By Allen Best
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Many ski valleys have been
mightily resisting vestiges of suburbanization. Regulations have been enacted
to restrict national franchisers, particularly big boxes, which are the symbols
of suburban sprawl.
But Steamboat Springs is increasingly a suburb — and many
other ski towns are, too, says Jonathan Schechter. “These are the new suburbs,
but they are virtual suburbs,” he told a group in Steamboat Springs recently.
People choose to live where they want to live, in part because of rapid growth
in technology that allows them to do so, but also because of rising incomes, he
said.
These changes caused Steamboat and places like it to add as
many people in the 1990s as had lived there in 1960, before the arrival of
tourism. But even now, it is not a purely tourism-driven economy, he said.
What could change this trend? Schechter, a long-time Jackson
Hole resident, sees nothing to stop the masses — unless their arrival
fouls the nest. “The boom is not going to bust… unless we screw up the reason
people want to move here,” he said.
To that end, Schechter was the architect of an idea recently
implemented called One Percent for the Tetons. In the program, businesses give
1 per cent of revenues to a fund, which is dispersed in grants to projects
intended to help retain the environmental integrity of Jackson Hole. Some 50
businesses are participating, and $25 million has been raised.
More ski area sales ahead
MAMMOTH, Calif. – In it its Dec. 2, issue, The Wall
Street Journal took a broader view of ski areas, noticing the recent shuffling
of ownerships unrivaled since the consolidation phase of about 1997. “What’s
the must-have item this ski season? A resort,” says the Journal.
The newspaper noted the entry of private-equity firms such as
Fortress Investment Group, which in October completed the purchase of Intrawest
for $2.8 billion, but also purchases of California’s Mountain High Resort by
Valor Equity Partners and the sale of Mammoth Mountain last year to investors
led by Starwood Capital Group Global.
Analysts tell the paper that they expect more ski-resort deals
in months ahead. The intense interest is reflected in the stock price for Vail
Resorts Inc. Stock price rarely percolated above the $16 price of the IPO in
1997, but have now surged above $44 per share.
“Ski resorts are in some ways a perfect target for
private-equity firms, which buy businesses in hopes of selling them for a
profit after improving them,” explained the Journal. “The resorts generally
have low debt, their upscale clientele is less affected by economic
fluctuations. But resorts also have plenty of risk, most notoriously their
reliance on natural snowfall.”
The Journals also notes a softening real-estate market that
could hurt demand for second homes and condos. It did not note the
still-Herculean demand for real estate in Aspen, Vail and other high-end
markets.
Aspen Ski Co. joins legal action
ASPEN, Colo. – The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard
arguments filed by Massachusetts and 11 other states in a lawsuit that seeks to
force the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency to take action
to stem the emission of greenhouse gases.
Also involved in the suit are three cities and 13 environmental
groups. The lone representation from the ski industry came in the form of a
friend-of-the-court brief filed last summer on behalf of the Aspen Skiing Co.
The company argues that it has business interests that are being harmed by the
absence of a federal policy to check climate change.
Just how much the changing climate is likely to impact the ski
resorts is highly speculative. Some precise projections have been issued, but
with a thin foundation. Still, the broader story is inexorable: Warmer temperatures
mean less snow and shorter winters.
Fundamentally at issue is whether the United States adopts a
climate change policy. The Bush Administration declares that its hands are
tied. That, notes The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert, is at odds with the
administration’s general stance toward executive power. The EPA, it argues,
lacks the authority to limit greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, because
when the act was drafted in 1970, global warming wasn’t yet (broadly)
recognized as a problem.
“Just about anyone familiar with the Clean Air Act can see the
White House’s narrow reading of the law for what it is: a deliberate
misreading,” writes Kolbert in the magazine’s Dec. 11 issue. “The act was
expressly constructed to allow the EPA to regulate substances known to be
dangerous and also substances that might in the future be revealed to be so.”
