Oh the wonderfulness of life on the edge -- but not too far out there. Can you guess where this photo was taken in July 1997?

by Allen Best

Dancing out on the edge of winter some years ago, I returned to solid ground with a good story. Others have not been so lucky.

My lark was near Colorado’s Beaver Creek ski area. A buddy and I had taken the lifts in late afternoon, then left the ski area through a backcountry gate to create our own adventure in the Holy Cross Wilderness. Those were the best days, and nights, of my life. Leaving the orderly, safe world of groomed runs and mechanized transportation, we plodded uphill, breathing heavily, into the above-timber world of wind-filed snow called sastrugi.

It’s a magical world. The lights of Vail twinkled below, and the shadowy peaks deep in the wilderness hulked forbiddingly, fetchingly.

With good eyes, you can see reasonably well at night, even under starlight. We were approaching the top of the 3,700 metre knob, where the wind each winter whips the snow into a cornice on the lee side of the ridge. Cornices can extend nine metres out over thin air.

A crack — and a whoosh: the cornice had broken a foot away from my buddy’s outer ski, six metres of snow vanishing suddenly, launching an avalanche on the slope below. I had stayed closer to exposed ground, but instinctively I lunged desperately toward the certainty of rock and grass. We were both safe. Unshaken, my friend guffawed at the sight of me sprawled on the snow. We had the stars to ourselves, a good laugh, and a scary story to tell.

Inside ski areas, you can smack into trees or fall into a tree well. Either can kill you. Avalanches are rarely a risk.

In the backcountry, though, avalanches are the great danger. Canada has documented 10 this year and 11 last year, in both cases all in British Columbia. The U.S. is bigger and more populated, of course, and the statistics correspond: 30 fatalities this year and 36 last year. Victims have included an indiscriminating mix of snowmobilers, skiers and snowboarders. Big snow doesn’t care.

Of course, it doesn’t take much snow to cover you and incapacitate you. Technology only helps so much. Twice in the last decade, I have read newspaper stories in Denver by greenhorn reporters who suggested that had only the victims been carrying avalanche beacons, they would have lived. I was annoyed beyond words. That’s like saying that had the driver been wearing a safety belt when he went off the road, he would have survived. Maybe — but probably not if he went off a cliff.

Avalanche transceivers aren’t magic wands, says Dale Atkins, who has long worked in the world of avalanche forecasting and safety. He now represents a company that sells a radar-like tool called Recco, which allows rescuers to more rapidly locate avalanche victims. He speaks highly of a whole number of technological innovations in recent years, but warns that altogether they don’t amount to insurance.

“The best thing to do is not get buried,” he said. “It’s important that people be equipped with transceivers, shovels, probe poles, Avalungs, air bags and cell phones. But they need to travel as if they left this stuff at home, because if you have to bet your life on it, you might be painfully disappointed,” says Atkins.

Statistics bear out that advice. Two major studies have been done: One in Switzerland, and another by Dr. Jeff Boyd of Banff, who examined 204 avalanche fatalities in British Columbia and Alberta between 1984 and 2005. The statistics of the two studies differ very little: 75 per cent of victims die of asphyxiation.

Time is of the essence. Of those recovered within 15 minutes, survival is 93 per cent. Within 30 minutes, your odds of survival are little better than 50-50. After 35 minutes, only one in three people survive.

There are exceptions. Some avalanche victims have emerged after being buried for 23, even 24 hours.

On a steep, rocky slope or in trees, your odds might be further reduced, however. Almost a quarter of avalanche victims die from trauma, and even most people who died of suffocation have been banged up.

Illustrative is the experience in Bear Creek, the steep and stark backcountry haunt of skiers and riders adjacent to the ski area at Telluride, Colo. San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters says none of the avalanche victims there has ever died of suffocation. That included the most recent victim, a 38-year-old snowboarder in February who had most all of the new technological gizmos. They were, says the sheriff, all bloody when their bodies were recovered.

This caveat aside, technology does boost your odds in some situations. Atkins says that in cases where airbags were deployed, creating a full-body cushion around a victim, similar to what air bags do in cars, mortality has dropped to three per cent. Although they’ve been around in Europe for 20 years, few people used them in North America until the last few years. Atkins, however, has been carrying one on his backcountry travels for 15 years.

Stay at home and avoid all risk? Hardly. That’s not living. I supposed many people would think me crazy for skiing atop a mountain at night. I danced out on the edge, but only so far. You can call me lucky, but also call me rich.

by Allen Best

The following appeared in the April 1, 2012 issue of Mountain Town News. For a complementary copy, which includes the full story, please write to me at allen.best@comcast.net

For years, the incessant planning meetings for Colorado’s Interstate 70 seemed like the movie in which Bill Murray plays the role of a weatherman assigned to do a story from Punxsutawney, Pa. He finds himself waking morning after morning to find it’s once again Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day on I-70 has ended:

I-70 congestion remains primarily a weekend problem, although projections see the crawl worsening and expanding into weekdays within the next decade. Photo taken just west of the Twin Tunnels on a Sunday in March.

