Mountain Town News: Truckee, Aspen, Ketchum
Bring back the griz?
TRUCKEE, Calif. – California’s state flag has a grizzly bear on it, but the grizzlies that inspired it disappeared from California in the 1920s. Does that need to remain the case?
The Center for Biological Diversity, an advocacy group, wants the federal government to expand its recovery plan for grizzly bears to California and several places across the West.
“If we’re serious about recovering grizzly bears, we need more populations around the West and more connections between them, so they don’t fall prey to inbreeding and so they have a chance of adapting to a warming world,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The group calls for reintroduction of grizzly bears into the southern Sierra Nevada in California and Utah’s Uinta Mountains, a range stretching eastward from Park City toward Dinosaur National Park.
The Grand Canyon could also use some grizzlies, the group says, as would the Mogollon Rim and Gila Wilderness complex in Arizona and New Mexico.
As many as 100,000 grizzly bears once lived in western North America. Now, there are 1,850 in the United States.
How realistic is the reintroduction to California? Ann Bryant, who directs the Lake Tahoe-based BEAR League says, “(People) can’t even co-exist with black bears,” she said. “How in the world do we think we can co-exist with grizzlies. There’s just no room, no mentality for it.”
What price history?
TELLURIDE, Colo. – What price history? That’s the question before Telluride as it faces a deadline next spring if it is to avert demolition of the Pandora Mill.
The mill was at the center of the town’s mining economy from the 1920s until the mid-1970s. It once processed ores for lead, zinc, gold, and other metals and in 1974, the last year of profitability, employed 500 people. This was just a year after the ski lifts of Telluride began operating.
The mill sits a mile or so east of downtown Telluride at the end of the box canyon, a place wondrous in its visual appeal. But to restore it will cost at least $30,000 for an engineering assessment, probably more. Then the real work will begin. But the site is too contaminated to be easily adapted to affordable housing or public meeting space, notes the Telluride Daily Planet.
“It’s not a clean site by any stretch of the imagination,” historical commission member John Wontrobski said.
Still, he wants to see the three-level, steel-framed structure saved, as ordinary as it is. “I’m a believer that you need to remember our history, both the good and the bad. And that’s what I think the Idarado mill represents,” he said,
Tortoises carrying iPads highlight museum debut
ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s new $45 million art museum debuted to the public over the weekend with round-the-clock open doors starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday. It also opened with controversy.
The most controversial exhibit was one conceived by New York-based artist Cai Guo-Qiang. It features three African tortoises carrying iPads on their backs. The title of that exhibit is “Moving Ghost Town.” What it has to do with ghost towns was not clear from descriptions.
Some charged animal abuse, although a veterinarian retained to monitor the tortoises found nothing of the sort.
“In my professional opinion, the tortoises have adapted well to their new habitat, and the iPads have not interfered in any way with their natural behavior,” Dr. Elizabeth Kremzier said in a statement posted on the Aspen Art Museum Facebook page.
Of course, how natural can it get on the roof-top deck of a 47-foot-tall building in downtown Aspen?
The Denver Post art critic raved that the four-story, 17,000-square-foot museum is a “modern wonder.” It was designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who won this year’s Pritzker Prize, the profession’s highest award.
The building is among the tallest in Aspen, running against the dominant thought that taller is not better and scale matters greatly. But that philosophy is grounded in the idea that tall buildings in downtown Aspen should not be built solely for residential real estate.
This taller building is different. The museum is free and open to the public.
In addition to paying for the museum at Aspen prices, it enjoys an endowment of $27 million. In other words, passing the hat yielded $72 million. The Denver Post notes that 27 people wrote checks for $1 million or more, and of them, 22 have homes in Aspen and many are on the Art in America magazine’s annual Top 200 international collectors list.
Reminder: Onus on uphill skiers
KETCHUM, Idaho – A district court in Idaho has issued a $447,000 judgment against a man who hit another downhill skier from behind on the slopes of the Sun Valley resort last year.
Taking note of the hefty figure, the Idaho Mountain Express says that the message is loud and clear “that skiing too fast, losing control and injuring another person is not only not acceptable, it’s punishable in a court of law.”
The decision shows that responsibility for avoiding collision rests with the person who is uphill.
Heartburn on short-term rentals
JACKSON, Wyo. – Jackson and Teton were in a mini-uproar in recent weeks as the result of a decision by local governments to start enforcing a law adopted in 1994. That law bans short-term rentals in residential districts.
The law was so widely overlooked that one company, Clear Creek, was in the sole business of helping rent private homes, 52 of them. All but one are illegal rentals under the law.
The Jackson Hole News&Guide says some are gauging that local governments are trampling on private property rights. But another interesting issue is whether the homes in question meet standards of the International Building Code designed for short-term rentals. It seems that few, if any, would comply.
Welcoming the drilling rigs
STEAMBAOT SPRINGS, Colo. – Colorado has been engaged this year in what many call the fracking war. As oil and gas drilling has expanded rapidly during recent years along the state’s Northern Front Range, hostilities have escalated into what appeared sure to be a giant battle at the November election with dueling ballot initiatives. Many millions of dollars were already allocated for 15 and 30-second television sound bites.
The Niobrara formation has been one of the sources of this oil and gas, and it also exists west of Steamboat Springs, in the state’s northwest corner. But there, at least in Craig, located 42 miles west of Steamboat, the drilling rigs are embraced.
A company called Southwestern Energy has purchased $234 million in leases this year. Just a handful of drilling operations are planned at this point.
“I hope they strike it rich,” Moffat County Commissioner John Kinkaid told the Steamboat Today.
Business use of a massage table
ASPEN, Colo. – When is a penthouse a home – or an office? That’s the question raised in Aspen where Marc Bern, an attorney, purchased the penthouse atop an old building in downtown for $6.27 million.
On the second floor of the building, below his penthouse, Bern has what he insists is an office. Zoning in downtown Aspen permits second-floor offices, but not homes. The city doesn’t want high-priced residential real estate to displace the town’s commercial sector.
The city government won’t give him a certificate of occupancy. Chris Bendon, the city’s community development director, says he believes the office is really an extension of Bern’s residence. As evidence, he points to a wine room and a massage table in the office.
Bern said that these are simply items that didn’t fit into the penthouse and further challenges the city to point to regulations that specifically exclude such things as wine coolers and massage tables from offices.
