Building resumes as foreclosures slow

TELLURIDE – Construction is returning to resort towns that haven’t seen much since before the recession.

In Jackson, Wyo., erection of several large, expensive commercial projects resulted in a five-fold increase in construction last year. More broadly in Teton County, residential development hit $184 million, compared to $107 million the year before.

“Real estate agents, contractors and business owners say the data confirm the proverbial ‘bottom’ of the economic downturn is well behind us and show a general rebound in confidence around the valley,” reports the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

A new Walgreens and other projects “are indications to me that people feel good about the future,” said Matt Faupel, an owner and broker with Jackson Hole Real Estate Associates.

John Jennings, owner and president of Peak Builders, who specializes in custom building, said that high-end resort towns recover more rapidly than other places. He predicted an even bigger 2014.

Aspen also has had a quickened pace.

“Speculative builders are sniffing around the Aspen-area real estate market again after all but disappearing for five years,” says The Aspen Times, citing real estate agents as its source. The newspaper reports increased construction activity of 37 percent last year.

With the market for vacant land heating up, there’s expectation of new homes at $1,000 a square foot.

In Steamboat Springs, a 10-unit multifamily building and two duplexes are before city officials. If approved, they will be the most significant addition to Steamboat’s multifamily inventory in years, says Steamboat Today.

But unlike conventional townhouses, these would be horizontal in layout, and not small either: 2,000 to 3,000 square feet.

The backdrop for all this new construction is a drop-off in foreclosures.

In Aspen and Pitkin County, foreclosures last year dropped to their lowest level since before the recession. In 2008, as the recession started, there were 34. The annual total leaped to 144 at the height of the real-estate shakeout, and last year dropped to 57, reports The Aspen Times.

Down-valley in Basalt and El Jebel, foreclosures grew from three before the recession to 107 at the peak. Last year they dropped to 30.

In Telluride, real estate sales last year dropped 8 percent, but nobody seems to be crying the blues. Declining foreclosures give agents cause to think a more hopped-up market lies ahead. “Once the prices stabilize, people feel that the bottom has been found and that their investments are safer than they were three or four years ago,” says broker George Harvey. “Those folks were gamblers,” he says of early buyers in the recovery. “The stability of the market is much easier to determine right now.”

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Pot taxes need to fund treatments

FRASER  – Andy Miller admits he smoked pot for a long time, but he’s dubious others should now, just because it’s legal.

Miller, 62, says he began smoking after he got out of high school but quit 15 years ago.

“I quit after finally understanding the insidious effects this drug had on my memory, but more importantly, on my motivation. I am old enough now to see the long-term effect on the few friends I have who still imbibe. Their lives have been reduced to a meek day-to-day existence, dreams long since lost. We need to admit pot will drag our community down as some citizens lose the gifts they can give toward building our community’s future,” he writes, in a letter published in the Sky-Hi News.

He calls for measures to keep THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana, from ending up in the bloodstream of children.

“I am not sure what would have happened if I had started with the more powerful so-called ‘couch weed’ (so strong the user can’t get off the couch) when I was 12.”

Instead of seeing pot sales allowed like alcohol, he’d like to see more stringent regulations.

He also wants local governments to allocate some of the tax revenues they will reap from sales to offer free drug treatment for those who are like he once was. “Tax revenues should also go to enhancing healthy physical activities, which can lure children and adults away from pot and liquor stores,” he asserts.

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Memories abound of Vail avi victim

VAIL  – The Vail community said good-bye to Tony Seibert, the 24-year-old grandson of Vail’s original visionary founder, Pete Seibert, and the Vail Daily says that it wasn’t your usual memorial.

“You knew the celebration of Anthony Pardee Seibert’s life would be a celebration when, before the opening prayer, people began carefully working their way through the standing-room-only crowd carrying trays of wine glasses,” writes the Vail Daily’s Randy Wyrick.

The hall atop Vail Mountain had 1,000 people, he says (although others think that vastly underestimated the head count). The stories about Seibert, who died in an avalanche just outside the Vail Mountain ski area Jan. 7, went on for a good long time.

Among those stories was one from his father, Pete Seibert Jr., also known as Circle. He said he took his kids, including Tony, who was then 4, to a petting zoo, and when he turned his back he heard a loud hissing. It was a goose that Tony had cornered, and the goose was trying to bite. In a flash, the boy had his hands around the goose’s neck.

