Mountain Town News
Do people count as wildlife?
CANMORE, Alberta – Three Sisters Mountain Village, a major real estate project in Canmore, has several designated corridors for wildlife. But many local residents see it as open space, to be used for recreational purposes.
Biologists working on behalf of the real estate project report that three times as many mountain bikers and hikers, many with unleashed dogs, have been using the wildlife corridors, reports the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
“It is no longer about how you get the animals to move through the valley,” said Chris Ollenberger, principal planner, with QuantumPlace, which is working on behalf of the project owners. “It is how do we stop the humans from getting in the way.”
Tahoe boosts direct flights
RENO, Nev. – For years, Andy Wirth put together a direct flight program for Steamboat Springs to make it easier for destination skiers. Transplanted to Squaw Valley, he vowed to do the same there.
True to his word, Wirth this past week helped announce new, twice-weekly flights from London’s Gatwick Airport to the airport in Reno through ski season. Last month, non-stop service from Guadalajara, Mexico, was announced.
The ski industry of Lake Tahoe teamed with the casinos to secure the flights. There was no mention of revenue guarantees in the story in the Sierra Sun, but such financial backstops are common in other mountain towns.
For students of irony, the two primary ski area operators in the Lake Tahoe Basin of California are from the Denver area. Vail Resorts has three ski areas (Heavenly, Kirkwood, and Northstar), while KSL Capital Partners has two (Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows). Also part of the ski industry consortium are two smaller ski areas, Mt. Rose-Ski Tahoe and Sierra-at-Tahoe.
Jackson flight program robust
JACKSON, Wyo. –This winter, Jackson Hole will have non-stop flights from 14 U.S. metropolitan areas on a weekly and in some cases daily basis.
It didn’t happen by accident. A group called the Jackson Hole Air Improvement Resources has worked hard at this for more than a decade. About 20 percent of the flights have backstops of revenue guarantees, money posted to reduce or eliminate losses by airlines.
Mike Gireau, the co-chair, tells the Jackson Hole News&Guide that the group’s exposure two years ago was $1.4 million had it paid every nickel to every airline for every contract. In fact, the group paid only $247,000. The state of Wyoming paid another $100,000-plus.
Some years, he added, Jackson Hole pays out more in revenue guarantees.
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, the largest of the local ski areas, provides funding buttressed by contributions from Grand Targhee and Snow King and, according to a 2012 story in the News&Guide, some 200 organizations.
The big pickups in recent years? Gireau points to new flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and now Seattle. “That’s very important to us, based on just the fact that now we’ve got three gateways to the entire Pacific Rim, whether it be China or southeast Asia,” he said. Jackson Hole also has direct flights this winter to Washington D.C.
Jackson Hole does not yet have a link to Phoenix. Gireau says he’s confident if an opportunity arose, the local group would jump on it.
Aspen girds for boom
ASPEN, Colo. — As defined by the total valuation of building permits, construction in Aspen this year is up 60 to 70 percent over 2013. It could get much busier yet.
The Aspen Daily News reports that the city council there can expect to review five major hotel and lodging proposals during coming months.
Mayor Steve Skadron hopes to moderate the building boom. “I’m frustrated really as a local, outside of being the mayor, about the livability of town during these construction booms,” he told The Aspen Times.
“It’s becoming apparent to me that we’re not simply in a boom but in a long-time redevelopment cycle, and it isn’t as if one building is getting built and construction stops. We’re going to have two or three or four or five years or a decade of constant building.”
The word “pacing” has been used to describe how the city might modulate the activity, but Skadron said he understands why builders and developers would dislike the word.
Telluride down to one paper
TELLURIDE, Colo. – Telluride has become a one-newspaper town, more or less. The Watch, published since 1996, mostly as a weekly, has been purchased by the Daily Planet, a daily.
On its website, the Daily Planet announced that the Watch would continue to be published, but likely with a greater emphasis on features of a regional nature.
Newspapers, of course, have had a tough time of it in recent years. In 1985, Colorado’s Eagle Valley had four newspapers, two edited and produced in Vail and two more in down-valley towns. Now it has one daily and a door-stopper publication, designed to be a repository for legal notices.
In Wyoming, Jackson Hole had two strong and healthy weeklies that merged a number of years ago. Across the Teton Range in Idaho, the Teton Valley had two weeklies, but one of them, the Valley Citizen, closed its doors in September. Mammoth Lakes, Calif., also has two newspapers, both weeklies.
Only in Aspen do you see a strong battle with two relatively vibrant daily newspapers, the Daily News and the Times.
Andrew Mirrington, publisher of the Daily Planet, said the Watch had not been profitable for years. In the announcement published in the Planet, he said he is confident it can be made profitable. The Daily Planet was struggling in 2008 when his ownership group purchased it, and he implied it is now successful.