• Work now beginning will, by October 2013, yield a new bore at the Twin Tunnels, the notorious chokepoint for traffic returning to Denver on weekends. The result of the $60 million project will yield three lanes from Idaho Springs to Floyd Hill.

• The Colorado Department of Transportation on March 16 issued a document that begins the process of drawing out the ideas of private contractors. This process may yield a public-private partnership for the corridor between the outskirts of Denver and Silverthorne. Because of the revenue that could be gained, an express lane that can be tolled at varying rates proportionate to the level of congestion might well be expected.

A new bore under the Continental Divide may also conceivably result from this process. That, however, must be labeled as speculation.

• Traffic engineers and elected officials continue to study the idea of using highway shoulders to create additional lanes of traffic segments through Clear Creek County, where the highway footprint is constrained by towns. Recent research included a trip to Minneapolis, one of many places around the country where the practice is already in use. It is described by one tour participant as a “strong maybe” for application along the I-70 corridor, although concerns remain about emergency access.

Guarded optimism is being expressed by elected and appointed officials along the I-70 corridor that a somewhat fragile consensus will remain.

“If it holds together, traveling I-70 on weekends will be a heck of a lot better 5 years or 10 years than it is now,” says Kevin O’Malley, chairman of the Clear Creek County Board of Commissioners, the county that bears the largest brunt of the weekend traffic. “Things are moving. It’s really pretty amazing.”

Officials give high marks to state officials, both in the administration of former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and now with Gov. John Hickenlooper.

“Ten, 12 years ago, we couldn’t get them (state officials) to pay attention to I-70. Now, we have administration pretty focused on it, to see if there is a creative way to get things done,” says Tim Gagen, town manager of Breckenridge and the I-70 corridor representative on the High Performance Transportation Enterprise. That state board was formed two years ago to examine public-private partnerships and other funding mechanisms.

On some Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons, I-70’s stop-and-go traffic can extend for 40 miles. By 7 p.m. on a Sunday in February, it might look like this.

STATES ACROSS THE  NATION are realizing the need to find new and more equitable ways to pay for surface transportation. The Economist magazine, in a far-ranging essay called “Life in the Slow Lane” in the April 28, 2011, issue (www.economist.com/node/18620944?story_id=18620944 pointed out that in the United States “total public spending on transport and water infrastructure has fallen steadily since the 1960s and now stands at 2.4 percent of GDP.” The magazine says Europe invests 5 percent of GDP in infrastructure, and China 9 percent.

In Colorado, demand and traffic growth have outstripped revenue increases. The state last raised its gas tax in 1991 and its diesel tax in 1992. The state government’s transportation budget is currently $1.1 billion, barely enough to keep up with maintenance, let alone plan for growth.

Demographers project Colorado’s population, now 5.1 million, will grow 48 percent by 2035. State planners also expect that we’ll be driving ever more, a 61 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita. This is despite a downturn in driving in the last several years across the nation.

Congestion-tiered tolls are a key piece of the future, most analysts say. So are public-private partnerships, or P3s.

A bill introduced in the Colorado Legislature by former State Sen. Chris Romer two years ago broached the subject of I-70 tolls—and aroused catcalls before being killed.

But Romer’s mistake perhaps was to paint with too broad a brush. A more delicate approach is already evident in Colorado, where a 7-mile express lane can be found along I-25 between downtown Denver and the turnoff to Boulder. Tolls range between 50 cents and $4, depending on level of congestion. Buses always get to use the express lane.

The plan moving forward is to extend the express lane all the way to Boulder. The road, constructed in the early 1960s, was originally tolled. The state’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise authority expects to have a short list of potential partners on this project by late May. Tolling revenues are expected to deliver about 30 percent of the revenues needed to complete the new express lanes.

I-70 wiggles through Clear Creek County, along with the eponymous creek and a frontage road for local traffic. Conventional expansion requires moving mountains.

Unlike the daily congestion in that corridor, I-70 has a more complicated and difficult pattern of congestion. Truly distressing traffic is largely limited to two or at most three days per week. But summer months—when the corridor has the highest levels of use—offer the greatest challenges, because the congestion is not as time specific.

I-70 also offers more challenging terrain. Consider that the apex of the nation’s nearly 47,000 miles of interstate highway is at the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel Complex. But the tightness of Clear Creek valley and the pre-existence of the old mining towns of Idaho Springs, Georgetown and Silverplume also present special challenges.

The highway also challenges users. Last winter, my nephew, a 20-something money manager in downtown Denver, wrote to me in exasperation. He and his wife, a scientist, had hoped to go skiing in Summit County one Saturday, but after two hours they had turned around. A daily user of light rail in Denver, he said they would be happy to pay to use a high-speed train.

