Sneak Peek of the Week
Stagecoach locals wary of plans for private ski, golf resort for uber-wealthy
The Stagecoach ski area operated three lifts for three years in the early ’70s before shutting down. Since then, a bustling community of about 2,400 property owners has grown around the dormant slopes above the 3-mile long Stagecoach Reservoir and Stagecoach State Park.
For nearly 50 years, a local family who bought 6,600 acres around the old ski hill in the late 1970s has pondered what could be at Stagecoach.
Now, there’s a plan.
Discovery Land Co., the Arizona operator of 35 high-end private resorts including Montana’s Yellowstone Club, wants to turn the property into a private ski area and golf course with about 700 homes for the extremely wealthy.
Residents are worried.
“They are going to change the very fabric of what Stagecoach is,” Stagecoach homeowner Jennifer Fernley told Sun freelancer Kari Harden. “It’s just going to suck. It’s not going to feel like our place. It’s going to feel like their place.”
There could be hundreds of residents living next to a ski area and golf course they cannot access. Discovery executives recently hosted their first meeting with locals, laying out brief details of what they are considering at the so-called Stagecoach Mountain Ranch. They got an earful.
Which really is not surprising for a development proposal at a property that has been largely empty and untouched for half a century while a community has grown around the property. It’s easy to draw parallels to another quiet lakeside community in a busy valley, where residents have spent decades dealing with developers.
Residents around the much smaller Sweetwater Lake have seen deep-pocketed investors come and go, with plans for private golf and luxury homes and even a proposal for a high-end water bottling operation. The latest plan involves the U.S. Forest Service, which acquired 488 acres around Sweetwater Lake in 2021, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife turning the property into a state-managed park or recreation area.
Residents around Sweetwater share the same concerns about how visitors and development will shift the quiet culture and vibe in their community. They worry how new plans will fit with traditional uses and existing homes. They wonder if their concerns will be heard as powerful forces push new designs.
“Any similar community that sees this kind of real estate development, especially for higher end development, there is unavoidable impact upon the culture of the community,” Routt County Commissioner Tim Corrigan told Harden. “And land use regulations are not very well equipped to address the cultural impact.”
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read Kari’s story
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In Their Words
Argo Mill gondola project back on track after losing millions in alleged title company scam
The investors behind a planned gondola-anchored resort and village at the Argo Mill in Idaho Springs have revived their project after losing $4.5 million in an alleged scam by an escrow company.
“Can you believe it? We have the most amazing team in the world,” said Mary Jane Loevlie, an Idaho Springs entrepreneur who is guiding the Argo Mill project.
It’s been a long and tortuous road for the 50-plus investors in the Mighty Argo Cable Car Group, who in 2019 proposed a sweeping resort project that would spark a revived economy in Idaho Springs. Their initial investment disappeared in an alleged scam by a title company. They had to scrape up new funds and new investors, while federal officials accused the title company of stealing close to $15 million in escrow deposits from 10 businesses.
Nearly five years after initially planning to break ground, the Might Argo project is underway. The investors are joined by a European investment group — the Funis Fund — that supports urban cable car projects. It’s the group’s first investment in North America.
“We will be part of an elite group of global gondolas that this group is invested in,” Loevlie said. “We are sort of on the cusp of this kind of development in North America.”
In 2019, the Argo investors planned to spend more than $32 million to start construction of a 1.2-mile gondola and commercial village around the dormant Argo Mill on the banks of Clear Creek in Idaho Springs. In 2020, the group deposited $4.5 million into an escrow account with Virginia-based First Title Inc. as an equity deposit to secure a construction loan.
But the money disappeared. The Argo investors in 2021 sued the owners of the title company, arguing Sandra Bacon and Chrisheena McGee stole the deposit and distributed it to personal accounts.
A U.S. District Court judge awarded the Mighty Argo investment group $8.7 million in damages in 2022 after the two women failed to respond to the civil lawsuit other than arguing they were protected against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.
McGee and Bacon were each indicted by a federal grand jury on 12 counts of wire fraud in November last year. They pleaded not guilty and a trial is set for April.
The recovery of the Argo Mill project “has got to be one of the biggest surprises of my life,” Idaho Springs Mayor Chuck Harmon said. “I realize it’s only an indictment right now, but it was such a crime. Since these thieves took off with their money, the interest rates have doubled and construction costs have gone through the roof. They stole so many opportunities. But don’t ever count Mary Jane out.”
The project has changed a bit in the past five years but every one of the original 50-plus local investors is still on board.
“That just warms my heart,” Loevlie said. “It will be a longer haul, but they will get their returns. They all invested for the project, not the returns. It’s pretty stunning that we have managed to come through all this with all our original investors and supporters.”
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
The Outsider now has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.
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Breaking Trail
Home prices continue to set records as mountain real estate market slows
$3,427
Average price per square foot for homes in Aspen in the first half of 2024
From the “whoa” file:
The average price for a single-family Aspen home in the first half of 2024 hit $22.1 million. Not a typo.That’s an average price of $3,427 a square foot. Both those numbers are all-time highs for Aspen.
