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Banff grapples with growth

By Allen Best BANFF, Alberta – Banff town officials have wondered whether chain stores should be limited. A study commissioned by the town suggests no, as long as there is a good balance between chain and independent retailers.

By Allen Best

BANFF, Alberta – Banff town officials have wondered whether chain stores should be limited. A study commissioned by the town suggests no, as long as there is a good balance between chain and independent retailers.

Independent retailers provide uniqueness expected by visitors, and can experiment with products and services that chains find too risky. On the other hand, chains have the name recognition and customer loyalty.

The study notes that several communities in the United States have taken action to control retail chains in order to protect unique character. In California, these include the Napa Valley and San Francisco’s North Beach; and in Massachusetts, Cape Cod. Even so, said Randall McKay, Banff’s planning and development manager, San Francisco has struggled with finding the balance of how many is too many, and also what constitutes a chain.

Some U.S. jurisdictions have local ordinances restricting chains in certain store categories from operating in tourist areas. The authors of the study say the limited powers granted to municipalities in Canada make this strategy difficult to implement. They suggest zoning bylaws, design guidelines and size restrictions can help ensure that chains, if allowed to operate, do so in ways sympathetic to the theme of the tourist area.

Meanwhile, the amount of commercial space allowed in Banff is also an issue.

In 1998, Parks Canada ruled that a growth cap would be enacted for the town, allowing only 350,000 square feet of additional commercial space. Town officials gave out the space on a random basis, but only one-third has been built. Those with allotments have five years to build or else they lose the space.

Banff since then has looked at various resort communities that have similar growth caps. Most notable is Carmel-by-the-Sea, Clint Eastwood’s getaway in California.

But a new study commissioned by town officials says the growth cap was flawed, in that it failed to distinguish between commercial uses that help make Banff more of a magnet to visitors, and commercial space that would support existing residents.

The study, by urbanMetrics inc., a Toronto-based real estate consulting firm, compared Banff’s commercial structure to those in neighbouring Canmore, located 15 miles down-valley and outside Banff National Park, and also those of Whistler and Aspen. The study found commercial rent in Banff ranges from $85 to $110 per square foot, compared to $85 to $95 in Whistler and $22 to $25 in Canmore.

 

Snowmobile avalanche deaths rise

DENVER, Colo. – The number of snowmobilers being killed in avalanches is rising. The Denver Post reports that from January through March, when most fatalities occur, half of the 26 avalanche deaths recorded in the United States and Canada were snowmobilers. That equals the number of skiers, snowboarders, snowshoers and climbers combined.

Avalanche experts Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center estimate that more than 60 per cent of avalanche-related snowmobile deaths are attributed to the game called high marking. The newspaper says that as snowmobiles become more powerful, riders are taking them farther up steep mountain slopes, vying to get the highest on the slope before gravity overtakes them.

 

Show on immigrant labour revealing

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – Just after Christmas, newsman Tom Brokaw narrated an hour-long special about immigrant labour in the Roaring Fork and Eagle Valleys, focusing on one contractor, Mark Gould, and one of his employees, an illegal immigrant.

In the program, Gould explained how hard it was to verify the documents presented by job applicants, but also hinted that without immigrant labour — including, presumably, illegal labour — that the prosperity of the resort valleys would end.

The program resulted in Gould firing his employee, who he did not realize was illegal until watching the broadcast. In addition, because of new, tighter immigration laws, he must clear all workers with the Department of Homeland Security, reports the Glenwood Springs Post Independent.

But the national attention yielded more than 600 phone calls and e-mails from people across the country interested in working for him.

One such contact came from Rick Valko, a construction supervisor from Brighton, Mich. Valko told the newspaper that he at first thought the story about the difficulty in finding workers was a joke. “I had never heard of such a problem. It shocked me. In Michigan you don’t have that problem.”

Altogether, Gould has hired 15 people who responded to the TV show. But he still needs labourers, and he had hoped to hire 15 people from Mexico under the federal government’s H-2B temporary guest worker program. The current U.S. quota of 66,000 workers has been filled.

“Our economy needs to function properly, and it needs immigrant workers,” he told the Post Independent.

 

CB charged in groomer’s death

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – Operators of Crested Butte Mountain Resort may be fined up to $67,500 in connection with the death this winter of a snow groomer who was run over and crushed by his own machine.