What, he wondered, was taking Colorado so long?

EVEN BEFORE THE  final segment through Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1993, highway engineers began tinkering with how to increase capacity. A public-participation process in 1997 yielded an emphatic “monorail” as the solution, but the administration of Gov. Bill Owens, in a formal programmatic environmental impact review (PEIS) process launched in 2000, denied any such possibility with an artificial cap of $4 billion on improvements. Owens also famously dismissed the idea of a monorail as unrealistic, calling it a “Disneyland ride.”

Communities along the corridor were deeply dissatisfied with the presumed outcome of process, distrustful of state officials and wary of one another. They also perceived the PEIS that was being shaped up as vulnerable. “All you needed to tie it up for 10 years was a lawyer with a pulse and $100,000,” says O’Malley, the Clear Creek County commissioner.

A 2005 meeting in Granby forged a tenuous consensus among corridor communities and other stakeholders, such as the Sierra Club and Trout Unlimited. Even more important was the 2006 gubernatorial election. Incoming Gov. Bill Ritter appointed Russell George as executive director of C-DOT. A water lawyer by training, George had been an accomplished state legislator, able to represent liberal Aspen and conservative Rifle at the same time.

Under George’s guidance, the $4 billion artificial budget cap was limited, and facilitated processes were instituted. “I can’t believe I have to hire a facilitator to take me through a process where the goal is to hire a facilitator,” is one quote savored from that time. Harmony can take just as long as fractious debate.

Idaho Springs, one of Colorado’s oldest communities, with roots to 1859, depeneds upon I-70 and travelers, but is sometimes overwhelmed by it.

A crucial part of this new process was something called context-sensitive solutions, a process articulated by landscape architect Ian McHarg’s seminal 1969 book “Design with Nature.” Context-sensitive design has been favored by the Federal Highway Administration in recent years. It seeks to engage various communities while acknowledging multiple impacts of highways. I-70 across Vail Pass, lauded for its relative sensitivity to aesthetics, is a product of that early iteration of this process. In the end, transportation remains a compromise of environmental values, aesthetics, and much more. But it starts at a different place.

The new programmatic environmental impact statement also set out a 50-year planning horizon. Perhaps ironically, this longer time horizon made the short-term highway improvements more palatable, particularly in Clear Creek County.

Transportation officials have been contrite. “We crashed and burned pretty hard,” said Anthony “Tony” DeVito, regional transportation director for I-70, at the USA Rail Conference held in Denver in 2010. “Now,” he says, “we all realize there has to be a multi-modal approach to this corridor … We recognize we cannot build our way out of congestion.” He also said out-of-the-box funding ideas were needed.

After heartburn and hiccups, kumbaya and $430 million, the programmatic environmental impact statement, or PEIS, was completed in 2011 and a record-of-decision signed.

The PEIS was notable for what it freely admitted it didn’t know: the effects of climate change, the prospects of peak oil, and just what kind of futuristic technology might be suitable for the I-70 corridor in this 50 year vision after the highway improvements had been maximized.

For that matter, the document admitted it didn’t know where the money would come from for the highway capacity improvements, with a total cost of $8 billion, much less the presumably far more expensive automated guideway system, i.e. a monorail.

Passenger cars on mag-lev lines hover over steel rails, eliminating friction. But despite the technology being more than a century old, there are relatively few commercial applications in the world. The most notable is a 17-mile segment in Shanghai, China. Photo from Internet

THEN CAME THE SURPRISE proposal from Parsons, the international engineering, construction and management firm. In July 2011, the company submitted a plan for phased improvements between C-470 and Silverthorne, and extending into the future, to Eagle. One centerpiece of the proposal was the addition of tolled express lanes based on congestion pricing, as well as a transit system for the long term. The proposal, according to C-DOT, called for existing lanes of I-70 to remain free to all vehicles.

FOR THE FULL STORY about I-70 and an accompanying story bout the monorail, please write to me to request the April 1, 2012, issue of Mountain Town News.

This article originally appeared in the November 24, 2011, issue of Mountain Town News.

by Allen Best

Clearly, different resort communities of the West are responding to diving prices and stalled real estate development in varied ways.

In Eagle County, Commissioner Jon Stavney is calling for a rollback or at least a repurposing of impact fees. “I believe those regulations established at the height of the market must be revised for the new reality,” he wrote in a recent op-ed published in the Vail Daily.

In California, Mammoth Lakes has eased the onus of housing regulations on the last two projects, the assumption being that fewer exactions will prime the pump of development. Tellingly, the town’s housing authority, called Mammoth Lakes Housing, now has 2 employees, down from 5.

Steamboat Springs a year ago scrapped its affordable-housing requirements linked to commercial development. “It was a tax on job creation,” says Cari Hermaniski, who was then president of the city council. “The more employees your building created, the higher the linkage fee,” she told MTN.

