Mountain Town News
By Allen Best
Status or security?
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – Lyman Orton charges that calls for a security gate at the entrance to a high-end housing enclave near Steamboat Springs called Catamount smack of snobbism.
“I don’t know who these folks are that keep agitating for a gate, but I hope that they calm down and learn to enjoy what is one of the safest places in the world to live – Routt County,” said Orton in a letter published in the Steamboat Pilot. He accuses the agitators of using “security” as a code word for “letting the rest of us know just how exclusive they are.”
As an owner, Orton says he and others specifically directed that Catamount would remain an ungated community, because of the negative signal that gates send.
“The heritage and culture of our valley is neighborliness, friendliness and a welcoming attitude,” he writes. “Gated communities send exactly the opposite signal.”
Grow or die?
EDWARDS, Colo. – Gosh, was it only three years ago that Edwards, located about 10 miles down-valley from Vail, was a poster child of New West extravagances. Officially designated by the U.S. Census Bureau as a micropolitan, it had become the new locals’ address of prestige, with new shops, schools and everything else.
Now comes a proposal from the Atira Group for 400 more housing units along with 260,000 square feet of commercial space on the former site of a gravel pit.
Reporting from a recent meeting with neighbors, the Vail Daily says that many perceive the project as a detriment to their semi-rural lifestyle. “This is more like being in Denver’s suburbs than being in the mountains,” said Elizabeth Holland.
Rick Mueller, a developer, argues for economic development. “You’re either growing or you’re dying, and we’re dying,” he said. “People are moving out of the valley.”
The commercial component of the development would cater to health and wellness, and Mueller said that would help diversify the local economy.
Whistler caters to retirees
WHISTLER, B.C. – Whistler has become older but still sees itself as rooted in tourism. Pique Newsmagazine reports that the municipality there has hired a part-time staffer to assess the needs of the growing number of people who are choosing to remain in Whistler during their retirement.
“These are people who have built homes and will not want to leave Whistler, so we’re creating a plan for allowing those people to stay in their homes and age successfully in Whistler,” explained Melissa Deller, who has a degree in gerontology.
Blame Google
PARK CITY, Utah — If somebody gives you bum directions, can you blame that person if you get hurt?
The somebody in this case is Google, which provides mapping directions, and a Los Angeles woman has sued the company, asking for $100,000 in damages after she was hit by a car. She was in Park City, and it was just before dawn in January 2009. The instructions sent her down a busy road without streetlights or a sidewalk.
Writing in The Washington Post, author Nicholas Carr says the story illustrates a remarkable shift in the way people get around these days, “We may not all be wandering around highways in the dark, but most of us have become dependent on computer-generated maps of some sort.”
Carr, the author of a new book called “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” says there is evidence that our growing reliance on automated global positioning system (GPS) directions could end up altering the circuitry in our brain.
He cites a study of London cab drivers that showed them with enlarged portions of their brains that are believed to have to do with navigational skills. He also cites ruminates of a researcher from Canada’s McGill University that speculates that giving into the easy directions of GPS may actually result in more cases of dementia.
The hot-air effect?
DURANGO, Colo. – Spring always brings wind, but the winds this year seemed stronger and grittier.
Travelers in Arizona reported dust storms that left sand a foot deep along the highway. As was also true last year, snowpacks across Colorado were coated with dust, leading to earlier runoff. Even Denver was affected, as cars in late April looked like they had gone through a car wash that dispensed dust, not water.
Scientists generally warn about making too much of any one thing. Last winter’s snowstorms on the East Coast do not debunk global warming, nor do any one month’s hot temperatures prove it. The pattern of changing climate, they say, will only become distinct from the “noise” of natural variability with time.
Still, the Durango Telegraph finds several individuals who contend the winds do fit in with global warming theory. The theory maintains that weather events in a warmer environment will produce more extremes, with more ferocious storms as well as more prolonged droughts.
The upshot of all this, says Tim Foreman, former director of a United Nations environmental program, is that people downwind of deserts in the Southwest should expect more dust.
Co-op board tilting against coal
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – The electrical cooperative that serves the Aspen and Vail areas has been getting a new complexion. It has long been considered one of the more progressive co-ops. It encouraged production of renewable energy by members and adopted policies designed to reduce electrical demand.
Still, the co-op remains hitched to coal, and in 2004 agreed to become a partner in building a major new coal-fired power plant in Colorado called Comanche III.
But steadily, anti-coal activists have been chipping away at the co-op. They succeeded again this year when an energy consultant from the Aspen area named Dave Munk turned back a 25-year incumbent by garnering 62 percent of the votes.
Munk wants to devote $5 million of the utility’s annual operating revenues into “green” initiatives, compared to the existing $2 million, notes The Aspen Times.
Counting the noses of this new board, anti-coal activist Auden Schendler sees a slim majority of four votes for green initiatives, and five votes in some issues. The board has even members.
“I think it’s a brand new day and Holy Cross is going to become, perhaps , internationally known for what it does in the next decade,” Schendler told the Aspen Times. He is the executive director of sustainability for the Aspen Skiing Co.
Frisco building housing
FRISCO, Colo. – Despite the slowdown in the economy, several mountain towns have continued their investment in affordable housing. Frisco, for example, has cut a deal with a developer named David O’Neil, who plans to build the first 12 units of what will ultimately be 70 townhomes and single-family houses. Families of four with incomes ranging from $68,000 to $136,000 will be eligible. The units will range from 800 to 2,000 square feet.
