Mountain Town News
By Allen Best
More courses than golfers
VAIL, Colo. – Is the Vail resort complex oversupplied with golf courses? You could make that argument, as several of the valley’s 17 public and private clubs have struggled enormously in the wake of the Great Recession.
In the 1980s, a columnist for a now-defunct newspaper in Vail joked that someday it would be possible to golf continuously from Vail to Glenwood Canyon, a distance of nearly 50 miles.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, developers seemed determined to make that come true. There was even a proposal to build a golf course atop an abandoned landfill. At another location, a developer proposed to cap an old pile of mine tailings and create a golf course, as was done at Anaconda, Mont.
Then golfing, as had happened with tennis in the 1970s and skiing in the 1980s, started losing its luster. The growth flattened, nationally as well as at mountain resorts.
Those golf courses that suffered most substantially in the Vail area were those farthest from the ski slopes and resort centers of Vail and Beaver Creek. Brightwater, a project located south of Gypsum, about 45 miles from Vail, is now in bankruptcy. A beautiful course called Adam’s Rib, south of Eagle, reportedly sold very few memberships and has revised its fees.
Harry Frampton, managing partner of Avon-based East West Partners, which has built golf course-based higher-end real estate, says there are two problems with Vail-area golf. First, the season lasts only three or four months. Second, he thinks too many of the golf courses take four to five hours to play, too much commitment given dozens of other things to do.
Frampton, an avid golfer, told the Vail Daily that in a survey of his company’s high-end real estate buyers, 20 percent had been driven by golf. It’s still important, he said, but golf does not drive the economy of the Vail Valley.
Research done for the Vail municipal government that showed hiking was the top activity of summer visitors.
Debate about ski interconnect
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – The debate about a gondola called SkiLink that would link ski resorts, Canyons and Solitude, located on opposite sides of the crest of the Wasatch Range, has been heating up.
Democrats, environmentalists, and Salt Lake City seem to be on one side of the argument, and Republicans and at least some of the ski areas are on the other. Proponents want to take the federal government out of the decision-making. To that end, U.S. Rep. Bob Bishop, a Republican who represents Park City, has introduced a bill in Congress that would require the Forest Service to sell the two ski areas, Solitude and Canyons, 30 acres of land.
A counterpart from the Democratic party, Rep. Joel Briscoe, of Salt Lake City, says the bill before Congress “subverts the democratic process – and process matters. It sets an awful precedent for other public lands in Utah.”
If the bill goes through Congress, the decisions would be made by local officials in Summit County, where Park City is located, and in Salt Lake County. Salt Lake City gets its water from the canyons of the Wasatch area, including those that contain the ski areas of Alta, Solitude, Snowbird and Brighton.
Opponents see the SkiLink as a Trojan horse for future ski area expansions. A map of proposed and rumored ski-resort expansion shows the terrain near the top of the Wasatch canyons not currently used by ski areas would be consumed by the ski areas. “It would transform the Wasatch into developed ski-resort areas on an action-by-action, piece-by-piece basis,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, who was an environmental planner before gaining public office.
Taxpayers challenge carbon tax
WHISTLER, B.C. – The United States remains divided in a cultural war, and climate science has been sucked up into the chasm, leaving the nation fundamentally unable to create a cohesive response.
In Canadian, the federal government is drunk on the vast revenues from its deposits of bitumen, otherwise known as tar sands, if you dislike the mining, and oil sands, if you approve. It, too, has no consensus about howt o move forward on containing greenhouse gas emissions.
While California still is putting together the structure for a cap-and-trade system, British Columbia did what most economists said made a lot more sense: put a tax on carbon and let the market figure out how to reward innovators.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is making the case for dropping this grand experiment. The tax was introduced in 2008 and now costs 6.67 cents per litre of gasoline.
The federation clams that of the $1.2 billion raised by the tax each year, only $228 million goes back to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts. The remainder is given out in the form of venture capital and industrial property credits, or for research and development.
Boomers decline, millenials rise
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Baby boomers are starting to retire, and many are moving to mountain towns for their golden years. No news there, right? But Patrick Phillips, president of the Urban Land Institute, downplays the economic impact of that phenomenon. Instead, during a recent presentation in Steamboat Springs, he said that boomers as a group will be challenged to achieve their ultimate retirement lifestyle. Many will be cash-strapped and unable to make the big move to the mountains.
Instead, Phillips advised Steamboat to continue to focus on making room for millenials, the children of baby boomers, and otherwise being attractive to investment capital?
How to do so? According to a report in Steamboat Today, Phillips urged Steamboat to continue to invest in amenities.
The climate, mortgage nexus
BOZEMAN, Mont. – Speakers on a panel in Bozeman recently observed that climate change and the subprime mortgage crisis share two trends: they had early signs that some people ignored or denied, and they can strain the economy, reported the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
Speakers representing sportsmen and environmental groups on a recent panel said that climate change is a threat to Montana’s economy and way of life. “We believe that sportsmen are actually among the first to recognize climate change, even if they don’t say the word,” said Bill Geer, who has spent 39 years with fish and game organizations, including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
Pilot, plane at fault in Reno crash
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Transportation Safety Board determined earlier this week that deteriorated locknut inserts found in the highly modified North American P-51D Mustang airplane that crashed during the 2011 National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nev., allowed the trim tab attachment screws to become loose, and even initiated fatigue cracking in one screw. The condition reportedly led to aerodynamic flutter at racing speed that broke the trim tab linkages, resulting in a loss of control and the eventual crash.
According to the NTSB report, on Sept. 16, 2011, the experimental, single-seat “Galloping Ghost,” piloted by veteran air racer Jim Leeward from Ocala, Fla., was traveling at 512 mph on lap 3 of a 6-lap race when it experienced a left-roll upset and high-G pitch up as it passed Pylon 8.
The airplane’s vertical acceleration peaked at 17.3 G, causing incapacitation of the pilot. Seconds later, a section of the left elevator trim tab separated in flight. The airplane descended and impacted the ramp in the spectator box seating area, killing the pilot and 10 spectators and injuring more than 60 others.
“Contributing to the accident were undocumented and untested major modifications made to the airplane, as well as the pilot’s operation of the airplane in the unique racing environment without adequate [in-flight] testing.” Lawsuits against the Galloping Ghost’s owners and Reno Air Races organizers have been filed. –NTSB