The affordable-housing ordinance, was passed prior to a November, 2007 election. New members believed that the housing ordinance had unintended consequences. Since the recession, she adds, there is virtually no gap between market priced housing and the limits set in the ordinance for so-called affordable housing.

Breckenridge town officials are taking advantage of lower construction costs to move ahead with two more phases of Valley Brook, a deed-restricted neighborhood. The only difference is that eligibility is being geared to lower-income segments, those at less than 100 percent of area median income (AMI), reports Kim R. Dykstra-DiLallo, the town’s director of communications. “We don’t want to see people have to drive to Fairplay or Alma if they want to be in Breckenridge,” she says.

Planning is still underway for the next phase of Aspen’s Burlingame Ranch, but with much close attention to ensuring demand. Photo/Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority

Even in Aspen, which has had affordable housing since the early 1970s, the Great Recession has caused more cautious evaluation of the community’s showpiece Burlingame Ranch.

Almost every community with deed-restricted housing is grappling with how to move forward, reports Melanie Rees, a consultant specializing in affordable housing who has worked broadly in resort towns of the West during the last 18 years.

Rees, who is writing a white-paper on the effects of the recession on affordable housing, says the conversations generally fall under two different headings:

1) Has the recession revealed flaws in the deed restrictions placed during boom years?

2) Should affordable housing requirements be scrapped or at least scaled back, in an effort to lower the hurdles so that backhoe operators, carpenters, and others can return to work?

In all cases, the recession has reinforced the need to get price points on affordable housing right at the outset. Consider the case of Eagle Ranch, a large upper-middle-end housing project built around a golf course on the south end of Eagle, which is 30 miles west of Vail. The tastefully constructed development was a perfect metaphor for the New West in the decade of the aughts. Buyers of the homes—single-families tended to fall in the $400,000 to $700,000 range, although many pushed higher as the boom continued—tended to be contractors and others involved in the real-estate business.

In setting price points for the 50-some deed-restricted townhomes, condos and single-family houses, the assumption was of a constantly rising free market. Then the plunge occurred, knocking back free-market prices 30, 40 and even 50 percent—and, in some cases, below the prices of deed-restricted housing.

“In most cases, the market value of deed-restricted housing is coming in at well below the price the owner paid for it,” reports Tori Franks, of the Eagle County Housing Department.

Lesson learned? “When you’re putting deed-restricted affordable housing in place, that initial price point is so important,” says Franks. The pricing can’t be too high to start with, and it must be tied to some measure of affordability, such as the area median income.

Lesson No. 2: Despite words of warning along the way, many buyers of deed-restricted housing assumed that their housing would always appreciate to the maximum 3 percent annually.

Unlike many others, Breckenridge continues to move forward with its workforce housing plans at Valley Brook, but this time aiming for lower-income segments.

Eagle County administers 574 housing units, which does not include those in Vail and Avon. Of them, 289 are at Edwards, mid-way down the valley, in a project called Miller Ranch.

For about year after the recession began, the resale market for deed-restricted units was robust. “Two years ago you could put your (deed-restricted) unit on the market, and the next day you’d have 10 offers,” says Franks.

Now, owners of deed-restricted housing are having to use techniques of the free market: setting a price below the maximum cap, then perhaps lowering it again once or twice and negotiating over sales terms with buyers.

Only 2 of the 574 housing units managed by Eagle County have been foreclosed on. (Programs in Vail and Avon are separate).

In San Miguel County, where Telluride and Mountain Village are located, 34 foreclosures have occurred among 1,124 units. Notable is that all but 2 were on units that had no price restrictions on resale prices. The affordable-housing deeds only require local employment.

Housing values of these units rose significantly during the boom, and as was occurring across the country, people took out equity via second mortgages. When housing prices plunged and jobs dwindled, many couldn’t keep up with their payments.

Telluride, unlike the county and Mountain Village, has had no foreclosures on deed-restricted homes. Why the difference? It may have had to do with limits on loans to value on its 106 owner-occupied homes—preventing owners from using their properties as cash machines. Telluride also has 204 renter-occupied units.

Vail and Summit County seem to be happy with how their affordable housing programs have worked during the recession.

“Where the gap has disappeared between deed restrictions at the free market, or where the free market has dropped below the prices of deed-restricted housing—that’s where the problems are.”

In Vail, there’s still a significant gap between deed restricted housing and the free market, even if some owners of affordable housing are cashing out for larger free-market homes down the valley. But an 1,800-square-foot half-duplex with a two-car garage, all for $395,900, is still a great deal for somebody in Vail—thanks to deed restrictions that were not allowed to gallop upward too quickly.

In Summit County, deed-restricted housing continues to appreciate, reports Jennifer Kermode, executive director of the Summit Combined Housing Authority. The authority administers 825 units in Breckenridge, Silverthorne, Frisco and unincorporated areas, including Keystone.

