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Pot hurts tourism? Then explain this

BRECKENRIDGE – Is cannabis bad for the tourism business? That’s the fundamental question around which a special election will be held Tues., Dec. 9, in Breckenridge.

Voters are being asked whether they think cannabis shops should be allowed in the town’s Main Street and adjoining areas. There’s one such retail store now, but the other four marijuana businesses operate in a service-oriented area distant from hotels.

The debate was so heated last summer that the Town Council sent the issue to voters for a non-binding show of hands. One faction in Breckenridge has argued that cannabis should not be viewed any differently than alcohol, and the town doesn’t ban sales of beer, wine and hard liquor in the town’s primary shopping district.

But a string of former mayors plus several business groups argue that cannabis could sully the image of Breckenridge in the minds of tourists, causing them to go elsewhere.

“The reality is that in the world of vacation destinations Breckenridge has a great deal of competition,” wrote Bob Gordman in a letter published in the Summit Daily News. He characterized marijuana stores on Main Street as an “experiment,” with the stores gaining – but potentially the whole community losing.

But evidence from last winter might suggest exactly the opposite. Ski Area Management, a magazine in the ski industry, points out that one study found 90 percent of the marijuana sold in Colorado ski towns was purchased by tourists.

That being the case, how do you explain that the 2013-14 skier visits in Colorado rose more than 10 percent compared to last season and more than 8 percent compared to the state’s five-year average.

“It seems that fears of lost visits were not what they were cracked up to be,” the magazine declared in its September issue.

From Vail comes anecdotal evidence of the same. One real estate agent reports that his clients ask him about it.

What do they ask? “Mostly where to get it,” he says.

Vail, for the time being, has said no. Those buyers of million-dollar real estate have to go outside Vail to secure their THC.

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Grand Canyon gets a wolf at its door

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. – Everybody should see the Grand Canyon at some time in their lives. And so a female gray wolf from somewhere in the Northern Rockies did.

DNA sampling of scat and so forth revealed that the collared “canine-like animal” seen since early October on the Kaibab Plateau, on the north rim of the canyon, was indeed a wolf.

This means that the wolf loped at least 450 miles. The Fish and Wildlife Service says that it’s not uncommon for young wolves to strike out on their own. A male wolf was killed on Interstate 70 about 30 miles west of Denver in 2004, and there has been some evidence of other wolves in northwest Colorado.

Drew Kerr, carnivore advocate for WildEarth Guardians, told the Idaho Mountain Express that it is a “bellwether event for wolf recovery in the United States.”

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Bears get comfy in condo complex

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – A trio of black bears seemed determined to over-winter below the decking for the outdoor hot tubs at a condominium complex in Steamboat Springs.

Property managers put down towels soaked in ammonia with the hope of deterring the bears, but it didn’t work. Firecrackers, however, did flush the bears out of their would-be den. A property manager tells the Steamboat Pilot & Today that the bears damaged the electrical system and insulation before being evicted.

What drew the bears to squat in the condo complex? During the off season, it’s quiet and dark there. But before off-season, the bears were drawn to a nearby complex whose unsecured trash cans provide what is tantamount to a picnic. “It’s kind of sad for the bears,” said property manager Donna Mae Hoots.

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Phone plug-ins among hotel upgrades

JASPER, Alberta – Ever been in a hotel room where you had to use an electrical outlet in the bathroom to recharge your cell phone?

You’re not alone. Most hotel rooms – including those of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge – were designed prior to smart phones and laptops.

“What guests expect today versus what they expected 10 years ago is very different,” Markus Treppenhauer, general manager of the hotel, told Jasper’s Fitzhugh newspaper.

To figure out how to accommodate the shifting tastes of guests, the hotel mocked up a model room. Based on that experience, it then renovated three more rooms, just to make sure the design worked. After further refinements the $16 million renovation started.

Treppenhauer said the Fairmont will never be completely “modern,” because it’s important that changes reflect the rustic atmosphere of the park that surrounds it.

“To renovate a building like this is not like renovating some city upright. You have to get it right, and you have to take time to get the design right – that is going to be something that is going to have to last us 10 to 15 years.”

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On being Janis Joplin’s road manager

JACKSON, Wyo. – John Byrne Cooke has led a creative life. He is a photographer, plays in a bluegrass band in Jackson Hole and, in the early 1980s, wrote a novel about mountain men in the West. It was called Snowblind Moon.

But Cooke also had another interesting curve in his journey. In the 1960s, he was the road manager for Janis Joplin. And now, he has written about it in a book called On the Road with Janis Joplin.

Reviewing the book in the pages of the Jackson Hole News and Guide, Mark Huffman explains that the singer “was a rocket about to take off” when Cooke joined her and her band. In his job he met just about every rocker in the world and was there for the explosion of Jimi Hendrix at Monterey.

“Cooke did all this while handling the mundane side of rock glory,” Huffman writes. “His job was booking rooms and arranging cars, hanging out while the band rehearsed a song over and over, getting people to photo shoots, keeping things going despite rock group politics and sexual craziness, signing papers and negotiating costs.”

Cooke also puts rock in its context, which in the 1960s was a time of war and politics not since equaled.

“So you see B.B. King playing gospel music after hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King, witness the America of the moon landing and LBJ announcing he would not run for re-election,” Huffman writes.

It is, he concludes, a story about a singer and her band, “but it is also a tale of the American Dream of going from nowhere to the top and then burning out quickly.”

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Park City amends gun-control law

PARK CITY, Utah – With a distinct lack of enthusiasm, the Park City Council has loosened its gun laws. It’s now legal to carry concealed weapons down the street and to have a loaded gun inside a car.

Furthermore, the city’s law that prohibited someone drawing or showing a gun in “an angry or threatening manner” was stricken.

The Park Record explains that the council took the action after being informed by a gun-rights group based in Bellevue, Wash., that the provisions violated state law in Utah. The group threatened a lawsuit.

The city attorney told elected officials that Park City’s revised law still prohibits someone from discharging a firearm within the city.

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Big real estate sales in the Aspen market

ASPEN – It’s not quite like the crazy times of about seven years ago, but real estate activity continues to accelerate.

News in Aspen is of a new penthouse that was sold for a price of $3,100 per square foot, which ranks right near the front trickle of prices in the Aspen-Vail markets from the pre-recession era. The total sale came in at $15.8 million.

The Aspen Times says the sale was the fourth in November of more than $10 million while there were other sales this year of between $17 and $27 million. While the Aspen-area real estate market through September was 13 percent ahead of last year, most of that gain was during the first half of the year. During summer, sales lagged.

– Allen Best