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Christmas, Sundance spending on the rise

Christmas, Sundance spending on the rise PARK CITY, Utah - Customers resumed their free-spending ways at Christmas, and now corporations appear ready to do the same as the Sundance Film Festival returns to Park City.

Christmas, Sundance spending on the rise

PARK CITY, Utah - Customers resumed their free-spending ways at Christmas, and now corporations appear ready to do the same as the Sundance Film Festival returns to Park City.

"Last year they would have a glass of wine; this year a bottle," said Steve McComb, owner of three dining outlets in Park City, observing holiday visitors.

More telling yet, people were reserving tables at multiple restaurants, a tactic to ensure choices more commonly seen during the Sundance Film Festival. One steak-house restaurateur told the Park Record that business was what it was last year.

Sundance will begin Jan. 20, and it could be the rollicking affair reminiscent of old, given the evidence that corporations will restore allowances for high-profile presences to showcase products and services.

One agent of such parties estimated the number of festival lounges or other venues will increase 15 percent from last year, approaching the level reached in 2008, shortly before the recession free-fall.

"Companies who hadn't had places recently are spending money again. They're back to spending money," said Christopher Ryan, the Los Angeles-based agent.

Among the corporate brands with a prominent presence will be Bing, the search engine from Microsoft. Microsoft has rented a restaurant for use by celebrities and partying.

Another rental agent in Park City told The Record that rental fees paid during the two-week festival sometimes cover upward of four months of rent for the businesses.

 

Evidence at every turn of growing economy

ASPEN, Colo. - From the judge of records for November, real estate in Aspen and Pitkin County continues to grow. Through November, the real estate market is up 15 per cent as compared to 2009. This is as measured by total dollar sales, $1.14 billion, according to a Land Title Guarantee Co. report summarized by The Aspen Times.

Meanwhile, the town finance department reports sales tax receipts were up five per cent during November, another indication of a livelier economy.

In what has been a sharper indicator yet, The Times reported surging interest in leasing of retail locations. "I think everything is moving in a very positive direction," said Karen Setterfield, who has been leasing local retail and office space for 25 years. "There's a lot of energy in retail in downtown Aspen right now."

But in none of these cases are costs and revenues remotely close to the benchmarks of the last decade. In the case of commercial space, rates ranged between $90 and $240 per square foot. Now, the rents range from $45 to $125 a square foot, said Ruth Kruger, a real estate broker.

 

Jackson Hole notches terrain, visitor records

JACKSON, Wyo. - In the first two months of ski season, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort set two records.

The day after Thanksgiving, all of the ski terrain - top to bottom and wall-to-wall, in the words of Jerry Blann, the ski area president - was opened. This was a first for November in the resort's 44 years of operation.

Then, in November, the ski area set a record for skier days. Season-pass prices slashed by 25 percent was at least partly responsible, but so was the abundant snow of 240 inches by New Year's Day.

 

 

Merchants want snow, but not too much of it

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. - Blessed and cursed - that's snow in Crested Butte, which has a bunch lying around this winter, most controversially on Elk Avenue.

Elk Avenue is the primary commercial district in the one-time mining town, and the snow piled up so fast that town crews did not get a chance to remove it during Christmas week. That limited the space available for parking, to the great distress of some merchants, reports the Crested Butte News. Making it worse was that without fresh snow, the pile of snow had turned dirty and gray, not exactly the stuff of postcards.

Snow banks on Elk Avenue have been on ongoing debate since he's been there, said Jim Schmidt, a resident since the early 1970s and a town council member. "Some love it, and some hate it," he said.

 

Flat world includes market for uranium

DURANGO, Colo. - New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has said that the world is flat, a clever way of saying that we're all far more connected than we once were. But there's some heartburn in the interior West about some of that flattening that might cause renewed mining of uranium in the slickrock country of Utah and Colorado for shipment to distant countries.

The Durango Telegraph points out that a Canadian company called Uranium One, which has a Durango office, has been purchased by a Russian company called Atomredmetzoloto, and this Russian company may well ship the processed uranium to Iran.

"This is the Russian government coming in to take advantage of our resources," said Jeff Parsons, of the Western Mining Action Project. "This will be American uranium that will be going to Russia, and it's no secret that Russia supplies Iran with its nuclear fuel."

As well, some uranium from a mill recently approved for a site about an hour west of Telluride, would be shipped to China. Plus, South Korea will be importing uranium from the Southwest.

Intersecting this geographic flatness is a deepening historical timeline: much of this uranium mining will be done under authority of a U.S. law enacted in 1872.