Why the continued creep upward? Kermode thinks it’s because of the more constrained land. Only 15 percent of land in Summit is privately owned, a figure comparable to Aspen and Pitkin County. Eagle and Routt counties have much more private land.

Plus, says Kermode, Summit County benefited by taking a hard look at older housing programs in Eagle and Pitkin counties. “We looked at what was working and what wasn’t working,” she says.

One key: Tying appreciation caps to local income, instead of the costs of goods (the consumer price index). That keeps affordable housing affordable. So far, thanks to a continued robust tourism economy, the average median income has not dropped.

Everywhere, however, seasonal and for-rent housing remains in high demand. That’s true in Steamboat Springs, despite a 30 percent reduction in real-estate values (and much, much steeper declines in outlying areas such as Stagecoach, 15 miles away).

A two-bedroom rental still requires an annual income of $23 an hour, she points out, or $48,000 a year.

The housing authority’s 55-unit rental project, which is based on income, is “stock full,” says Page-Allen.

In Vail, the community’s largest for-rent affordable-housing project, called Timber Ridge, is completely booked for winter. It has 189 units.

However, the down-market and revised lending practices are causing a down-sizing of redevelopment plans for the project. George Ruther, director of the Department of Community Development, reports new plans call for a 22 percent reduction in bedrooms—although still an increase from the current configuration. The reason: a rental-housing market study by the redevelopment project’s potential lender, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Counties have typically been slowest to adopt affordable housing requirements. Now, some are studying retreat. In Colorado’s Garfield County, an advisory group is scheduled to report to the county commissioners and the planning commissioners in December about steps to reduce requirements. The proposal, says Tamra Allen, the long-range planner, would remove restrictions altogether from New Castle west, and then cut back requirements in the unincorporated areas near Glenwood Springs and Carbondale. In addition, the board will be looking at waiving all requirements for 2012-2014, an in attempt to kick-start construction.

For a year after the recession began, owners of units at Eagle County’s Miller Ranch had buyers lined up, ready to sign. Now, they’re having to market, discount, and negotiate, similar to free-market housing.

“The county had been reeling from 10 percent growth with 40 percent of our work force involved in building or development—a pace and portion that wasn’t sustainable,” he wrote in the essay, published Oct. 15 at: http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20111015/EDITS/111019887/1023&parentprofile=1065

“That plan responded by establishing that 35 percent of all upcoming projects be set aside for work-force housing. It was a historic response to a historic gap. If the plan had been in place 15 years earlier, the Eagle Valley might have had plenty of work-force housing.

“It was a great vision, and yet today it already seems a relic,” he went on to say. “My take is that there will be great competition in the next decade for entry-level housing and that we don’t need to regulate it so aggressively—at least not like we thought in 2008.”

Another jurisdiction hearing calls for backing-off requirements is Ketchum. The Idaho town has approved plans for four different hotels in the final years of the boom, but although several of the developers have called for reductions in requirements, including public-sector housing, the city council so far has not relented. The council will be taking up the matter on Nov. 29. If a housing needs assessment completed by then shows much more supply, “the council may decide that we can allow a new approach to housing,” says Lisa Horowitz, the director of community and economic development.

Perhaps the most interesting community to watch will be Wyoming’s Jackson Hole. Just 3 percent of Teton County land is privately owned, yet the economics are as robust as that of Aspen. The long term is clear enough: continued high-end development. And so far, there is no evidence of strong local support for backing off regulations. “You hear grousing in some quarters,” says Bob McLaurin, town administrator. “But I haven’t heard it from an elected official in either the town or the county. That doesn’t mean they aren’t talking or thinking about it amongst themselves,” he added.

In Eagle, the first substantial project that might trigger the town’s affordable-housing requirements likely won’t get to entitlement stage for three years, says Willy Powell, town manager. At that time, a housing needs assessment can be done. Another project, Eagle River Station, may reach the same statge earlier, but it only involves for-rent housing and commercial, which does not trigger the regulations.

The recession has slowed, but not stopped, planning for affordable housing in Aspen and Pitkin County. Of course, having been created in the 1970s, the program has seen ups and downs before—although nothing this breath-taking.

“We are moving into new territory in terms of refining the demand side of the equation,” says Tom McCabe, the program’s director.

The program has 2,800 housing units in a community with a full-time population of 6,500—and if you think that might influence elections, you’re absolutely right. This housing spans an enormous variety of situations, in seven separate categories. In addition to the typical condos and townhomes, there are even million-dollar homes (deed restricted) for doctors and lawyers. “You know it’s pretty hard to get the job done here in the free market, even if you have what is considered a really healthy income,” says McCabe.

However, the free market is impacting Aspen’s affordable housing program, especially its 200 seasonal housing units. Two years ago, the rentals filled to 53 percent of capacity, an all-time low for that property, but last year hit 95 percent and will likely be in the 90s again this year. Prices are being adjusted to be competitive in the Roaring Fork Valley. “It has our eyes open, because we have to pay our bills, too,” says McCabe.

