Sneak Peek of the Week
The grind for gravel in Colorado
$530 million
Value of nearly 59 million tons of aggregate produced by Colorado sand, gravel and crushed stone providers in 2021.
Gravel miners and asphalt providers have a unique power to rile neighbors. Across Colorado, few proposals are more contentious than those from aggregate companies seeking to establish or expand operations.
A gravel pit owner this month killed his plan to add an asphalt plant to the Ellie Belle Mine in Fairplay, citing “threats and harassment.” Park County planners said they also faced harassment over the proposal as residents united to oppose the asphalt plant plan.
As Colorado collects more than $4 billion in federal dollars to improve roads, and calls for new housing reach a crescendo, the gravel miners and contractors in charge of providing concrete and asphalt are facing stiff opposition. Across the state — in Colorado Springs, Delta, Dotsero, Fairplay, Glenwood Springs, Lyons, Pagosa Springs, Salida and Silverthorne — residents are sounding alarms over the expansion of aggregate mining, and asphalt and concrete plants, citing impacts to air, water and the riparian corridors where gravel accumulates.
“There are better places for those kinds of things to go, not 200 feet from the river and less than that from peoples’ homes,” said Paul LeMaster, whose home abuts the Ellie Belle Mine outside Fairplay. “A lot of people are worried about toxic air pollution and our drinking water being contaminated from the plant’s holding ponds.”
Delta County Commissioner Don Suppes, who reluctantly nixed an asphalt plant facing fierce opposition in 2022, said county leaders across the state are struggling with gravel plant plans.
“People are always anxious to complain about the quality of roads and … the cost of materials is directly related to how many miles of roads get fixed,” Suppes said. “Everyone thinks gravel and asphalt should be done in someone else’s neighborhood though. The NIMBYs are a very loud group when something is affecting them directly.”
Colorado quarry and gravel pit operators produced 58.6 million tons of aggregate — 39.8 million tons of sand and gravel and 18.8 million tons of crushed stone — in 2021, making the state the sixth largest producer of construction sand and gravel in the country. Those producers generated $346 million for sand and gravel and $184 million for crushed stone. The average price for sand and gravel — $8.69 a ton — and crushed stone — $9.76 a ton — were record highs in 2021.
“Locating quarries close to population centers helps lower overall costs,” reads the Colorado Geological Survey’s annual Mineral and Energy Industry Activities report for 2021-22. “However, residential and commercial development near an aggregate source can make permitting a new or expanding quarry a challenge.”
>> Click over to The Sun on Monday to read this story
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In Their Words
U.S. House committee weighs land bills to block “orchestrated attack on public lands”
163
Number of national monuments created or enlarged by 18 U.S. presidents using the 1906 Antiquities Act
The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources on Wednesday considered several new land management bills to thwart what the Republican-led committee called “an orchestrated attack on public lands” by President Joe Biden.
“The legislation under consideration today will put an end to the egregious and out-of-touch policies coming out of the White House,” said the committee’s chairman, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany.
The committee heard testimony on legislation that would require Congress to approve all national monuments created by presidents using the 1906 Antiquities Act. The Antiquities Act has been used by 18 presidents to create and grow 163 national monuments, including Biden’s creation of the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in 2022. The legislation — H.R. 5499 — says that if Congress does not approve a national monument created by presidential proclamation within six months, the land cannot be designated again for 25 years.
U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from Iowa, citing President Barack Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act 34 times to protect 553.6 million acres, said the Antiquities Act has not been changed since 1906.
“It is an arbitrary rule by one person. To vest one person with the unfettered power, regardless of what political party, to make these decisions with no congressional check, or local input should be offensive to each and every member of Congress,” Miller-Meeks said.
A campaign led by conservation groups on the Western Slope is hoping Biden will use the Antiquities Act to create a national monument along the Dolores River. The effort has stirred opposition from residents and elected leaders who fear the designation could bring crowds and limit mining, ranching and motorized access.
