Host cities embrace Quiznos road race

VAIL – After an absence of 23 years, major bicycling is ready to return to Colorado next August. Though race organizers rejected Durango’s bid to host a stage, the Quiznos Pro Challenge is on track to draw 120 professional bicycle racers, including many from the Tour de France, to the 600-mile, multi-stage race.

And this excites the bicycling mayors of both Aspen and Vail, both of them stops along the race. Colorado Springs, Salida, Crested Butte, Gunnison, Avon, Steamboat Springs and Breckenridge are also on the race course.

Lance Armstrong, who now has a second home in Aspen, lent support to the race, which will be the fourth largest in the world.

“This is a great place to ride bicycles, and it’s been absent from the high-end pro cycling agenda since the Coors Classic ended in the 1980s,” said Steve Wood, a former member of the U.S. national cycling team who now lives in the Vail area.

The race will pose a special challenge to the world’s bicycling racers, because of the thinner air. The lowest elevation will be in Denver.

European races often have much steeper climbs, but from lower elevations, says Wood.

“Some of the Alps races top out at 7,000 to 8,000 feet – but they start near sea level,” he says.

The most grueling leg may well be between Gunnison and Aspen. In that one-day stage, competitors will twice cross the Continental Divide, using Cottonwood and Independence passes, both of them surpassing 12,000 feet.

Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland, an avid cyclist who has crossed both passes, says that stage could well determine the outcome of the Quiznos Pro Challenge.

After Aspen, racers will compete in Vail, which at one time hosted time trials in the Red Zinger Classic and then the Coors Classic, which ended in 1988.

“It was a huge event,” recalls Vail Mayor Dick Cleveland. “It brought thousands of people to Vail. The streets were jammed with local and international guests.”

To participate, Aspen had to agree to donate 400 lodging rooms for free or discounted rates for use by racers, support staff, race officials and media.

How will the lodges sort this out? Warren King, general manager of the Aspen Square Condominium Hotel, said some sort of revenue-sharing plan is needed, to see that hotels providing free rooms are compensated.

Race organizers tell theVail Daily that they expect the race will attract recreational riders, who want to test themselves on the roads where the pros have been riding.

“They want to do the climbs the pros are doing. They want to ride them because when you do, it gives you more respect for what the pros are doing,” explained Sean Petty, chief operating officer of USA Cycling.

Ski areas grapple with I-70 corridor

I-70 CORRIDOR – Even in the off-season, when Interstate 70 between Denver and the mountain resort communities has comparatively little traffic, the debate continues about what to do.

Traffic on the 75 miles between Frisco and Denver becomes a crawl during winter and summer weekends, particularly in the 25-mile segment between the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel and Idaho Springs, all of it just two lanes. Skiers’ drive to Denver, an hour in good times, can drag out to six hours.

And that’s with just 2.9 million people in metropolitan Denver, a figure expected to swell by 1.6 million people within another 25 years.

Ski areas know they’re losing business, but what can be done? Identified highway improvements in the 100-mile segment would cost $8 billion. That’s eight to nine times the current highway budget needed to repair Colorado’s thousands and thousands of miles of roads.

And widening the highway cannot easily be done without severe environmental consequences in Clear Creek Canyon, where the congestion is most severe.

The state’s current plan – the subject of a draft environmental impact statement – calls for eventual adoption of some type of high-speed mass transit. The technology – mag-lev, steel-on-steel and so forth – has not yet been chosen. Cost has been estimated at up to $20 billion.

But all along, there has been some doubt in Summit County and Vail, too, whether fast and efficient transportation really will benefit them. “To have people that could easily live here and work in Denver, it would really change the complexion of our community,” said Breckenridge Councilman Eric Mamula at a recent meeting covered by theSummit Daily News.

Eagle County votes for dispensaries

MINTURN  – While the towns of Vail and Avon have shut their doors to marijuana dispensaries, 60 percent of voters in nearby Minturn last week voted that the Town Council could not enact a ban. This opens the door for the town to begin drawing up regulations governing where and how such dispensaries could be operated.

One of those residents who voted to open the door to marijuana dispensaries, Courtney Gregory, 33, dismissed the idea that marijuana shops will hurt Minturn’s character. “You get a contact buzz just driving through the town anyway,” he said.

But apparently, not all Town Council members think the issue is over with. Jerry Bumgarner, a councilman, said that the town’s business license requires the business to comply with federal laws. Marijuana remains illegal under U.S. law, he pointed out, although the Obama Administration announced it would not enforce it – setting off the rapid spread of marijuana medical dispensaries in Colorado, California and Montana, among other states.

Elsewhere in Eagle County, voters said existing medical marijuana dispensaries should be allowed to stay. There are five, reports theVail Daily.

Three resort towns vote in tax hikes

BRECKENRIDGE – With the real estate market still anemic, voters in three resort communities in the Rocky Mountains voted by wide margins to increase lodging taxes in order to boost tourism marketing.

In Breckenridge, 71 percent of voters approved a lodging tax increase, while in Aspen it was 63 percent. In Wyoming, Jackson and Teton County voters favored a tax with a 60 percent plurality.

The tax generated the most discussion in Jackson Hole. Voters there had abolished a marketing tax in 1994. At the time, the boom in real-estate construction was already under way, and many people blamed tourism for worsening traffic congestion and overheating the economy.

This time, there were similar warnings about deteriorating quality of life. But the valley has lost 2,000 jobs since the end of 2007, theJackson Hole News&Guide notes.

“The economy has changed since the ’90s,” said Tim O’Donoghue, executive director of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce.

The 2 percent tax is expected to raise $2.1 million for promotions. But local projects, including pathways and mass transit, will get another $1.4 million per year.

High-end real estate on the rebound

JACKSON, Wyo. – The high-end real estate market has returned to Jackson Hole.The Hole Reportreported more closed sales of $3 million or more in nine months of this year than all of 2008 and 2009 combined.

“Sales numbers and prices have clearly rebounded, particularly at the high end,” writes business analyst Jonathan Schechter. But across the pass in Teton County, Idaho, in and around the towns of Victor and Driggs, the real estate market remains torpid.

“It will be a long, long time before Teton County, Idaho, awakens from the nightmare it created for itself by thinking supply and demand would never catch up with its decade-long overbuilding fantasy,” he writes.

Examining the economy more broadly, Schechter reports that sales tax revenues in Jackson Hole remain flat – better than was the case a year ago. While construction remains thin, other sectors of the economy are doing better.

– Allen Best