Danger was defined as broadly as possible, including “effects
on soils, waters… and climate.” Massachusetts has testimony from four former
EPA administrators, including those under two Republican presidents, that
Congress clearly directed the EPA to regulate air pollution based on new and
changing scientific information.
But even if Massachusetts wins the case, it may not make much
difference in the short term, says Kolbert. The EPA would be responsible for
writing those regulations to govern carbon emissions. “Imagine entrusting
campus alcohol policy to the guys at Delta Tau Chi,” she states in an aside.
Beyond Aspen, this argument is being noticed in various quarters
of the resort world. “The EPA’s do-nothing position is an outrage and
tantamount to criminal malfeasance,” railed Ketchum’s Idaho Mountain Express.
“With a budget of $7.3 billion and 17,500 employees, EPA was mandated to be
guardian of the environment, not its sworn enemy.”
But how good is the link between carbon and global warming. The
Christian Science Monitor reports that while skeptics may be few, their numbers
even now dwindling, they are not entirely dismissed as cranks.
“To imply that any scientist who has questions about global
warming is somehow part of an orchestrated campaign” by industry or interest
groups greatly oversimplifies the spectrum of motivations among those outside
the consensus view, says Annie Petsonk, a lawyer with Environmental Defense.
Some of the skeptics, notes the newspaper, hold that the climate is too complex
to reliably forecast its future trends.
Ski towns fight global warming
VAIL, Colo. – The Colorado Association of Ski Towns is
getting engaged in the debate about global warming. The group has delegated
Stan Zemler, Vail’s town manager, to represent it on a new task force set up in
Colorado to evaluate a state-wide response to climate change. The backup
delegate on the group is Tim Gagen, Breckenridge town manager.
Eight states, led by California but also including Arizona, and
New Mexico, have completed action plans for responding to global warming, and
five states have started. Bypassing Colorado’s state government, a Denver-based
group called the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization has organized a panel with
a broad arc across Colorado’s political and business climate.
Included are mayors of three major Front Range cities: Denver,
Fort Collins, and Lakewood, plus former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, utility company
executive Pat Vincent, and assorted others. The group expects to issue a report
next year to the new governor, Bill Ritter, and state legislators.
Show takes aim at immigration
ASPEN & VAIL, Colo. – Major national attention will
be focused on the immigration issue as it plays out in the high-end resort
valleys of the West. NBC News has spent eight months in the Aspen-Rifle-Vail
triangle in research for a one-hour program that will be broadcast on Dec. 26.
The report is to be called “In the Shadow of the American Dream.” It will be
narrated by Tom Brokaw, the former anchorman for NBC.
NBC says the report will look at the “economic realities,
social consequences and political controversies” surrounding Colorado
immigration, and will feature interviews with police, government officials,
teachers, doctors and others.
While the dynamics of immigration are fundamentally the same in
the Vail and Aspen areas as they have played out elsewhere, they provide an
attractive place for telling the story because cheaper, immigrant labor has
financed rapid economic growth in both places, and because the dichotomies
between rich and poor are even more distended than in most places. Not least,
the immigration to both places surged even in the late 1980s, well before most
other places in the country.
Cold snap won’t slow beetles
CANMORE, Alberta – It got plenty nippy in Western Canada
during late November, but it didn’t stay cold nearly long enough to freeze out
the bark beetles that are afflicting trees in the Bow River Valley. A cold snap
of at least 40 degrees below zero (both Celsius and Fahrenheit) sustained for
10 days would be necessary, officials tell the Rocky Mountain Outlook. Although
the bark beetle epidemic in British Columbia rivals that of Colorado’s I-70
corridor, the epidemic in Alberta is milder. The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports
only 3,500 to 4,000 infested trees in the Bow Valley of Banff and Canmore.
However, an extraordinary flight of beetles of 400 kilometres has yielded as
many as 1.5 million infested trees in the Jasper and Peace River region.
