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Ski business is different, 'It takes a community'

FRISCO, Colo. - Intrawest's announcement last week that it has reached an agreement to sell Copper Mountain to Powdr Corp. has others trying to read the tea leaves.

FRISCO, Colo. - Intrawest's announcement last week that it has reached an agreement to sell Copper Mountain to Powdr Corp. has others trying to read the tea leaves.

Bill Jensen, the Intrawest chief executive, openly admitted to the need to sell a property. But, in an interview with the Summit Daily News last April, he said, "Copper is not one we want to sell."

Jensen also noted that the real estate assets at the base of the ski area had dramatically dropped in value.

Taking stock of the sale in an interview with the Aspen Daily News was Mike Kaplan, the chief executive of the Aspen Skiing Co. He noted that in the late 1990s four giant ski companies had emerged - Intrawest, but also Vail Resorts, Booth Creek, and American Skiing - with overt plans to expand.

But of the four, only Vail Resorts has continued to grow. American Skiing disappeared altogether, and Booth Creek remains small.

"And so I think it tells you that this business is different, as we've always known," Kaplan told the Daily News. "It really is 'of the community,' and that is one of the things we try and focus on (in the Aspen community). There is an inherent tension here, but it takes a community to offer a vacation experience.

"And when you are owned by a bigger conglomerate, in a mountain town anyway, that's tough. Because residents of places like this - and while Aspen is different, it's not that different - are independent thinkers and people who like to enjoy the mountains and have strong opinions and feelings about those mountains and the business you are running. And that can make it difficult to be part of a large organization with shareholder needs and other issues."

Aspen Skiing for the last 15 years has been owned by the Crown family of Chicago - into which Kaplan married. He maintains that long-term private ownership gives Aspen an inherent long-term perspective that allows Aspen to operate with a wiser perspective; something not allowed many other resorts.

He specifically cited Steamboat, which has been owned by American Skiing and Intrawest.

The Copper sales price was not divulged, and is not likely to be in the immediate future, because both companies are privately held. Jerry Jones, a long-time ski industry veteran, speculated that the price was around $100 million.

The Summit Daily notes that with the real estate market continuing to be in the doldrums, the challenge for Powdr Corp. will be to compete with Vail Resorts for skiers. Vail has four ski areas in close proximity to Copper Mountain.

Powdr Corp. owns Park City Mountain Resort in Utah, Killington in Vermont, Mt. Bachelor in Oregon and a handful of other ski areas.

 

Realtors hoping for summer sales

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," said Alexander Pope in an essay first published nearly 400 years ago. Now comes further evidence of that hope from the pages of the Steamboat Pilot & Today in a report about a source of trouble for ski towns everywhere: stalled real estate sales.

The Pilot & Today reports nothing remarkable in sales. In the big money soft spot - homes worth $2 to $3 million - almost no sales have occurred in the last year. But after sellers have finally conceded the lowering of prices, the real estate store at least has been getting shoppers.

"Our phone calls, Web traffic and showings are all up," said Dave Baldinger Jr. of Steamboat Village Brokers. He expects plenty of real-estate lookers over the holidays, more hard looks come March - and sales next summer.

But lower prices were the first essential, he told the newspaper.

"We're starting all over, brick by brick," Baldinger said. "Over months and years, we'll see growing sales volume and growing confidence in the values placed on properties."

A blogger on the newspaper's website identified as Scott Wedel was unpersuaded. "Local realtors expressed hope after the sun rose today," he wrote, assigning local realty agents such names as Mindless Promoter, Polly Anna, and Ignorance S. Bliss.

 

Club members can cut lines

PARK CITY, Utah - Talisker, the operator of The Canyons ski area, has copied a page from ski area operators in Colorado and Utah. For extra money, customers can get extra privileges, like first dibs on the morning's powder skiing.

This and other perks will be folded into the privileges of the new Canon Club. Cost is $2,500 for a couple and for a family of four the bill runs $5,900.

Club members will also get discounts on dining, several free ski lessons, discounts on equipment, and line-cutting privileges, reports The Park Record.

 

Med dispensaries likely banned

WINTER PARK, Colo. - Winter Park, like Avon before it, may prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries within town limits. Drew Nelson, the town manager, told the Sky-Hi Daily News that probable prohibition was provoked by the sentiment in Winter Park that the clientele includes customers from the "more conservative areas of the country."

Somewhat ironically, a major portion of the ski area at Winter Park is called Mary Jane, a nickname for marijuana. Some say the name for the ski area came from people smoking pot there, although others trace the origins to a woman.

