OCR Text |
Show A-25 1 The Park Record Wed/Thurs/Fri, March 19-21,2008 HI55ION ftllffllTmiC 5rKlflU5TS MOUNTAIN TOWN NEWS J Aspen council again says 'no to redevelopment plan By ALLEN BEST Record contributing writer ASPEN, Colo. - Aspen's city council has sent developers packing once again. Last summer, the council rejected a proposed hotel next to the ski lifts, calling it just too much. Now, a proposal to replace the city's venerated Wienerstube restaurant with a much larger and taller building has similarly been nixed. The new building would have been 38 feet tall in a district with buildings less than 30 feet. A neighbor, architect Charles Cunniffee, called it "10 pounds in a 5-pound bag." Also testifying against the bulk was a long-time resident, Steve Stevenson. "It's not our responsibility as citizens of Aspen to make sure they make money," he said of the developer's plea for greater density, to make the numbers work. "If they spent too much for the building, that's their problem and a bad business decision." The Aspen Times applauded the rejection. Three of the current council members were elected last summer amid an outcry from Aspenites about noise, dust, traffic, disturbance and a loss of community character - all associated witb demolition and redevelopment of aging buildings. While redevelopment is needed, the newspaper added, such redevelopment "can and should reflect not just the wishes of the developers, but also Aspen's vision of itself.11 The rejection was a show of backbone, concluded the newspaper, and not motivated by an extremist, no-growth kind of thinking. "Rather, we think the council is pushing developers to do better and to consider their long-term impact on this town and its residents when they bring proposals forward." Vail plans to seek bus drivers in Puerto Rico VAIL, Colo. - For well more than a decade. Vail town officials have filled the ranks of bus drivers with recruits from Australia. But it's getting harder to recruit Australians, and so Vail is now planning recruitment in Puerto Rico - a place where the Aspen Skiing Co. also went looking. Puerto Rico has the advantage of being a territory of the United States, so no H2B visas are necessary. Such visas are now in short supply. But although Aspen Skiing got 12 employees for the winter, spokesman Jeff Hanle says it wasn't a panacea. "It wasn't a gold mine by any means," he told the Vail Daily. Some of the Puerto Ricans apparently didn't like Aspen's winter, and unlike employees hired under the H2B visa program, they were free just to leave. One of the Australians who has driven buses in Vail for several years, Graeme Rowe, said Whistler and other resorts are providing more competition, and the faltering U.S. dollar has made overseas employees less attractive to Australians. As well, the mandatory interviews and other hurdles now required by the Department of Homeland Security make U.S. employment less attractive. How about another road across the Front Range? TABERNASH, Colo. - The debate continues about how to best defy Colorado's mountainous geography between Denver and the mountain resorts. This winter has brought a spate of new ideas - including some old ideas filched from the discard bin. One of those ideas is to build a new highway directly west from Boulder across 11,775-foot Devil's Thumb Pass and down to Tabernash, located between Winter Park and Granby. "I would be glad to pay for a small toil for an alternative to waiting on 1-70," writes Glenn Glass in a letter published in a Denver newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News. This and other ideas for traversing Colorado's Front Range have been around since at least the middle of the 20th century. Instead, highway engineers bored the range with the Eisenhower and Johnson tunnels - which is probably why Summit County now is a virtual city, while Middle Park, where Granby and Winter Park is sometimes called "Colorado as it used to be." Steamboat closing in on '97 snowfall record STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. - With a month left in ski season, Steamboat ski area had reported 436.5 inches of snowfall for the season. Only a foot more, reports the Steamboat Pilot & Today's Tom Ross, and Steamboat will surpass its all-time record of almost 448 inches of snow at midmountain, which was recorded in April 1997. What has been remarkable about this winter, says Mike Lane, spokesman