Same-sex couples get benefits
EAGLE COUNTY, Colo. – Same-sex couples who are among the
450 employees of Eagle County government are now eligible for insurance
benefits. A human resource director, Nora Fryklund, told the Vail Daily she
expects that a half-dozen of Eagle County’s employees might qualify, and maybe
only two will request the benefits.
The standard that will be used is the same as has been used for
cohabitating heterosexual couples. They must provide proof of commitment as
reflected in such things as jointly holding a mortgage or lease, or even just a
joint bank account.
Vail Resorts, a major presence in Eagle County, has extended
insurance benefits and ski passes to same-sex couples for several years. That
corporation, however, requires couples to sign paperwork saying they are
married according to common law. “We’ve done it for several years now,” said
corporate spokeswoman Kelly Ladyga. “It’s important for us, and it is used.”
The Vail Daily also notes that its parent company, Colorado
Mountain News Media, which publishes newspapers in the Aspen and I-70 corridor
from Summit County to Grand Junction, also offers benefits to same-sex couples.
Other governments, including the towns of Vail and Avon, do not
provide the benefits to domestic partners, nor does another major employer, the
Vail Valley Medical Center.
Store-front offices may be out
TELLURIDE, Colo. – The Telluride Town Council appears
poised to adopt regulations limiting the amount of office space allowed in the
ground floor of buildings in the town’s historic commercial district.
Telluride has been concerned for several years about losing
vigor in its retail sector, and at one point even talked about instituting
affordable retail space, similar to the concept of deed-restricted affordable
housing.
Vail decades ago and Aspen and Steamboat Springs in recent
years banned offices on the ground-floor locations of their main commercial
districts. Existing uses were grandfathered into continued use. Crested Butte
last summer also adopted such regulations, but scrapped them after a strong
community response. Park City has twice considered, but rejected, such
regulations.
Jackson Hole on edge
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – A teenaged girl in November told
police she had been raped by two Latino men at knifepoint in downtown Jackson.
This came on the heels of several other rapes and lesser sexual assaults by
Latinos in Jackson, as well as charges against Latino men for prostituting a
teenager from Mexico in Jackson Hole.
Police think the girl lied. But the report brewed great
anxiety, leading to a run on pepper spray at a local pawnshop and also, reports
the Jackson Hole News & Guide, a volatile letter. The newspaper chose not
to print the letter, but reported that the writer called for vigilante justice.
What is the truth here? Ed Munoz, a professor at the University
of Wyoming, said someone making up a story would be more likely to choose a
minority attacker because it would be met with less skepticism.
“That’s what I think,” he said, “and in your community what are
the odds that people would believe a black man did it? It depends on the
circumstances, but also on a deep-seated stereotypes and beliefs.”
But a police prosecutor, Steve Weichman, believes the truth is
that, at least at the moment, Hispanic males are being charged with a
disproportionate number of sexual assaults. Of the six sexual assault charges
since January, three involved males with Latino surnames. The newspaper did not
report any theories to explain this disproportion.
Proposed law deemed invasive
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Steamboat Springs' councilors
considered adding a new arrow to the quiver of police charged with trimming
illegal drinking by people under 21 years of age. The proposed law would have held
parents and other adults responsible for allowing under-age drinkers to consume
alcohol in private homes.
But the Steamboat City Council said the proposed law was
invasive, confusing, and unclear, reports the Steamboat Pilot & Today.
Steve Ivanice, a council member, said he believed the better tactic was to
change the “social culture” than to adopt a law that isn’t easily enforced. “I
see this as the overreaching of government, which government tends to do,” he
said. “The real question is, ‘How do we change the cultural norms here? How do
we teach our kids to be responsible?’”
Not ready to pay for green energy
TAOS, N.M. – The connection between local electrical use
and the construction of new coal-burning power plants is also being nailed down
in Taos. There, the chief executive director of the local rural co-op, Kit
Carson Electric Cooperative, points out that less than 3 per cent of the
electricity consumed by the co-operative’s members comes from alternative
energy sources, such as wind and solar.
