Mountain Town News

By Allen Best

Real estate market strengthens

JACKSON, Wyo. – The real estate market has continued to improve this year in Teton County. In their quarterly Jackson Hole Report, Devon Viehman-Wheeldon and David Viehman tell of continued strong sales of distressed properties costing below $500,000 but also construction in the valley’s toniest neighborhoods.

“In the aftermath of 2009, real-estate watchers said the market was bouncing along a ‘soggy bottom.’ Recent activity points to improving conditions,” says the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

The newspaper talked with Ed Liebzeil, president and chief operating officer of Jackson Hole Sotheby’s International Realty. “The market is stronger than in 2010, stronger than 2009,” he said. “Buyers are looking for bargains. Sellers who have adjusted prices to reflect today’s market conditions are having some level of success in selling their properties.”

Inventor built device for own use

MONTROSE, Colo. – Ed Pauls died recently, and although you probably never heard of him, you’re likely seen or even used his invention: the Nordic-Track.

In an obituary, the New York Times explains he was working as a mechanical engineer in Excelsior, Minn., in the early 1970s, when he got the idea. He was training for a cross-country ski race, running on roads around his house in the early evening. Slipping on ice, he imagined an indoor training machine that he could use to replicate the workout but without the risk of falling. At first, he had no intention of the idea being used by others, and when he did, he initially called it the Nordic Jock.

Renamed and broadly marketed to people who had no direct experience of cross-country skiing, his family sold 500,000 before selling the company. He died at the age of 80 in Montrose, near Telluride, according to the Times.

Trout out! 

BANFF, Alberta – Non-native brook trout are to be removed from a creek in Banff National Park, to allow for the reintroduction of westslope cutthroat trout. The cutthroat were extirpated from Cascade Creek following construction of a dam near the town of Banff in 1941.

Parks Canada say the dam reduced flows 99 percent in the creek, eliminating both the cutthroat trout and another native species, bull trout.

If all goes as planned, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook, the brook trout will be eliminated through electro-fishing during the next year.

Drilling for hot water 

ASPEN, Colo. — Drilling is underway in Aspen, which hopes to strike paydirt in the form of hot water. A preliminary analysis suggested that the water is 90 to 110 degrees, but temperatures of at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit are needed to provide heat for buildings, explains the Aspen Daily News. That’s what the drilling will determine. The geothermal testing is part of the city’s ambitious effort to shrink its carbon footprint.

Time to backtrack on housing?

EAGLE, Colo. – Is it time to roll back some of the requirements for affordable housing enacted during the boom years?

Jon Stavney thinks so. Running for Eagle County commissioner in 2008, he supported regulations that required 35 percent of all projects be dedicated for workforce housing. For years, he points out, the county – which includes Vail and Beaver Creek — had been growing 10 percent annually, with 40 percent of the workforce involved in building or development. Neither that pace nor portion was sustainable. Most developers didn’t bother with providing lower-end housing.

Now, he wants to reduce the onus on developers, in hopes of encouraging more development. That, he suggests, will put people back to work.

The Eagle County Housing authority recently began a conversation with developers and local jurisdictions about how best to reposition expectations.

Old-growth cuts  continue

WHISTLER, B.C. – End the cutting of old-growth in the Cheakamus Community Forest? Not gonna happen soon, says Peter Ackhurst, who chairs the partnership that manages the 33,000 hectares of forest. The partnership consists of Whistler and two First Nations groups, the Squamish and Lil’wat.

“Right now, there is no second growth that’s old enough to harvest,” he said at a recent meeting. “There will be some old forest logging at least for 20 years. I would think it would be very difficult to maintain the harvest without logging the old growth.”

Several readers of Pique Newsmagazine were aggrieved by the report. “Every year, Whistler spends hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting itself as a model of ‘sustainability.’ At the same time, it continues logging its old-growth forests,” wrote Van Clayton Powell. Said another reader: “These forests are worth more standing than logged.”