The report says that the Snowcat that Chris Mikesell, 23, was operating had armrest and driver door safety switches that were bypassed. “These switches were designed to automatically activate brakes if a shut door opened, or the armrest was pulled up,” said the federal government’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

John Healey, an OSHA area director, told the Crested Butte News that other equipment at the resort was similarly altered.

Randy Barrett, general manager of Crested Butte, said the company disagrees that the violation was willful.

 

Sun Valley skier days down

KETCHUM, Idaho – Snow was scarce at Sun Valley this year, just 144 inches for the season, less than half that of the previous year. Skier visits were also down, only 362,000, the lowest during the last 12 years, although the Sun Valley Co. reported occupancy rates as good as last year. Does that gap represent how much less locals were skiing?

Always there’s a silver lining. In this case, Tad Roberts, who supervises the half-pipe and parks on Baldy Mountain, reported that less snow was more. Instead of having to blow the fresh snow out of the flats of the pipe, he told the Idaho Mountain Express, the runs were fast nearly all year.

 

Dirt to fly this summer

TELLURIDE, Colo. – This summer is lining up as a memorable construction season in Telluride and, to an even greater extent, at the slope-side town of Mountain Village. More than a million square-feet of building is planned, not counting a 300,000-square-foot addition to an existing hotel called the Peaks.

The Telluride Watch suggests that even more impressive than what goes up is what goes down. At one 47-unit high-end housing project, a hole 70 feet deep will be cut into the mountainside. At another project, the parking garage will require five months of excavation and shoring before actual building begins.

Much of the excavated dirt and rock will be trucked 20 to 30 miles away, says the newspaper, turning the two-lane road nicknamed the San Juan Skyway into the San Yawn Dirt-way for commuters.

 

Small-town feeling going

EAGLE, Colo. – Can a town of 5,000 and still rapidly growing retain small-town atmosphere? That’s the essential question being asked in Eagle, located 30 miles west of Vail.

The town’s population has been growing at up to 20 per cent annually this century. Not so tax revenues. Town voters rejected a Costco that was instead allowed into the adjacent town of Gypsum. But to get to the Costco, many people drive through Eagle, congesting the roads.

Now, the town is reviewing another proposal for a new shopping district in what is now an alfalfa pasture along Interstate 70. Called Eagle River Station, the proposed development would create an outdoor mall-type cluster of stores with architecture that mimics the Victorian street fronts found in old Colorado mining towns.

Two opposing groups have formed. One group, founded by two new residents, argues that the town needs to better accept growth and channel it. The second group also professes to understand the need for economic development, but the group’s mission seems to be guided by a fear of loss.

“Eagle has existed for more than 100 years, and it will exist for another 100 years,” writes Julia Denault Parker, a resident of the Eagle Valley for 28 years. “Our goal should be to maintain the typical ‘small town in America’ feel that we have today.” Those who feel they need to shop, she writes in the Eagle Valley Enterprise, should drive to other towns.

 

EPA, developer strike accord

PARK CITY, Utah – Like many old mining towns, Park City has had a great deal of tainted soils and waters, the residue of silver mining that ended about 40 years ago. That pollution, in turn, drew the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA had a reputation for fractious relationships in mountain towns of the West during the 1980s. Colorado’s Leadville had a stormy affair, and Aspen tried hard — and succeeded — in keeping the EPA out. (In contrast, the EPA was greeted as a knight on a white horse when it arrived in the Vail area in 1990 to reorder the bungled cleanup of an old zinc mine).

In Park City, says the Park Record, the friction was so great that when the EPA ended its investigation last year, some neighbours in one neighbourhood called Prospect threw a party. Some people wore badges that said, “Not an EPA Inspector.”

Actually, things have been better for several years, says Myles Rademan, Park City’s director of public affairs. The EPA has become less dictatorial, less bureaucratic, and more practical, he says. “The relationship has gotten far better over the years.”

In its new bottom-line orientation, the EPA is also open to new ideas. One such idea is playing out at Deer Valley Resort. A developer there, the Athens Group, plans to build a large, luxury hotel with 178 rooms and suites plus 94 condominiums. But the site is at the Daly West Mine, an old silver mine whose contaminated soils had contributed to local water quality problems.

