Down valley growth shakes Aspen

ROARING FORK VALLEY – In Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley, the tail is wagging the dog.

The tail in this case is down-valley growth. While Aspen is and always has been the leading job center in the Roaring Fork Valley, the one-time down-valley bedroom communities of Basalt, Carbondale and even Glenwood Springs have increasingly become “up-valley,” which is to say job centers of their own. In turn, the “bedroom” has shifted farther down-valley yet – to New Castle, Rifle and even Parachute, some 80 miles from Aspen.

None of this is new. Nor are projections of even more volumes of growth ahead particularly new. For some time, state officials have been projecting that Garfield County, which is where most of these towns are located, will grow enormously in population, the combination of continued tourism and, even more important, a Baby Boomer generation flush with money for vacation and retirement homes. A new growth pressure is the energy boom, as Aspen’s down-valley bedroom overlaps with one of the largest natural gas exploration areas in the West.

The latest projections show Garfield County doubling or tripling the current population from today’s 50,000 in the next quarter century, with more population growth yet in Eagle County, where Basalt and El Jebel are located, and in Pitkin County, where Aspen and Snowmass are.

From the perspective of traffic-clogged Aspen, all these projections are getting up close and personal. “Aspen is not going to build six lanes (into town) to accommodate growth that’s way over the top in other jurisdictions,” said Aspen Mayor Helen Klanderud at a recent meeting.

Tellingly, Klanderud made the comments at a recent meeting of the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority, the only government agency that span’s Aspen’s economic zone of influence. The towns are located within three different counties.

A previous plan for handling transportation issues was shelved some years ago. A consortium of governments had secured the old railroad line from Glenwood Springs to Aspen. However, impetus for the commuter trains faltered even as the state government continued to ream out a four-lane highway that now connects from Glenwood Springs to the entrance to Aspen. That’s where the bottleneck has resulted in years of debate and daily gridlock.

While Klanderud is calling for a regional summit meeting, Pitkin County Commissioner Dorthea Farris hints at an even more substantial step, saying, “We need to get beyond dialogue.” She believes rising fuel prices and the new population projections make a commuter train more justified.

Towns may share big-box revenues

FRISCO – Two years ago, former Summit County Commissioner Gary Lindstrom suggested that the individual towns of Summit County unincorporate and fold themselves into a city and county of Summit.

Summit County has six towns, and Lindstrom saw overlap among them. But he, and many others, have also observed a disquieting competition for sales tax dollars, with towns working against one another to land the big-box retailers that by the square foot are the largest generator of taxes.

Lindstrom’s idea was discussed but didn’t go very far. But the issue is still at hand. Frisco has a 9.4-acre parcel, and it wants to let The Home Depot build a store there. Frisco isn’t hurting for revenue at the moment, but still would like the tax money to help build a campus for a community college.

One idea discussed at a recent forum, reports theSummit Daily News, is regional tax sharing. A similar idea is being talked about west along the I-70 corridor in the towns of Eagle and Gypsum.

Frisco voters are scheduled to decide the fate of The Home Depot project in December. Unlike Wal-Mart, which insisted upon peddling groceries, town officials say The Home Depot has been willing to develop in conformance with town guidelines.

Surge in Brazilian tourists appears

ASPEN – Reservations agents in Aspen are reporting a surge of Brazilians booking ski vacations this winter.The Aspen Times reports that the strengthening Brazilian currency mostly explains the surge, although it doesn’t hurt that a Portuguese-speaking reservations agent is now at work in Aspen.

However, in the big picture, Australia and New Zealand remain the top market for international skiers in Aspen, followed by the United Kingdom and then Brazil. Altogether, international travelers make up 15 to 20 percent of Aspen’s overall destination guests.

Town goes after endangered species

MT. CRESTED BUTTE – The Town Council for Mt. Crested Butte, the more pro-development town located adjacent to the Crested Butte ski area, has come out in support of a controversial bill related to the Endangered Species Act.

Environmentalists are crying foul over the law, which was promoted by California congressman Richard Pombo. The proposed law would compensate landowners in cases where their rights to use their land are limited because of the needs of endangered species. Existing law places the onus on the private landowners.

Chris Morgan, the mayor of Mt. Crested Butte, called the current law a “well-intended, very powerful act that really is not working very well.”

Mt. Crested Butte has no particular dog of it own in the fight, although habitat for the dwindling Gunnison sage grouse is 10 to 20 miles away. Earlier this year, reports theCrested Butte News, the Town Council wrote a letter in support of the Western Wildlife and Water Conservation Coalition, which is actively fighting the listing of the Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species. The group, notes the newspaper, is made up primarily of state and local homebuilders, real estate brokers and private landowners.

Latino students fear stereotyping

CARBONDALE – Generalizations are risky, exceptions inevitable. With that said, it’s broadly recognized that schools with large numbers of immigrants have lower test scores.

But when does trend breed expectations, and those expectations breed inevitability? That’s a fundamental question that some Spanish-speaking parents have asked in the Roaring Fork School District, which is down-valley from Aspen. The district is recruiting a new superintendent, and as part of the process, it authorized interviews of both English and Spanish-speaking parents by a group called The Stepstone Center.

Among other things, the report found that some Spanish-speaking students thought they were being typecast. Even if they got good grades, they felt categorized as failures for being Latino. Some parents also thought the ethnic background and native language of Spanish were devaluated.

Mammoth plans big building boom

MAMMOTH, Calif. – Rusty Gregory, the CEO of Mammoth Mountain, is predicting picked-up real estate development at the base of Mammoth Mountain as the result of new ownership.

Real estate development was a low priority for Mammoth Mountain founder Dave McCoy, who still retains an interest in the ski operation. However, several years ago he sold a portion of the operation to Intrawest, which launched major real estate development. Somewhat similar to Winter Park, Mammoth had been a weekend-heavy resort that was seeking to become a major destination resort.

Now, Intrawest has sold its Stake to Starwood Capital, a private equity firm. Gregory predicts Starwood will want to pick up the pace even more.

“They want results now. They’ll want to move faster than Intrawest,” he said. According toThe Sheet, Gregory predicts Starwood will hold onto Mammoth for five to seven years.

Telluride unveils traffic roundabout

TELLURIDE – Telluride now has a traffic roundabout at the entrance to town. Stan Berryman, the town’s public works director, pointed out that roundabouts are much safer than other options for the intersection, such as a stoplight or four-way stop. A raised red concrete crossing lane slows cars going through the roundabout, allowing pedestrians an opportunity to pick their way across traffic lanes.

Vail gambled on the first traffic roundabout in the Rocky Mountains in 1994 amid warnings of colossal failure. It was anything but and since then has been widely imitated.

– compiled by Allen Best