Luis Reyes, the CEO, suggests that Taoseños aren’t really
walking their talk. They think of themselves as supporting and promoting green
energy. Taos has homes with straw-bale construction and other cutting-edge
innovations that conserve energy. But the masses of people have been unwilling
to pay a small incremental cost to help fuel the demand for alternative energy,
he said at a recent gathering. He pointed to several Colorado resort areas as
leaders.
In New Mexico, as in many other places, about 85 per cent of
the electricity is generated by burning coal, resulting in emissions of gases
that most scientists have fingered as a prime cause of global warming. Another
large percentage of electricity comes from burning of natural gas. Only a small
percentage comes from alternative sources.
Asked to help pay for new coal-burning plants, local rural
cooperatives across the West have been probing that same connection between
local demand and regional outcomes. In California, Truckee has been engaged in
that debate, as have the communities of Gunnison/Crested Butte in Colorado and,
in somewhat different fashion, Steamboat Springs, Durango and Telluride.
The average American uses 300 to 350 kilowatts of energy in
home electrical use each month, or the equivalent of burning 6 to 7 gallons of
gasoline.
Electricity demand could double
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Demand for electricity
continues to grow across most parts of Colorado. In the Yampa Valley,
electrical officials warn of potentially doubled demand in the next few years.
One major cause of expanding demand is the booming oil-and-gas
exploration in areas west of Steamboat Springs. But real-estate expansion could
also cause major growth in demand. One proposed building at the base of the ski
area envisions 440,000 square feet. A task force, notes the Steamboat Pilot
& Today, identifies a major problem is inadequate transmission lines.
Vail may ban wooden shingles
VAIL, Colo. – The horrors of the 1994 Storm King Fire, in
which 14 firefighters died near Glenwood Springs, illustrated not only the
dangers to firefighters, but the true cost of insulating mountain homes to the
threat of fire dangers. Then, in 2002, a second fire raced across land adjacent
to Glenwood Springs, this time gutting houses but taking no lives, although the
story could easily have taken another — and hugely different —
tack.
Still, mountain towns and valleys have been generally slow to
guard themselves against the potential and likelihood of fire. A case in point
is Vail, located 60 miles east. There, after investigation of several years,
town authorities are only now considering a proposal that would wag the long
finger of the law at wood shakes and shingles. Only fire-resistant Class A
materials would be permitted on new roofs or reroofed areas.
The change is the first installment of wildfire regulations
that are being created to better insulate Vail against wildlife.
That threat of wildfire is no longer an idle one at Vail.
Foresters some years ago described the forests near ski towns as being asbestos-like.
Catastrophic fires in higher-elevation spruce-fir forests more commonly occur
every 300 or so years.
But the current bark beetle epidemic has waxed uncommonly long,
unhindered by sustained cold temperatures. Too, extended drought has weakened trees.
The result has been whole hillsides in Vail looking rusty, the result of
beetles attacking trees, their needles dying.
Highest and best use?
KETCHUM, Idaho – Hailey is more or less the entry town to
the Wood River Valley, where Sun Valley and Ketchum are located. But a rodeo
grounds at the town’s gateway is likely to get developed into what town and
development officials are calling the “highest and best use.”
The Idaho Mountain Express protests this possible change. “So,
what could be ‘highest and best use’ at that site? Another boxy structure with
the personality of lifeless concrete?” wonders the newspaper.
“‘Highest and best use’ has its place when visionaries use land
to uplift a community’s virtues. But so, too, do icons and landmark building and
historic sites that create a community’s character and make it more livable… If
this trend continues, the valley is in danger of evolving into another
undistinguished triumph of ‘highest and best use’ of land whose value can be
measured in real estate taxes, not character.”
Worker town on hold
KETCHUM, Idaho – The idea of a new town in the Wood River
Valley to provide the muscle for the Ketchum-Sun Valley area won’t be allowed
to cut to the front of the line. The county commissioners of Blaine County have
ruled that the proposal must hew to the normal planning process instead of
getting the fast-track of a “special planning area.”