Demand for for-sale affordable housing—a given since about 1991—no longer is taken for granted. This new mentality is most evident at Burlingame Ranch, the city’s newest affordable housing complex. Having completed the first phase several years ago, the city is looking at another 60 to 80 units. There’s a new caution about ensuring sufficient buyers.

“We are shooting to get 60 bank-qualified applicants,” says McCabe. And banks have raised the hurdle, reviewing credit and employment history, and giving out lower interest rate and downpayment requirements to the less risky applicants.

A former city councilman, McCabe says elected officials necessarily have a broader perspective than affordable housing administrators. From his perspective now, he wants to ensure that there is no erosion of public support, such as might happen if the city and county overbuilt subsidized housing.

“We’re going to be very careful about how we move forward,” he says. “We have to be more precise in what we produce, so that it matches very closely the need in the marketplace.”

Adds McCabe: “We’re looking at the long view. We’re not one-hit developers. We want to shepherd that public confidence. We have a good reputation, and we don’t want to mess that up.”

Many ski resorts are turning 50 this year, and taking that long, long view, few only investments in workforce housing have been misplaced. The question that continues to be played out is just how strong the recovery is. Only time will tell, of course.

by Allen Best

Nolan Rosall and the firm he co-founded, RRC Associates, have become significant figures in many ski towns, mountain resort valleys, and the ski industry itself.

The firm engages in planning, conducts surveys for town governments, but is known especially for its work with the ski industry.

Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, credits Rosall with helping the ski industry better understand its customers.

“He brought to the industry an understanding of demographics that they didn’t have before,” says Berry. “If you think back to the ‘70s, the industry was growing like crazy, but suddenly in the ‘80s we got trapped in that national figure of 52 million skier days annually, which some thought would last into perpetuity. Nolan wanted to know why we were trapped at 52 million, and he was the first guy to start getting the answers.”

In the late 1990s, explains Berry, Rosall delivered research that identified the life cycle of the sport’s existing participants. And from there, the ski industry itself began to better understand its customers, their probability of participating and the messages that were necessary to draw more skiers to the slopes and keep them there.

That research, the foundation for Model for Growth, which was introduced by Berry’s organization in 1999, appears to have paid off. Within the last decade, the ski industry has started growing again—not in pace with the population, but at least surging past the barrier of 52 million skiers, and has twice edged above 60 million. In a few places—Nevada, California and Colorado—the participation in snow sports is actually outpacing population growth.

Nolan Rosall

Rosall retired from full-time work with his firm on Jan. 1. Before he left, Mountain Town News talked with him about his work with mountain resorts—but also his prior work from 1974 to 1979 as the director of planning in Boulder, Colo. Although not a mountain town by most definitions, Boulder has been—and continues to be—extremely influential as an incubator of ideas.

In this issue of MTN, Rosall talks about the work he did in Boulder to help revitalize the downtown area and create the Pearl Street Mall. If it’s a shining economic success now, that success, he says, is grounded in basic principles of the planning profession.

A graduate of Cornell University, with a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, Rosall had worked first in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he helped create affordable housing projects. The model for affordable housing before that had been the giant projects, such as are typified by Cabrini-Shrine in Chicago. In Puerto Rico, they created smaller nodes. Then, he worked in Reading, Pa., an industrial town on the edge of the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside. His job was to figure out how to stabilize the economy and redevelop the downtown.

That experience landed him a job in Boulder in 1974. Boulder was originally a farming town and supply depot for the mining camps to the west, but by then the University of Colorado had grown to 25,000 students. Boulder has also drawn several national laboratories.

Despite the strong economy, the downtown area was skidding into obsolescence. Many storefronts on Pearl Street were empty, few basements and upper floors were in use, and the red brick exteriors in many cases had been covered with metal facades. Crime was rising, and shoppers had fled to suburban shopping malls.

“I found this incredible environment in the outskirts of Boulder, but the core, what I would consider the heart of the city, was essentially not functional,” says Rosall.

Railroad tracks had been pulled out, but uranium ore still tainted what is now the site of the Boulder County Justice Center. A lumberyard still operated on Pearl Street. The downtown area, along with the adjacent residential neighborhoods, had effectively been red-lined. No investment was occurring. In the foothills just below the Flatirons, the Chautauqua resort was getting little use. Firefighters saw the Chautauqua auditorium as a firetrap and wanted it demolished.

Attractive higher-income demographics have helped Boulder, as has a strong infusion of federal and state funds, but it has consistently been a leader in planning endeavors, including the pedestrian mall.

Boulder leaders understood they had a problem. As early as 1966, a task force had been appointed. A contingent of young leaders, who had once focused their energies on opposition to the Vietnam War, had started transferring their energy to local improvements, laying the foundation for preservation of open space. Rosall points out that he didn’t accomplish the revitalization of central Boulder unaided. “There were others obviously who had the same feelings,” he says.