The committee also heard legislation sponsored by Colorado Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — The Colorado Energy Prosperity Act — that would block the BLM’s Resource Management Plan for 1.56 million acres of surface land and 1.92 million acres of mineral estate on the Western Slope in Garfield, Media, Montrose and Rio Blanco counties. The BLM’s preferred alternative in the draft plan that was published in August closes about 1.6 million acres from energy development while keeping open some areas with high potential for oil and gas drilling.
Boebert’s bill would restrict the Interior Department from enforcing the plan for the BLM’s Colorado River Valley Field Office and the Grand Junction Field Office. The plan and environmental review were developed in response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups contesting the BLM’s issuance of oil and gas leases in 2016 and 2017.
Boebert, a member of the natural resources committee, said Colorado’s Western Slope “used to have a booming energy economy.”
“Unfortunately we’ve been regulated into poverty by bad Democrat policies,” she said, calling the BLM’s draft plan a “fossil fuels attack” that removes areas for oil and gas development without considering modern technology used to access hard-to-reach resources. “This proposed land grab is nothing short of partisan politics meant to further restrict access to oil and natural gas development that could reinvigorate the economy of Colorado and help ensure energy security for all Americans. Rogue bureaucrats at the BLM shouldn’t be unilaterally locking up more land in Colorado.”
The committee also considered similar legislation sponsored by Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman to block the BLM’s Draft Resource Management Plan for 3.6 million acres in southwest Wyoming.
Nada Wolff Culver, the BLM’s deputy director of policy and programs, said the agency “strongly opposes” the legislation, saying the plans reflect “thousands of hours of engagement by many people who care about their public lands.”
“These plans serve as blueprints for keeping public landscapes healthy and productive,” Wolff Culver said.
Culver also said the agency opposes the legislation that would amend the Antiquities Act, noting that the BLM manages 30 national monuments that were created by presidential proclamation.
“The Antiquities Act provides the necessary flexibility for presidents to respond expeditiously to impending threats to resources,” she said.
Colorado U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, said he was “deeply disappointed” about the legislation that takes “us backwards in our effort to protect and preserve our nation’s public lands; efforts that are overwhelmingly supported by local communities.”
The Antiquities Act, Neguse said, has allowed all but three U.S. presidents to “bypass congressional gridlock” and protect federal resources, noting that the Camp Hale plan was approved five times in the U.S. House as part of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Economy Act but never passed in the Senate. (President Donald Trump used presidential proclamations under the Antiquities Act to shrink national monuments created by Presidents Obama and Bill Clinton.) Neguse cited Colorado College’s annual Conservation in the West polls showing 85% of Westerners supporting the creation of national monuments.
“Apparently the only people who believe that we shouldn’t be designating national monuments are House Republicans,” said Neguse, who on Wednesday was elected to serve as the Assistant Democratic Leader in the U.S. House, becoming the second Colorado lawmaker to ever serve as a senior member of House leadership.
Breaking Trail
Outdoor retail sales decline in 2023 as participation grows with newly minted adventurers
$630 million
Amount Americans spent on insulated mugs in 2023, an 84% increase over 2022
Last August the owners of the Mountain Outfitters outdoor gear shop in downtown Breckenridge shut down after almost 40 years in business.
Doug Bittinger said it was “one of the most difficult decisions” he and partner Cindy Reese ever made. After the best year ever in 2020 when the pandemic drove hordes of people into the outdoors — and into outdoor gear shops — an economic storm led to the worst years ever for Mountain Outfitters.
“It all goes back to housing,” said Bittinger, who bought the Breckenridge gear shop with Reese in 2012.
The housing market explosion drove away his workers, who could not afford to remain in Breckenridge. He was short-staffed and paying the employees he could find 75% more than 2019 wages. Property taxes on the Mountain Outfitters building tripled as the value of Breckenridge real estate climbed.
And then, starting in December 2022, people stopped shopping.
