Eagle begs for big box retailers

EAGLE, Colo. - Eagle's town leaders are thinking long and hard about the virtues of big-box retailers. The problem is that population growth, which hit nearly 16 percent last year, is outpacing tax revenues.

Located 30 miles west of Vail, Eagle is something of a typical down-valley town. It had cattle drives on its streets even within the last decade, but today has a new golf course lined with massive neo-Victorian and Prairie Style homes and a few streets of New Urbanism-style homes. Out along the highway there are the fast-food joints. The population is still only 4,500, but at the current pace could hit 9,000 in a half-dozen years.

Right now, everybody seems happy, but town manager Willy Powell can see storm clouds on the horizon. Traffic at several pinch points, which is merely annoying now during rush-hours, could congeal. New water and sewer plants will be needed soon enough, with a collective price tag of several tens of million dollars.

Powell notes that small businesses generate relatively little in the way of taxes. People spend most of their money in larger stores. Aside from places like Vail's Bridge Street and Aspen's Hyman Avenue, retail sales per square foot are much higher in larger stores like Bed, Bath & Beyond, Gart Sports, Target, and other mid- and big-box retailers than they are in small businesses.

As it so happens, a proposal for a commercial complex that would likely include Target or some other big-box retailer is now before the town board. Town trustees have not said yes, but Mayor Jon Stavney says the town cannot afford to sentimentally look backyard.

"Nobody comes to Eagle to buy; and most Eagle citizens shop elsewhere for everything but groceries," he told the Eagle Valley Enterprise. "All that has to change."

Forest Service clamps down on sleds

BERTHOUD PASS, Colo. - The U.S. Forest Service is clamping down on sledding at the former Berthoud Pass ski area. The agency took the stance after learning that an 8-year-old child had suffered spinal injuries recently. The child had apparently slid across a berm of snow and into the windshield of a parked car. There have also been a broken arm and other injuries.

"The injuries were almost a weekly event," Brad Orr, a Forest Service employee, told the Winter Park Manifest. "The speed at which they were coming down the hill, over the berm and into the parking lot, we had no choice but to close it down before somebody got killed."

In a somewhat parallel case, the Forest Service closed down a popular sledding area near Vail, at the former Meadow Mountain ski area, after being sued as the result of a sledding accident.

Ernest Hemingway festival in works

SUN VALLEY, Idaho - At long last the people of Ketchum and Sun Valley will hold a festival for the writer who was called "Papa." For five days next fall there will be an Ernest Hemingway Festival, and there will be lectures and panel discussions, a tour of places where he hung out, and even a short-story contest.

The writer came up to Ketchum just before World War II, not long after the Sun Valley ski area was opened, and he had some good years there. It was a good place to be when the monsoons were wreaking havoc on his other homes in Cuba and in the Florida Keyes, he said.

In all, he spent parts of 22 years in Ketchum until finally, in 1961, wracked by mental illness as well as other health problems, he turned a 12-gauge shotgun on himself in the front room of his house in Ketchum.

The Idaho Mountain Express says the festival has been in planning for some time. The festival would have been held last year, but the chamber of commerce organizers could not come to terms with the owner of the name Ernest Hemingway. Now they have.

Winter Park scores 9-11 kickback

GRAND COUNTY, Colo. - In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government continues to dole out grants to local governments. What this means in one resort valley of Colorado is new radios.

The Winter Park Manifest reports that Grand County's share this year, $160,000, is being used to purchase radios that use digital technology, as well as training for use of them, to replace radios that use analog technology. The newer technology allows enhanced "interoperability," according to a government report.

One benefit of the federal bucks is that the local emergency personnel, although they had the mechanisms in place before, now have a chance to practice, to see their weaknesses and correct them, said Jim Holahan, whose salary is also the result of the federal funding. In past years, the money was used to better prepare for hazardous materials.

-compiled by Allen Best