Cleaning up the site was never at issue. To that end, some hazardous materials are being moved elsewhere, while other ore piles are being covered and capped.

But where the project gets interesting is in the extra stuff. The developer is creating a wetlands area downstream, to further clean up the water coming from the old mining area. Nudged by the EPA and Park City town officials, the hotel developers have also committed to building standards that will allow a silver designation under the LEED program. This is the same designation planned by Vail Resorts in its new project in Vail. The developers are also buying credits for a 750-block of wind-generated electricity.

The EPA, in turn, is giving the developer relief from future liability at the mining site. That relief, says Kathryn Hernandez, project manager for the EPA, provides the developer some peace of mind.

Some of the “green” elements, she says, were suggested by Park City town officials, some by the EPA, and some were the ideas of the development company.

 

Illegal immigrants filing returns

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – Increasing numbers of illegal immigrants have been seeking aid in filing federal income taxes in Jackson Hole.

The number of people assisted by the Latino Resource Center has jumped from 89 people four years ago to 310 people by late March this year. About half are illegal immigrants, mostly Latino.

Jen Solis, of the Resource Center, explained that most people seeking help have already had taxes withdrawn from their paycheques. As such, they hope to get refunds.

Interviews with some of the immigrants by the Jackson Hole News & Guide also established a longer-term motive for filing. Even if they have become employed using fraudulent social security numbers, they must establish a legitimate taxpayer identification number. And that establishes with the government a history of paying taxes and filing tax records. Or, as one immigrant told the newspaper, “I want to be legal.”

Some parents also said they want to lay the groundwork for the legality of their children.

Some 15 per cent of the population in Teton County is Latino, and nearly all are immigrants, mostly from Mexico, particularly the state of Tiaxcala.

The proportions are the same in bedroom communities for Jackson Hole, located in Idaho’s Teton County, although the absolute numbers are less than half. In both cases, it’s unknown how many are illegal residents.

 

Redevelopment starting

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Work is beginning in the $23 million redevelopment of the base area at the Steamboat ski area. The Steamboat Pilot & Today reports work this year will include one new traffic roundabout, but also other work in mostly public areas in preparation for even more significant work in coming years. The basic infrastructure being replaced was installed in the early 1970s.

Meanwhile, in Granby, town trustees have approved a $5 million redevelopment of the base lodge at the SolVista ski area. Almost singular among Colorado ski areas, SolVista is entirely on private land. The ski area also serves a real-estate development called Granby Ranch, which has been approved for 4,000 residential units.

 

Search for victim’s board

ROCK SPRINGS, Colo. – Last October, Ben Bradley left his home at Tabernash, between Winter Park and Granby, and began thumbing rides. He planned to celebrate his 29 th birthday snowboarding with friends in Jackson Hole, where he had been spending winters.

Bradley never got there. His body was found north of Rock Springs, Wyo., and his backpack was found south, near Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Still missing is the Never Summer splitboard he had carried with him. The board was expensive and custom made.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that police hope to conduct a broader search along roads and other areas near where his body and backpack were found. Lt. Bob Myzel, of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office in Rock Springs, told the newspaper there are no clear suspects, only people of interest.

“This is a complicated case,” he said. “There are so many people involved.”

 

New species of lichen found

REVELSTOKE, B.C. – Scientists have found 13 new species of tree-dwelling lichens in the Incomappleux Valley, located 16 kilometres southeast of Revelstoke.

Why does it matter, asked the Revelstoke Times Review. “I’ve had a hard time explaining the answer to those kinds of questions,” responded Trevor Groward, a lichenologist. Value and utility, he explained, are things that evolve over time.”

The Times Review reports that the lichen were found near a heavily logged area. “It is urgent to stop logging any old-growth over 140 years old,” said Craig Pettit of the Valhalla Wilderness Society.

 

Realtors decline, but not endangered

TRUCKEE, Calif. – For seven years, the real estate market at Truckee and Lake Tahoe continued to inflate. Last year, the market conflated, with the number of transactions declining by 30 per cent. Most directly affected, reports the Sierra Sun, were part-time real-estate agents.

The Tahoe Sierra Board of Realtors lost 5 per cent of members, although 1,200 remain. But sales have picked up again this year, causing some realty specialists to predict good times ahead for the merchants of dirt.