“We were a locals’ shop and when locals lost their housing, we lost our core customers,” said the 59-year-old Bittinger, who now lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, with Reese, where “we are spending a lot of time riding our bikes.”
Bittinger was among many outdoor shop owners who endured a rough 2023. After a record surge of new outdoor participants fueled unprecedented growth in outdoor gear sales in 2021 and 2022, the outdoor retail industry is losing steam.
Sales of outdoor gear, apparel and accessories fell 3% to $27.5 billion in 2023 compared to 2022, with chain stores, e-retailers and independent shop owners all posting declines. Sales at independent stores fell 10% to $4.2 billion in 2023.
At least half of the nation’s independent stores — the main street ski and paddle shops like Mountain Outfitters that cater to core outdoor participants — were down “way more than 10%” in 2023, said Kelly Davis, the number-crunching maven at the Outdoor Industry Association.
Davis’s annual retail sales trend report for OIA landed this week, revealing an expected leveling after frothy post-pandemic years, when, she said, “the whole world went out and bought something for outdoor activities.”
The outdoor industry sold 6% less stuff in 2023 compared to 2022. Core outdoor folks — the lithe, tanned people who ski, climb, pedal, paddle, fish and run through the woods more than 50 times a year — didn’t buy as much. But the newcomers, the people who came to the outdoors during the pandemic, are still buying.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
The Guide
Steamboat voters to decide on a proposed 6,000-person affordable housing community that started with a $24 million donation
$483.7 million
Projected cost to develop an affordable housing community over the next two decades on the edge of Steamboat Springs
Voters in Steamboat Springs next week will decide on the city’s plan to annex 420 acres to build a community of affordable housing for more than 6,000 workers.
The Brown Ranch plan illustrates the challenges with building affordable housing in Colorado’s high country as communities grapple with the scope and cost of building homes for workers who cannot afford living in mountain towns. The vote in Steamboat Springs will decide if the city of 13,000 can move forward on a plan to spend hundreds of millions on a new community that could grow the city’s population by nearly half.
The size of the Brown Ranch plan “reflects the magnitude of the problem we are trying to solve,” said Jason Peasley, the head of the Yampa Valley Housing Authority. “Lots and lots of communities are dealing with a problem of this scope or larger. However almost none have opportunities and resources to address this housing problem in the way we can.”
The Yampa Valley Housing Authority acquired the 534-acre parcel west of the city in 2021 using $24 million from an anonymous donor. After a steering committee spent two years gathering public input from 4,000 Routt County residents, the authority sketched a plan for 2,264 new homes for local workers in the next 20 years.
Since its inception in 2003 and the passage of an affordable housing mill levy in 2017, the Yampa Valley Housing Authority has built 210 affordable units for locals with low and moderate incomes. The authority is building another 275 units. But that’s not enough. A 2022 study commissioned by the housing authority — conducted by Washington, D.C.-based RCLCO and Seattle-based architecture firm Mithun — showed an immediate need for 1,400 units for Steamboat Springs workers. By 2030, that need grows to 1,960 new homes and by 2040 the area will need 2,300 new units for workers earning between 60% to 128% of the area median income, or AMI. A majority of Routt County residents fall in that range of income, which is about $44,000 to $94,000 a year.
Brown Ranch would help with that, with 1,218 new units by 2030 and reaching 2,264 units by 2040. All the homes at build out would be priced below market value, with 677 for low-income workers, 968 for locals earning 60% to 128% of the AMI and the rest for workers earning $94,000 to $189,000 a year.
The plan — one of the largest ever affordable housing development plans on the Western Slope — calls for tens of millions in investment for parks, improvements to U.S. Highway 40 and police and fire stations. A committee studying the annexation proposal last year for the city projected using more than $240 million in revenue from taxes on the city’s short-term rental homes, $26 million in grants and $25 million in municipal debt to pay for the $483.7 million project when it’s fully built in the next 20 to 25 years. That figure does not include the cost of building homes. Add in the homes and the total construction cost of the project was pinned at $947 million, according to an economic analysis of the annexation agreement the Steamboat Springs City Council approved last fall.