Change was rapid, but not easy. Controversy abounded. And success depended upon many broad strokes.

“It was more than just a mall,” says Rosall. “A huge number of philosophic and legislative changes occurred that created opportunity for the downtown and mall to be successful. I think that’s the message that gets lost in a lot of communities. They look at it as a single project, rather than the transformation of a whole area and the neighborhoods adjacent to it.”

Importantly, officials from both the city and county governments began reading from the same page. To funnel business back downtown required an end to the zoning that allowed more and more shopping complexes in the unincorporated areas outside the town. It requires deliberate attention to the fading glory of the Chautauqua resort. Development of the linear park system, along the creeks and elsewhere, was also an element.

As many towns in the West have discovered, creating an urban mall requires more than just closing off traffic. Rosall describes several deliberate elements. First, the mall is only four blocks long. It was accessible, so that people could peek before committing. Building owners were encouraged to remove their faddish corrugated aluminum facades in favor of the original brick. And, not least, the street was reconfigured. Instead of a hump in the middle, with drainage to gutters on the side, the drainage was put in the middle. It’s a subtle thing, but with profound consequences upon how the space is perceived.

Rapid success 

Success was rapid. Downtown became an attraction, complemented by special-event programming. Sidewalk cafes appeared, and the quality of retailing upgraded. Key to the strength of the upgrading was the unique offerings of entrepreneurially minded shop-keepers. Franchises remained a minority, and today continue to be only 20 percent of the mix on the mall.

Getting buy-in from property owners was crucial, says Rosall. Then, almost all the buildings were separately owned. Creating a special improvement district, required their involvement—and money. Two-thirds of the improvements were paid for through the district, and the balance through municipal block grants.

This happened to a large extent by plan, says Rosall, but it required many people buying in—literally.

“You had a lot of people with skin in the game to make this work and really become an important ingredient to the success of downtown,” he says.

That success spread to adjoining residential neighborhoods, now some of the most expensive in Boulder. In time, high-end residential development occurred in the downtown area itself.

In this transformation of the old into the new, Boulder enjoyed certain advantages. With the university just a few blocks away, it was like slope-side real estate, but with greater reliability than snow.

For a full issue of Mountain Town News, please request a copy be sent to your e-mail address. Write: allen.best@comcast.net

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. – How to explain the nine candidates for two spots in the board of director elections at Holy Cross Energy this spring?

The electrical cooperative serves the broad triangle of western Colorado from Vail and Aspen nearly to Grand Junction, and there has been no real controversy for decades. In fact, there was so little interest that directors stayed around for sometimes 20 and 30 years. Few people voted in the elections, with voter response of only 10 percent or so, compared to 50 percent or so for town and county elections.

In recent years, however, elections have been more contested. In 2007, there were four candidates for three slots. Last year, there were five candidates for two slots.

The Aspen Skiing Co. has been attempting to stir the pot in these recent elections, although there’s no clear evidence the company’s endorsements had direct impact. The company’s vice president for environmental affairs, Auden Schendler, this year is taking a low profile.

Randy Udall, 60, a long-time energy activist and analyst, plus a sometimes consultant to the co-operative, this year is running for the board from Carbondale. He sees no clear reason for so many candidates.

At $600 per month, the pay isn’t singularly compelling to most people, he says, nor does he see any cleat dissatisfaction with the existing board. Holy Cross, he says, “is an open and transparent rural electric utility, arguably the most progressive in the state and possibly the country.”

Co-ops sometimes get enmeshed in controversies about electrical rates, which prompt strong interest, “but that doesn’t seem to be the issue here,” as the rates of Holy Cross are among the lowest in the state, he goes on to say.

“Is there a grassroots backlash to some recent green initiatives? Perhaps, but I haven’t heard about it,” he adds.

Perhaps the strongest theory is that even as interest in our energy future has grown, the recession of the last two years has left people more time to devote to interests beyond their work. At the same time, energy matters – from oil spills to climate legislation to solar developments – have been gaining attention. “What used to be the most boring job in the universe, in people’s minds, is now getting pretty interesting, and it’s about time,” says Mr. Schendler.

These themes do seem to come out in interviews with three candidates from the Eagle Valley.

Megan Gilman, 29, co-owns a five-year-old firm based in Minturn that installs solar panel systems and conducts energy efficiency upgrades. She cites her business experience as well as her engagement in a grassroots level in the world of energy. She believes clean energy can be pursued while retaining reliability and affordability.

If elected to the board, she would be only the second women on the male-dominated board.

Dan Corcoran, 67, is now the official surveyor for Eagle County. When things were booming, he reviewed two maps a week. But in four months this year, he has reviewed just 10 maps—and several of them were subdivisions of duplexes. “I haven’t been swamped,” he says.