for the ski area operator, has been the consistency. There was measurable new snow on 26 days in January, and then 20 days in February. Included in those two months was a streak of 26 consecutive days of snowfall. That falls well short of the remarkable run of 40 consecutive days of measurable snow in late 1983, but this winter's total snow; fall has nonetheless been greater. Granby getting a little too upscale for some GRANBY, Colo. - While not exactly -upscale by the standards of most ski-based mountain towns, Granby has some aspirations. But none of this is at all comfortable to Mike Pierce, of nearby Grand Lake. Writing in the Sky-Hi Daily News, he harrumphs about the restrictiveness of covenants adopted by homeowners association. Parodying such restrictions, he envisions a message: "We are sorry but your car is over the maximum age of five years, and that god-awful yellow is not an approved color. Please leave." Hard bodies exposed, in the name of charity TELLURIDE, Colo. - Fifteen years ago, a Telluride resident named Robert Presley, a costume designer, had difficulty paying for the medications to control the HIV he had contracted. In response, a fashion show was organized, with proceeds to go to the Western Colorado AIDS project, which provides services to HIV-positive people. The fashion show has continued, and from all published evi- A ROUNDUP OF NEWS 5rar DT ToPdT ,'JFROMfOTHER WESTERN JSKJIAESOKT. COMMUNITIES To See CKm dence, the in-the-flesh thing must be a wonderful thing to view: lots of hard bodies, plenty of them scantily clad, all displayed with a certain attitude. As one who has observed this in the flesh. The Telluride Watch publisher Scth Cagin finds the show marked by a certain defiance that would seem counterintuitive in much of the nation. "How pointedly ironic that an AIDS benefit has a strong current over overt sexuality! Some of the fittest and most physically attractive and uninhibited of our friends and neighbors jump in front of raucous crowd and show it all off," he writes. "Here in Telluride, we don't respond to a sexually transmitted plague by becoming chaste and fearful. Just the opposite: we respond with creativity, generosity and irrepressible sexuality and spirit." WIPE SELECTION Or 28", 40", AMP 51" WIPE 2198 5 HIQHLdND PRIVC . 5<J<4dRHO<JSL! (801) io fln-6 rn.T^c5-5flT io an-6 rn BEAR HOLLOW VILLAGE 3 Bedrooms, 2 Dens, 2 Fireplaces Wood-pellet factory to soon open in Kremmling KREMMLING, Colo. - The chips will soon start flying in Kremmling. Located equidistant between Winter Park. Steamboat Springs, Breckenridge and Vail, Kremmling is an old sawmill town that is soon to get a plant that converts the dying and dead lodgepole pine of surrounding forests into pellets that can be burned in home stoves. The plan, reports the Middle Park Times, is expected to operate continuously, with 18 to 20 people employed. By providing a market for the dead trees, the threat of catastrophic fire to homes is expected to diminish. Snowkiting catches air in the Rocky Mountains DURANGO, Colo. Although snowkiting has been around for a long time, interest is now surging in the United States, reports the Durango Telegraph. The newspaper reports a large group in Denver (which is actually based out of Colorado's Summit County), with smaller groups in Grand Junction and, in New Mexico, at Taos. However, one of the outposts is about 95 miles south of Salt Lake City, where the town of Fairview has become a snowkiting haven. High quality finishes throughout. New stainless steel appliances. Includes hot tub, 2 fireplaces and 2 dens. Homey, immaculate and ready for the right family. Three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms. Pool, fitness center, and clubhouse. Offered at $595,000 Sandra Vogt 435 90M987 Mohik435 649-1884 offk-v 800 641-1884 Toll I-rre s.indta if sandrjvngl .net LewisWolcottO'Dornbush ^-^ HIKE WALK WATER SCRAMBLE AMBLE Fact: Utah's economy is leading the nation, with healthy population growth, low unemployment and high job growth. Fact: Park City sales volume in 2007 hit nearly $2 billion - that's the second-best year in history and up 3% from 2006! Fact: 3 6 Style/Color hybrid models for Men & Women outdoor products 3125 South State | Salt Lake City 801.486.4161 IKirkhams.com | M-F 9:30-9 | Sat 9:30-7 | Sun 11-6 PARK CITY "REALTORS" The Park City.real estate market appreciated by 11% in 2007. n E A L E 3 T A T C |