The new town, tentatively called Spring Creek, would be located
farther down valley than the existing bed-room communities of Hailey and
Bellevue, and would provide 2,000 to 3,000 housing units, 70 per cent of them
in lower-cost (but not deed-restricted) housing.
Although an urban Land Institute team that visited last summer
admired the idea proposed by developers Bob Kantor and George Kirk, there is
hesitation in the Wood River valley. “There’s something wrong about ghettoizing
our workforce,” said John Peavey, a rancher and former Idaho state senator.
Another sentiment is that previous planning efforts want density focused in and
around existing towns. Environmental groups ranging from The Nature Conservancy
to Citizens for Smart Growth also oppose the fast-track ink, as did mayors of
the various towns in the valley.
The thinking from the county commission is that while affordable
housing is an increasingly thorny issue there, it’s not yet a crisis. “We have
the luxury of time,” said Commissioner Tom Bowman.
Real estate development next
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – Ski areas in the 1980s and
1990s increasingly renamed themselves resorts while on their way to adding
base-area real estate.
That is also the progression in store for what used to be
called Ski Sunlight. Now called Sunlight Mountain Resort, it is being sold to a
Florida-based firm called Exquisite Development. The firm is currently
developing condo resorts in Florida, Alabama and Tennessee.
In addition to the 40-year-old ski area, which has been doing
68,000 to 100,000 skier days in recent years, the sale includes land that is
currently zoned for up to 780 residential units and a retail complex. Only
minor lodging exists at the ski area now, although a subdivision is located a
few miles away.
Sunlight has remained profitable, owners and managers have
said, but narrowly so. With prices for skiing falling in recent years at resorts
catering to the Front Range population, skiers found it harder to justify
driving the 175 miles from Denver to Sunlight. That said, the Forest Service,
which administers the land on which the ski area sits, saw the greatest
potential proportionate growth in skier days at Sunlight.
But owners saw a different potential: high-end real estate
development. Sales price was not disclosed, but it had been advertised last
fall for $50 million. The sale is contingent upon government approvals of the
real estate component.
In addition, Current Sunlight operators estimate $10 million is
needed to keep the three existing ski lifts operating. They also want more
investment in snowmaking. “It’s been a while since we’ve had anything up here
happen” in terms of improvements, said general manager Tom Jankovsky. “It’s
time. Our infrastructure is getting old. Something has to happen.”
Put ’em in a ghost town
TELLURIDE, Colo. – Owners of a long-abandoned mining town
called Alta, located at an elevation of about 10,000 feet near the Telluride
ski area, have sweetened the pot in hopes of getting the property annexed to
the town of Mountain Village. Mountain Village is the slope-side town located
above the town of Telluride and would provide utilities for the project.
The biggest pot-sweetener is affordable housing: 71
price-capped units. In exchange, the developers hope to be able to build 71
high-end residential lots, a 44-unit lodge and sporting centre, and 45 small
for-sale cabins.
Affordable housing is in short supply in the Telluride area,
and Mountain Village earlier this year emerged with some egg on its face for
its proposal to put affordable housing well away from the town, in a river
canyon about 15 miles west. That plan received a barrage of criticism, and was
then withdrawn.
This new affordable housing, if the annexation is approved,
will also be apart from Mountain Village, thus eliminating traffic impacts that
existing property owners feared. Those objections killed a previous effort to
annex in 1997.
Lance takes on Leadville 100
LEADVILLE, Colo. – Bicycle rider Lance Armstrong is
scheduled to test his mettle next summer against the 100-mile mountain bike
race at Leadville, report the Leadville Chronicle and Denver Post.
The race starts at Leadville, elevation 10,152 feet, and during
the 100-mile course gains some 11,000 vertical feet. At its high point, the
trail reaches an elevation of 12,600 feet at a somewhat ironically named Hope
Pass.
Leadville was among the first mountain towns to engage the
ultra-extreme athletes beginning with a 100-mile foot race that began in 1983.
It now attracts 750 runners. The bicycle race was started a decade later.