in Aspen managed by the City of Aspen and Pitkin County are also rapidly filling, reports The Aspen Times. At one project, called the Marolt Ranch, 18 of the 94 available units were snatched within a week by workers who paid nearly $3,000 for first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit. The complex is expected to be full, or nearly so, by Nov. 1. A similar flurry of signed-cheques is reported at Burlingame Housing. “I don’t think I’m going to have anything left by the end of the month, if even then,” said manager Mary Ferguson.

Aspen’s housing market in 2002-03 was so slack that affordable housing was available even during ski season. By last year a more familiar story had returned. The crunch came to a head, says the Times, when a group of young, foreign workers crowded into the Aspen City Council chamber to bemoan sleeping on couches while looking for housing.

 

Agassi involved in Idaho resort

DONNELLY, Idaho – Tamarack, the new resort between Boise and McCall, in Idaho, will be taking on a decidedly tennis flair. There, tennis greats Andre Agassi and Stefanie Graf have become joint-venture partners in a project to be called the Fairmont Tamarack.

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts will manage the homes and a hotel, which is to be the top-calibre offering at the resort.

Agassi, the son of an Iranian immigrant, retired last week after years at the top of tennis. Graf, his wife, is a German who was a long-time leader in the women’s division of tennis. Both will be active in developing what is called a “lifestyle offering,” but they will also be financial partners, along with Bayview Financial LP.

Other key members are the design team of Wilson & Associates, which has six offices on three continents; and a Vail-based architectural firm, VAg Inc., which specializes in residential resort architecture and prides itself on environmental awareness.

 

Contractor wants level immigration field

FRASER, Colo. – What has made the issue of immigration so tricky is that not everybody gains equally, and arguably some people lose in the equation.

Among the losers are small-business contractors, says Marianne Klancke of Fraser. She’s a tilesetter, and her husband, Kirk Klancke, is a stonemason, and they have only a few employees, she explained at a recent session held in Grand County. But what she objects to, reports the Winter Park Manifest, are the under-the-table contractors.

“We want a level playing field,” she said. She said businesses like hers that obey the law by paying workers’ compensation unemployment insurance, and so forth, have to compete against larger firms that often hire illegal immigrants and then dodge financial and book-keeping requirements.

 

Timber sales welcomed

SUMMIT COUNTY, Colo. – Forests of lodgepole pine in the Vail, Summit County, and Winter Park areas this summer have shifted appreciably in color this summer. The epidemic of bark beetles that began in 1996 continues to wax, causing whole hillsides to turn rusty in colour as the work of beetles from the year before has yielded dead and dying trees.

Casting off their traditional distaste for below-cost timber sales, the ski towns and other local governments have been appealing this year with increasing anxiety to the federal government to revise rules. They not only want timber sales, but they want the wood cut at very, very low costs. In fact, they want the federal government to bankroll the cutting with a specific appropriation, the better to reduce the threat of catastrophic fire.

They got that budget allocation last week. Congress approved $1 million, although local officials say that is far less than is necessary. By at least one local estimation, that much money is needed every year for the next 40 years.

Federal and state officials have also released a plan that aims to cut across the private-public, local-federal jurisdictions. The new plan would allow the federal government to identify those lands that should be in partnership zones. In those zones, the agencies could offer contracts — without a bidding process — to businesses that want to set up long-term operations to handle the felled trees.

 

CB joins mayors’ pact on climate

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – The town of Crested Butte has joined the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. The agreement obligates the town to strive to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as per the terms of the Kyoto Agreement.

Other ski valley towns from Colorado that have previously joined the pact are Aspen, Basalt, Frisco, and Gunnison. In Utah, Park City is a member, as is Moab.

The Crested Butte News notes that Crested Butte this year has stiffened its requirements for energy efficiency in buildings, and it now agrees to purchase only Energy Star-rated appliances for municipal use. The mayoral pact also requires action against sprawl. However, what sprawl that already exists in the Crested Butte area is the result of state and county policies.

 

Eagle County may buy hybrids

EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – County commissioners in Eagle County, where Vail is located, are considering buying as many as 20 gas-electric hybrid cars, probably Toyota Priuses, which get around 49 miles per gallon, even in mountain driving. It’ll cost the county a big chunk of change to effect the change-out, reports the Vail Daily, because SUVs, vans, pickups and other such gas-guzzling vehicles have lost a great deal of value.

 

Sacrifices will be required

ASPEN, Colo. – It’s one thing to say you’re against global warming, but quite another matter to take the concrete steps to reduce your own greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s the challenge now in Aspen, which last year engaged in a well-publicized effort called the Canary Initiative. While part of the strategy is to use Aspen’s prominence to publicize the need for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, Aspen also said it would inventory its own emissions and then devise strategies for reducing the emissions.

That inventory found that transportation is responsible for a majority of Aspen’s greenhouse gas emissions, and jet travel alone is responsible for 40 per cent. This is partly why Aspen has double the per capita emissions of the U.S., which is among the world’s leaders.

Can Aspen continue as one of the world’s leading destination resorts with so many people flying to and fro? The Aspen Times reports no answers to that question at a recent meeting called to address the global warming issue, although most people agreed that some amount of sacrifice will be necessary.

 

Canmore legislates no smoking

CANMORE, Alberta – It’s curtains as of Oct. 2 for smoking in restaurants, workplaces and most other public places in Canmore. This follows a similar clamp-down in nearby Banff about a year ago. As elsewhere, smoking will be allowed in specially designated outdoor patios.

Hoteliers seem nonplused about the crackdown, as most hotels are already non-smoking, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook. Those that had gone voluntarily non-smoking were motivated by marketing and the lesser expense of maintaining rooms that had not housed smokers.

 

Noisy highway drives Vail crazy

VAIL, Colo. – Noise from Interstate 70 as it goes through Vail continues to be a fly in the ointment of that particular paradise.

Highway noise can hit 70 decibels within homes when windows are open. That’s noisier than having a talkative person yakking about six feet away, which yields 60 decibels of noise.

Residents recently had an opportunity to have their homes inventoried for how much noise is allowed from the outside. Closing windows helps, of course, but new windows and doors can make a difference in noise levels in older homes, experts tell the Vail Daily. A second layer of drywall on the wall facing the highway could be a good step in some cases.

Vail has been annoyed by highway noise for 20 years. Among recent initiatives, the town has studied the potential for noise walls, such as are found in cities, but found nothing that made sense. Part of the problem is that noise rises, and much of Vail is above the freeway.

As well, the town has been trying to reduce noise from the highway by stepping up enforcement of the speed limit of 65 mph. As well, the highway will be repaved in coming years with an asphalt that causes less noise.

Still, all of these solutions are like trying to kill an elephant with a pea shooter, says Greg Moffet, a town councilman who is among those most aggrieved by the sound. Instead of buying air conditions and closing windows, people should be able to sleep with their windows open, he said.

 

West Nile lays into Eastern Sierra

MAMMOTH, Calif.—News of West Nile virus victims has been conspicuously absent or at least diminished in newspapers of Colorado for the last two summers, but it is beginning to show up in papers located farther west.

One such newspaper is Mammoth Lake’s The Sheet, which reports that somebody from a rural region north of the town was receiving treatment. This was the first victim, although the virus had been found in mosquitoes, horses, and other creatures in Inyo, Mono, and Alpine along the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada for several years.

The virus is not believed to be particularly prevalent at higher elevations, if at all, although exactly where the dividing line is has not been conclusively determined. Presumably that dividing line depends upon temperatures less than the absence of thin air.