 

Unlucky arrhythmia victim was luckily on ski lift

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - Tanya Buhman had no idea she had a heart condition, and neither did her husband, Dion. But in retrospect, Dion believes it was their great fortune that she had her first potentially lethal arrhythmia on a chair lift at Steamboat.

"If it would have happened in an airplane or while driving down the road, she wouldn't have had a chance," he told the Steamboat Pilot & Today. "It really happened in the best spot possible."

The newspaper explained that Dion and their daughter were riding together in a chair, and in the next chair were Tanya and their 15-year-old son. She fainted. It was a chair without a safety bar.

The son held onto her, while the father yelled to lift attendants to stop the lift when they reached the top. He took off her skis, laid her horizontal on the chair, and started CPR. "I could see she wasn't breathing," he told the newspapers.

Within five minutes, "all kinds of guys from the Ski Patrol were there," he said. The ski patrollers used an automated external defibrillator to get her heart beating again. They have 14 such defibrillators spread across the ski area.

The 39-year-old woman was to be transported to Denver, to have an implant installed in her heart to prevent further arrhythmias.

 

Breckenridge finishes phase of new housing

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - The first 13 units of a 42-unit affordable housing complex have been completed in Breckenridge. The condominiums, one to three bedrooms in size, were made available to buyers earning less than 75 percent of the median income, which in Summit County is $87,200 for a family of four.

The Summit Daily News explained that Breckenridge, the municipality, donated the land, staff and some funding. The three together entail an investment of $1.5 million. The complex is called Valley Brook, and all but one of the 13 units were spoken for.

 

Balancing the energy aspirations, realities

SILVERTHORNE, Colo. - There are aspirations, and then there are realities, and Summit County is currently weaving its way between the two in its Energy Action Plan.

The Summit Daily News reported that after visiting a couple of the county's towns, the community energy coordinator, Lynn Westerfield, is pulling up the hemline of the plan.

For example, the plan's original goal was for the county to have 30 per cent of its energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. But one town council member in Silverthorne insisted that such a goal needed to have a specific plan, including proposed cost and funding streams.

Also facing pushback is the idea of inserting the finger of government into the trash-hauling businesses, to eliminate redundancies and thence eliminate heavy traffic on streets. But council members in Silverthorne didn't want to interfere with the market place.

And under the microscope is a proposed mandate that a building's energy consumption be made available upon sale or lease of the property.

But Westerfield told the newspaper that while compromises will be made, sometimes-lofty goals are necessary to create the space for dramatic change.

 

Pedicab searches for niche in the thin air

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. - At 9,600 feet and higher, Breckenridge has thinner air than most places. But two people have launched a bicycle-powered taxi service, called Pedicab, to shuttle customers around the town's business district for $10 per ride. And, noted the Summit Daily News, tips are always welcome.

Heather Olson, a co-owner, said no one would rent a car, taxi or a horse-drawn carriage for shopping. But Kevin Holmquest, the other owner, said that pedaling 500 pounds of customers is taxing. "It's definitely a workout."

 

Do consultants excel in telling the obvious?

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - How much are consultants worth? From the measure of their fees, quite a lot. And local governments are often quite happy to pay.

But sometimes there is heartburn, as was the case when Mammoth Lakes commissioned a consultant to prepare a report about whether some services could be delivered by outside vendors at lower costs. The Sheet reports that the consultant was promised $9,500.

Hearing the report, one self-described "concerned local" stepped to the lectern at a recent meeting to dismiss the work as unworthy. "A consultant has been asked to look at your watch and then tells you what time it is," he said.

 

For whatever reason Yellowstone visits up

JACKSON, Wyo. - It was another record year for visitors at Yellowstone National Park, a jump of 7.3 percent as measured by admissions at the park's south entrance 90 miles from Jackson.

Yellowstone has had surging numbers for the last four years. Even 2008, a year in which gas prices ranged between $4 and $5 per gallon, was among the top 10 in terms of visitors. National Park Service officials tell the Jackson Hole News&Guide that the series by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about national parks nurtured interest, as did promotional efforts by Wyoming and Montana, but the "dollar value" also came into play.

 

 

Newspaper gossip

JACKSON HOLE - The newspaper situation in Jackson and Teton County would be an anomaly in any number of ways. Despite a surging economy and a population of nearly 20,000, a daily newspaper never has made serious inroads. If you want to know what's going on, you have to read the weekly Jackson Hole News&Guide. And they get money for it - 50 cents, the price since Ronald Reagan was still president. The newspaper in its New Year's issue announced that it would soon change, as the price is going up to a buck per issue. The newspaper urged readers to subscribe, as it's just 83 cents that way. The News and Guide were dueling weeklies until a few years ago, when they combined.