“No other community has done something like this. It’s just too big,” said Jim Engelken, a former Steamboat Springs councilman who formed the Steamboat Citizens for a Better Plan group that helped gather support for the vote on the city’s annexation agreement. The group wants to see more homes for sale at market prices to help offset the cost to taxpayers for more than 2,000 subsidized units.
“We are not opposed to affordable housing and we are not opposed to growth. We just don’t see how this thing will work,” he said. “We have major traffic problems. Our park systems are pretty much filled up as it is. And people here, just like they were in the late ‘90s, they’re not anxious to see our town boom. We like our small town. And a development for 6,113 people is just too big.”
Peasely said the early planning is being misconstrued as a set-in-stone plan. If grants don’t come or short-term rental tax revenue drops or the city balks at spending millions, the pace and scope of development at Brown Ranch will slow. The only thing that is fairly established is that the homes at Brown Ranch will be affordable and the housing authority’s decision-making process is transparent.
“We are going to have challenges that present to us that we may be able to anticipate today and some we don’t see coming. The important part for us is to have the decision-making process clearly laid out,” he said. “The community will have needs every year moving forward and we own this incredibly important resource and land within our urban growth boundary. We wanted to design for the needs of the next generation, thinking about where our kids might live at some point. We wanted to focus on developing this very smartly to accommodate the growth that is going to occur in this community over the next two decades.”
Montana’s Yellowstone Club coming to Routt County?
697
Number of homes proposed for a private ski resort at Stagecoach Reservoir south of Steamboat Springs
For the last couple years, a Routt County local has been quietly shepherding plans to revive the long-lost Stagecoach ski area on the flanks of Stagecoach Reservoir south of Steamboat Springs. Preliminary sketches presented to county planners showed five lifts and a golf course surrounding a village with a base lodge, 91 condos, 107 ski cabins, 137 villas and 273 homes.
This morning, Dylan Anderson at the Yampa Bugle reported that Discovery Land Company, LLC — the developer of Montana’s luxury Yellowstone Club private ski and golf resort — will soon submit plans to Routt County to build a 697-home community on 6,412 acres on the south end of Stagecoach Reservoir.
Whoa.
Anderson at the Bugle — y’all should check out the stellar work Anderson is doing at the Yampa Bugle — unearthed a letter sent from Discovery Land Co. to the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District last week seeking confirmation that the district has enough water to use for snowmaking and watering a golf course.
Discovery said it plans to submit a development application and preliminary subdivision plan that includes 697 homes and “extensive recreational amenities” to the Routt County Planning Department as soon as May.
The Yellowstone Club pioneered a new model for private, luxury skiing, with 864 multimillion-dollar homesites in a community at the base of a 2,200-acre, members-only ski area adjacent to the 5,700-acre Big Sky Resort. The place attracts the elite, mingling the world’s wealthiest celebrities, athletes, politicians and business leaders.
After the resort’s founder, lumber baron Tim Blixseth, lost the Yellowstone Club to creditors in the 2009 recession, the resort was acquired by private equity firm CrossHarbor Capital Partners. The firm built out the community at the base of Pioneer Mountain in the middle of the Gallatin National Forest.
The success of the Yellowstone Club has spurred similar ultra-exclusive ski resort projects, including the Wasatch Peaks Ranch, with a planned 3,000 acres of lift-served skiing for 750 homeowners in a 12,740-acre ranch a half-hour’s drive north of Salt Lake City. In Colorado, the Cimarron Mountain Club outside Montrose offers private snowcat skiing to only 13 homeowners.
Stay tuned for more updates at Discovery unveils plans for what could be yet another exclusive ski playground for the uber-wealthy. And check out Dylan’s story here and make sure to send him kudos for solid reporting.
— j
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