 

Telluride an issue in California

TELLURIDE, Colo. - It turns out that former e-Bay chief executive Meg Whitman, now the front-runner for the Republican nomination for governor in California, was a major contributor to the effort to preserve open space at the entrance to Telluride.

The San Jose Mercury News disclosed that a foundation of which she is a part donated $1.15 million toward the $50 million purchase of the land.

The land had been a festering issue for decades. The owner, a San Diego developer, had wanted to develop the 600-plus acres. The town opposed it and threatened condemnation. A court-mediated price settled on a value of $50 million.

Helping round the California bases of this Colorado story, Hollywood movie producer Tom Shadyac donated the final millions necessary to complete the purchase in May 2008.

But Whitman's involvement had been a secret until the San Jose paper rustled through the tax reports of the non-profit trust.

Potentially more damaging to her gubernatorial hopes was the disclosure that the trust had also contributed money to an environmental group that had sought to save endangered species, to the detriment of California farmers. In public, she sided with the farmers in calling for a suspension of the Endangered Species Act.

A spokesman for a rival candidate told the newspaper that the contributions illustrated her hypocrisy. Her spokesman, of course, denied that accusation.

 

Virginia group cries fowl

SUN VALLEY, Idaho - The locavore movement has been getting some kickback in the Sun Valley area.

There, eighth-graders in the Community School raised 16 Cornish-cross chickens, a variety bred for meat production. The students reared the chickens to maturity, a time of seven weeks, then placed the chickens in cone-shaped devices, to prevent flapping, and then cut their throats.

The students and teachers, reports the Idaho Mountain Express, considered that method of killing humane.

United Poultry Concerns, a Virginia-based group that promotes "compassion for chickens and other domestic fowl," protested the killings as "not only animal abuse, but child abuse." In a letter, group president Karen David noted that immobilization of the chickens only added to the terrible death endured by the chickens.

"In excruciating pain, the birds could not even thrash violently as they otherwise would have, giving the students a stronger taste of the suffering they caused these poor birds," she wrote. "Throat-cutting is extremely painful."

Teachers told the newspaper that the first-hand experience showed some students the benefits of vegetarianism, but they believed it was highly unrealistic to expect the students to become vegetarians.

"What we tried to show the students was that if they are going to eat meat, it is possible to mitigate some of the more awful effects of factory farming by choosing to eat meat that has been raised and slaughtered in the most humane way possible."

In Aspen, a movie called "Locavore" was shown at what was described as a Local Food Summit. The move-maker - Lynn Gillespie, who farms about 90 miles away in a town called Paonia - defines a locavore as somebody who is trying to get all of his or her food from sources within 100 miles of their homes,

The Aspen Times noted reports that the average vegetable currently travels 1,500 miles from source to table.

 

Compromise struck

KETCHUM, Idaho - Last summer, it seemed like a fine idea to allow windmills along Highway 75, which connects Sun Valley, Ketchum and other communities in the Wood River Valley.

But the Blaine County Commissioners have changed their opinion, reports the Idaho Mountain Express . The commissioners intend to allow small wind turbines, but only up to 40 feet and on properties of five acres or more.

Wind has presented community officials across the country with Solomon-like questions of utility. To be more effective, wind turbines need to be higher in the air. But even some supporters find them jarring to the landscape.

"If we're going to allow wind turbines, we need to have them accepted by the community," Larry Schoen, the chairman of the commissioners, said. "We can't create a negative attitude about wind energy. It's not just about creating electricity."

 

LED streetlights cut costs

OURAY, Colo. - The effect of switching out the 100 streetlights in Ouray with LED lights is already paying off. Bob Risch, mayor of the scenic town on the north edge of the San Juan Mountains, reported that the cost of electricity has gone down 60 per cent.

 

Solar panels may go higher

ASPEN, Colo. - At first, many people objected to the sight of solar collectors on roofs. That aesthetic heartburn has gone away, but the debate continues in the matter of free-standing solar collectors apart from buildings.

The Aspen Times reports that Pitkin County officials are now considering whether to allow the free-standing collectors to be a maximum of 16 feet tall. Current law allows 10 feet.

Higher installations would allow the collectors to be well above the snow line. But higher installations mean more interruptions of scenic views from neighbouring homes. In a report, county planner Mike Kraemer also said that some people believe the free-standing solar arrays have more of an industrial look.

Alan Richman, a planning consultant, said he fears that people, even in the Roaring Fork Valley, may not be willing to move past battles over aesthetics to support the advancement of renewable energy.