“Tony didn’t want to hurt the goose, but he damn sure wasn’t scared of it, either,” said Pete, his father. “That’s how Tony lived his life, and that’s how he wants us to live ours.”

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Ten minutes for rescue wasn’t enough

GRANBY – From Colorado comes details about an avalanche that killed a 28-year-old split-boarder on New Year’s Eve. The report from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center says George Dirth and his companions did everything right as they descended Parkview Peak, including stopping several times along the way to dig snow pits.

But he skied slightly outside a treed area and into a clear avalanche path and got nailed. His companions, thanks to beacons, probe poles and shovels, had air to his face within 10 minutes – but it wasn’t soon enough. He had already suffocated.

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Victim was rare in having companion

WHISTLER, B.C. – News of the death of another skier by immersion in a tree well comes from Whistler Blackcomb. But this one is different from the others in Montana, British Columbia and Colorado during recent years in that the victim, a 63-year-old man from Vancouver, had a companion.

Experts say that when skiing in places with tree wells, be sure to stay within eyesight of a companion. That way, if one person falls headfirst into the well around a tree, the other person can help him or her out.

It didn’t work in this case. Pique says it wasn’t clear whether the victim died of suffocation, as is commonly the case in tree-well fatalities, or of another medical condition.

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Storms produce marketing geniuses

BROOMFIELD – There’s an old, old saying in the ski industry that snow can make a ski marketer look brilliant.

And, of course, the reverse is true, too.

Colorado Ski Country USA reports that skier visits were up 22 percent this year in the early season. Aspen Skiing Co., one of the Ski Country members, reports a 20 percent increase. It has, of course, been snowing in the Rockies.

Vail Resorts reported a smaller increase for its five mountain resorts in Colorado and Utah, which were collectively up 7.4 percent.

But the company’s three resorts in the Lake Tahoe Basin of California dragged down the numbers, with a 23 percent decline. Overall, the company’s revenue gain was up 3.9 percent.

“Unfortunately, conditions in Tahoe have been very poor with snowfall down approximately 85 percent relative to the prior year, resulting in visitation and guest spending well below our expectations,” said chief executive Rob Katz in a press release.

– Allen Best

Desti-Metrics reports strong gains in lodging in Colorado, up 11.6 percent in the final months of 2013. In Aspen, occupancy was 98 percent at Christmas, reports The Aspen Daily News.

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A good problem: What do you do with the snow?

CRESTED BUTTE – It’s a good problem to have. The snowfall has been sufficiently abundant at Crested Butte this winter that plowing crews have been filling up storage sites. With a lull in storms, they tell the Crested Butte News that the stored snow is now being hauled from the storage locations to a gravel pit outside of town.

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Whistler happy for diversity of activities

WHISTLER, B.C. – The rocky – that’s intended literally – start to ski season at Whistler provokes hosannas to economic diversification.

Snowfalls have now resumed, enough that an in-bounds avalanche caught three people, although all three escaped injury. But at Christmas, snow was so scarce that snowmaking was crucial.

But there is also a greater diversity of activities within Whistler and the resort valley, and for some of the high-paying Christmas guests, it was enough.

“We are not just in the ski business anymore,” says Clare Ogilvie, editor of Pique. “We are in the mountain vacation business.”

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Colorado continues to wrangle over last drop

The Colorado River drains the western slope of Colorado’s rockies, where 80 percent of the state’s snow falls. But about 80 percent of Colorado’s population lies east of the Continental Divide, along the Front Range.

Unallocated water may still exist, especially in the Yampa River downstream from Steamboat Springs. But diverting that water to markets, especially the growing Front Range, would be very expensive and politically divisive. Easier and less expensive for cities has been to buy farms and reallocate the water to residential use.

Eric Wilkinson, general manager of the Northern Colorado Water Conservation District, tells Aspen Journalism that with water going for $40,000 an acre-foot, there is strong pressure for cities to buy and dry farms.

Gov. John Hickenlooper last year issued a call for a state-wide water plan. But that order specifies five goals that some see as irreconcilable. For example, can you have vibrant and growing cities, productive agriculture and robust skiing, recreation and tourism industries – and still leave water in creeks and rivers?

Denver Water, meanwhile, wants water-saving fixtures mandatory in new and remodeled buildings.

“If we can’t do something on conservation, the rest will be so much harder. This should be the low-hanging fruit,” said Taylor Hawes of The Nature Conservancy.

– Allen Best
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