Mountain Town News
$12,000 a night … for spiders
ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen has had a slew of stories about big money lately.
One concerns a lawsuit over a $12,000-a-night home rented last Christmas. The Aspen Daily News explains that among the complaints are objections to the presence of a plumber on Christmas Eve morning and what were described as potentially poisonous spiders.
The defense lawyer for the house owner tells the newspaper that the spiders were found only in a utility closet and added this: “We have spiders in all of our Colorado homes. No one was endangered. Only people paying $150,000 for a vacation would complain about spiders.”
Epic Pass wins in Utah decision
PARK CITY, Utah – By now, everybody in the ski world knows that the Powdr Corp. screwed up, virtually mailing the key to its operations at Park City Mountain Resort to it landlord, the Canada-based real-estate development firm Talisker Corp, who in turn has given the key to Vail Resorts.
A district court judge in Utah made the ruling before Memorial Day, finding that Powdr had failed to renew the lease that entitled it to use 3,500 acres of Talisker-owned land for the bargain-basement price of $150,000 a year.
That slip-up occurred in 2011, and it’s been easy enough to slap Powdr for the omission.
“It’s unfathomable that PCMR let the deadline pass,” writes Tom Clyde in The Park Record. “The landlord, United Park City Mines and now Talisker, has been trying to get out of a below-market lease for better than 20 years. It’s just baffling that PCMR didn’t give notice every morning, for 20 years when they turned the office lights on.”
Writing in Outside Online, Marc Peruzzi further draws attention to the arrangement between Vail Resorts and Talisker. Powdr’s failure occurred before Vail Resorts inked a contract with Talisker to manage The Canyons, the nearby resort. Peruzzi says that by all accounts, “Vail Resorts overpaid for Canyons lease ($25 million plus a percentage of revenue), knowing that after some legal wrangling on behalf of Talisker it would soon be in control of both the PCMR property and Canyons, which when combined (one lift would do it) would result in a megaresort of 7,500-plus acres.”
Powdr still owns the lifts as well as land at the base, and Peruzzi says the company can “deploy a nuclear option and remove the lifts and disallow access from the private land it owns at the base… Or sell its infrastructure and base-area operating rights to Vail Resorts.”
The Park Record tried to get John Cumming, chief executive of Powdr, to tip his hand, given that he doesn’t have many cards to play.
For the time being, Cumming isn’t giving any public signs of being open to a deal. Instead, he reiterated Powdr’s position: “Park City and its base area aren’t for sale.”
Powdr will be appealing, of course, although no observers seem to think the company has much of a legal case.
Clyde, the Park Record columnist, wrote that he is sure a deal will get struck soon enough. “Everybody loses if the operation is splintered up,” he writes. “To put it another way, if two farmers are arguing over the ownership of a cow, you can bet that the cow will be fed.”
He offered another metaphor for what lies ahead: a shotgun wedding. “There’s too much value there to break it apart. So in the end, some kind of deal will happen. They will walk down the aisle, black eyes and fat lips, and say, “I do – because I have to.”
But Peruzzi identifies the bigger story with impacts beyond Park City. It allows Vail to further expand its brand, the “insanely affordable” Epic Pass, making it the largest ski area operator in Utah, as it already is in Colorado, where it has a third of all skier visits. It also has a sizable presence in the Tahoe ski market.
“The undisputed leader in the season pass war, their strategy is to brand, promote, and ultimately sell the Epic Pass,” he writes. “It’s difficult to see how pushing the One Wasatch agenda helps that cause.”
Income growth outpaces gains in Colorado skiers
DENVER, Colo. – Examining how much money ski areas in Colorado have paid for use of federal lands, The Denver Post saw more rapid growth in revenue than in skier days.
That conclusion is based on analysis of payments for the 2011-12 and 2012-2013 seasons. Figures for last winter apparently are not yet available.
Most notable in growing revenues was Arapahoe Basin. One of Colorado’s first ski areas, opened in 1946, it changed little for more than 50 years. It was acquired by the new Vail Resorts in 1997, but the corporation was forced to divest the property because of anti-trust laws.
With A-Basin, Vail would have unfairly dominated the skier market in Colorado, as defined by those federal laws.
Sold to Dundee Realty, a Canadian company with offices at Beaver Creek, Arapahoe Basin set out to modernize and expand. It got snowmaking in 2002, added Montezuma Bowl in 2007, and has installed three new lifts, additional parking, and a variety of other enhancements.
A-Basin’s payment for 2012-2013 (the most recent figures available) was 74 percent above its long-term average payments.
Vail Resorts has four of Colorado’s ski areas but roughly one-third of the state’s skier traffic. The Post notes that the company reported a 7.5 percent increase in ski lessons, a 3.1 percent increase in dining and a 5.1 percent increase in retail and rental revenues last winter.
Curbing phone books
JACKSON, Wyo. – Those telephone books that keep getting dumped on your doorstep? Jackson elected officials have decided it’s time to rein them in. The Jackson Hole News&Guide reports that town councilors have decided to draft a law to discourage the unfettered deliveries. For example, one idea is to require all mass-distributed publications to be picked up within 14 days of being delivered.
Phone book companies point to an opt-out program, but Councilor Jim Stanford said he had signed up and phone books continued to be sent to him anyway.
Whether this can pass legal protection of free speech is another matter. Seattle attempted to ban phone book distributions, but at least one court has found that in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection of free speech.
In Jackson Hole, local recyclers estimate they have received 200 tons of phone books during the past six years. As the books are printed on low-quality paper, they have little to no recycling value.