"The point is not is it pretty or ugly, but that's what we ought to be doing," Richman said.

 

Two sides gird for public support

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. - In announcing that it would refuse to evaluate a proposal to expand the Crested Butte Mountain Resort, the U.S. Forest Service may have forced the local community to reach a consensus on the issue.

Or maybe not. But it won't be for lack of a loud argument.

Two organizations in the Crested Butte-Gunnison area have created web-based polls. But the big action is probably in the meeting chambers of local governments.

Mt. Crested Butte, the town where the ski area is located, long ago registered support for the expansion. Crested Butte, the old mining town, has been more hesitant - a fact noted by forest supervisor Charlie Richmond. He also pointedly noted the absence of a public position by the Gunnison County commissioners.

As a matter of operating procedure, the Forest Service has had an aloof but pragmatic informal policy. While insisting that its actions cannot be voted on by local governments, as a practical matter it rarely, if ever, has accepted proposals to expand ski areas when the communities have been deeply divided.

Even so, the strategy has not always worked. Before accepting a proposal to expand skiing at Vail in the mid-1990s, the agency instructed ski-area operator Vail Associates to reach a peace with Vail community leaders. It did - but not with Minturn, a smaller town just around the corner.

In Crested Butte, meanwhile, there is great anger - or at least plenty of noise. The Crested Butte News reports that ski area officials and their supporters packed local meetings last week. Tim Mueller, president of the ski area, promised to appeal the decision to whatever level of the Forest Service was necessary. At stake, he said, was due process.

Alan Bernholtz, the outgoing mayor, appealed for civility. "We all should be able to live in the same town and be friends and neighbours despite differing opinions."

Leah Williams, the new mayor, urged that the dust be allowed to settle before the town decides what its strategy and position will be. But Jim Schmidt, a former mayor newly re-elected to the council, said he believes the town government was being forced to conduct hearings that the federal agency should have taken under the public engagement component of the environmental review process.

 

Fracking details sought

JACKSON, Wyo. - The controversy about chemicals used in extracting natural gas from so-called unconventional geological formations continues to percolate in ski towns of the West.

In Wyoming, the Teton County commissioners have adopted a resolution urging Congress to pass a law that would allow a physician or nurse access to chemical formulas used in hydraulic fracturing, called fracking.

Teton County has interest in what is becoming a national debate because the local hospital, St. John's Medical Center, sometimes treats workers injured in the natural-gas drilling fields near Pinedale, to the south.

At issue is whether the chemicals used in fracking compounds must be divulged publicly, and in what form. The bill now before Congress would increase federal oversight. The gas industry maintains that existing procedures have been established to protect public health.

Perhaps the most infamous case involving fracking chemicals occurred at Durango, Colo. There, a nurse at a hospital suffered severe symptoms of chemical poisoning last year after treating an individual who had been doused in hydraulic fracturing chemicals. News accounts described a swollen liver, erratic blood counts, and lungs filling with fluid.

Gas industry representatives told the Jackson Hole News & Guide that the Durango story has been unfairly told. Kathleen Sgamma, director of government affairs for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, said the gas field worker took something called the Material Safety Data Sheet and a number to call for more information when he checked into the hospital.

"The correct procedure was to call that number so they could know how to handle the chemicals," Sgamma told the News & Guide. "When you look at the facts, the worker was fine," she said. "The hospital didn't follow their procedures and a nurse was exposed to the chemicals as well and had some reaction. Whether it was from the chemicals or something else, I don't know."

Also at issue with fracking chemicals is whether they have or could contaminate drinking water supplies. Petroleum geologists insist that fracking chemicals cannot find their way from natural gas deposits to drinking water supplies located closer to the surface. A Colorado School of Mines professor told Planning Magazine last summer that the only way that water supplies could be contaminated was if the concrete casing in a well ruptured.

Nonetheless, doubts persist whether geologists truly know as much about the subterranean as they profess to know. Five years ago, chemicals began bubbling to the surface of West Divide Creek, located about 80 miles west of both Aspen and Vail, in Garfield County. A woman who lived in the area developed medical problems that, according to a story in On Earth Magazine, she believes were caused by contamination of drinking water.

The Aspen Times reports that the Garfield County commissioners have agreed to press state officials to more fully account for an investigation into the cause of seeps. A geologist found that benzene, a carcinogen linked to drilling activities, has been found in groundwater along the creek at concentrations 30 times the Colorado state limit for the watershed.