Mr. Corcoran has a ton of experience on elected and appointed boards. He was on the Vail Town Council, then the Eagle County School Board, and he is still is on the State Tram Board, among others. He offers no clear direction on where he believes Holy Cross should be going, but says he has the experience for evaluating policy and business propositions.

A third candidate, Scott Prince, 39, is a mortgage lender at the Wells Fargo Bank in Avon. Like Corcoran, he’s proven himself a joiner and volunteer: the planning commission in Avon, the board of directors for his son’s pre-school, and so on. And like Corcoran and Gilman, he cites business experience, what he calls the “skill sets” to pursue both clean energy goals while governing Holy Cross as a business.

At Holy Cross headquarters in Glenwood Springs, the long list of candidates was greeted as a positive trend. But the greater test will be whether people bother to vote. Normally, ballots are mailed out, but this year the co-op is taking the added step of providing pre-paid return envelopes, and will encourage voter participation through print and radio ads.

“It would be wonderful to me if 20 to 25 percent of our membership decided to vote, because to me, that would be saying that our membership is becoming more engaged and involved,” says Steve Casey, the membership director for Holy Cross.

The Colorado and other headwater rivers were formed roughly 10,000 years ago, when the glaciers of the last Ice Age melted. The riverbeds are broad, as necessary to carry large volumes of water.

by Allen Best

And sometimes they do. But those years have become ever more scarce in the last 75 years, the result of the canals and dams built to detain the spring flows and, in an extraordinary feat of plumbing described by historian David Lavender as a “massive violation of geography,” flush the water to the drier Eastern Slope of the Rocky Mountains.

Now, the task is underway to reconstruct the Colorado River and its tributaries and manage remaining water in ways that reflect the new realities. The goal is to restore ecological functions lost or imperiled by reduced water flows even as the two primary water-diverting agencies—Denver Water and Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District—propose to skim more water off spring runoff.

“We’re in a very difficult situation,” says Ken Kehmeier, a senior aquatic biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Kehmeier explains that the various diversion projects through the decades have left the Colorado River from Windy Gap most of the 27 miles to Kremmling substantially modified. With reduced flows, sediments have filled in between the river cobbles, the spaces between rocks, called interstitials. These interstitials provide habitat for a native species of fish, the mottled sculpin, and also willowflies. A sampling at 18 locations last September found just one sculpin, despite a relative abundance in the Fraser River.

Although others, including Ken Neubecker, of the Western Rivers Institute, have described the Colorado River as a river system on the brink of collapse, Kehmeier won’t go that far. “I just don’t have the data to say that,” he explains. “I can say that there are components of the system that have precipitously dropped (their functionality).”

What Kehmeier’s agency has recommended  to do in collaboration with the two Front Range water agencies is “reset the clock,” as he puts it. The river channel is too wide, and must be narrowed. A more narrow channel will yield increased velocities of water, better moving the sediment and delivering habitat for the sculpin and willowflies. Also, there will be improved “pool ratios,” and cooler water. The shallow water now heats up to the threshold of killing trout in late summer.

The recommendation—this is separate from the global settlement between Denver and the Western Slope—would provide about $3.5 million in cash for rechannelization and another $3.5 to $4 million in in-kind contributions, such as bulldozing work. The agreement also provides for water in the various reservoirs to be allotted specifically to the needs of improved ecological function.

But the agreements doesn’t provide nearly enough money to reconfigure the river all the way from Granby to Kremmling. Part of the problem, says Kehmeier, is provisions that preclude spending public funds on improvements to private land or land to which there is no public access. Various agencies and non-profits may collaborate to extend the improvements in coming years, he hopes, and some private landowners have already begun work on their own. Without work throughout, he says, untouched river segments will become bottlenecks.

“It is my best guess as a biologist that, once we have rebuilt that river, we will see the sculpin come back,” Kehmeier says.

At the end of the day, more water will be removed from the Colorado River to the Eastern Slope, and Kehmeier admits that’s not something he particularly likes.

“I would love to be able to say I don’t like that, that they need to give me more water. But from a legal standpoint, they won’t let me do that.”

It’s a matter of water rights and law, he says. “Water rights will trump us every time in this state, and so we have to look at the next best step, and that’s why we negotiated this enhancement package.”

The Colorado Wildlife Commission is expected to make a decision at its June meeting in Grand Junction. Theo Stein, spokesman for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, explains that the commission’s recommendation will be delivered to the Colorado Water Conservation Board and Gov. John Hickenlooper, who will in turn inform federal agencies overseen with review of these two water projects, the Moffat Tunnel and Windy Gap firming projects. The federal agencies could incorporate the proposed agreement into their findings, or perhaps call for broader measures yet.

To see the proposed enhancement and mitigation packages, go to the Colorado Division of Wildlife website at http://wildlife.state.co.us/LandWater/Water/MoffatWindyGapMitigationProjects/