Averages are a challenge in Aspen real estate. Buyers have spent more than $20 million on 11 Aspen homes so far in 2024. There’s been one sale for a home for $108 million and three sales over $50 million. There have been 11 Aspen sales for more than $20 million in the first half of 2024.
The deals this year include a $17 million sale of a former 815-square-foot miners shack built in 1888 on a small lot in the city’s West End, which builders transformed into a luxury four-bedroom, 3,900-square-foot home. The home was valued by Pitkin County at $3.2 million in 2021 before the remodel.
It’s hard not to skew averages when buyers pay more than $4,300 a square foot in Aspen.
(The big spending on the high end warps average prices in every community, not just Aspen, but the numbers from the headwaters of the Roaring Fork River are astronomical.)
This is the peak buying and selling season for mountain homes. Sales volume in most resort communities remains high, but less than the record-setting frenzy in 2021 and 2022.
Sales volume through May in Eagle County topped $1.1 billion for 2024, pacing ahead of 2023 but not 2021 or 2022. And the number of transactions in Eagle County through May is above 2023 but well below the frothy pace in 2021 and 2022. That means the average price in Eagle County is a record high at more than $2 million, according to sales tracked by Land Title Guarantee Co.
Sales volume through May in Summit County is $808.1 million for 2024, up 34% from 2023 but well below 2021 and 2022. And like Eagle County, the number of Summit County transactions through May are down, even below the numbers from 2014 through 2019. High volume with fewer transactions means Summit County prices are sky-high, with an average single-family home selling for $2.4 million, according to Land Title Guarantee Co.
Stay tuned for a quick story on high country real estate sales as the mountain market settles after the frenzied buying and selling of recent years.
The Playground
Colorado is well represented in the Summer Olympics
3
Number of Colorado Olympians heading to the Paris Summer Games who do not live on the Front Range, which compares with 18 athletes from Colorado’s mountain communities who went to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The Olympics kick off July 26, and 26 Colorado athletes will be there ready to bring home the Oly bling.
Colorado ranks sixth among states sending Olympians to Paris. That’s down a bit from the pandemic-delayed Summer Games in Tokyo in 2021.
By a per-capita measurement, Colorado ranks second for sourcing Olympians.
Colorado is a winter playground, so it’s not surprising that the state consistently sends the first or second largest contingent of skaters, skiers, sledders and snowboarders to the Winter Games. (Colorado sent 24 to the 2022 Winter Olympics in China, down from 36 for the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea.)
The Colorado Sun’s John Ingold crunched some numbers on Colorado’s contribution to Team USA in Paris and has some fun facts ready for readers to wow their pals on trivia night.
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read John’s story
The Guide
Federal courts dismiss two lawsuits filed by homeowners challenging Summit County short-term rental regulations
480,061
Room nights booked in short-term rentals around Breckenridge for the 2023-24 winter, up from 294,553 in the 2020-21 winter
Federal judges have dismissed two lawsuits filed by property owners in Summit County challenging both the county’s and the town of Breckenridge’s recent regulations on short-term rentals.
A coalition of more than 100 property owners in Summit County in September 2023 sued the county, calling rules that limit short-term rental property owners to 35 bookings a year and a 2% tax “a blunderbuss response” of “successively more severe, wide-ranging, misguided and unlawful regulations.”
Residents and property owners in Breckenridge in October 2023 sued the town over a town-wide cap of 2,200 short-term rental licenses, arguing the cap was a form of rent control prohibited by state law.
The Colorado Property Owners for Property Rights Group also argued that the town’s 2021 and 2022 ordinances that created zones that allowed for varying levels of short-term rentals were “arbitrary and irrational, discriminatory, lacking support from study or data, (and) there is no reasonable relation between the ordinances and the town’s stated objective of providing employee housing, and ultimately, unlawful.”
U.S. District Court Judge Nina Wang on July 9 dismissed the Breckenridge property owners’ lawsuit, ruling the town’s limits on short-term rentals “are at least rationally related to controlling associated noise, parking and waste disposal” and the the town’s “desire to limit perceived ill effects of STRs is a legitimate purpose and the ordinances are rationally related to this end.”
“Second-guessing by a court is not allowed,” Wang wrote, citing legal precedent.
U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Gallagher on June 25 dismissed the county owners’ lawsuit, ruling that Summit County is allowed to treat properties in various zones differently, including occupancy requirements for obtaining short-term rental licenses. Gallagher also dismissed the owners’ challenge to a county limit of 35 bookings a year — which the owners argued violated their property rights — ruling that owners failed to prove they have a fundamental right to a short-term rental license.
Both judges dismissed the notion that the regulations created different rules for Colorado residents and nonresidents. The property owners in both lawsuits argued the recent crackdown on short-term rentals by county and town policymakers violated the Equal Protection Clause in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which prevents local laws that discriminate between U.S. residents.
Gallagher wrote in his June 25 ruling that the court was “aware of the significant consequences” of Summit County’s short-term rental regulations and his ruling for property owners, residents and visitors to Summit County “and perhaps in similar communities across Colorado.”
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
Carrie Hauser taking rural lessons of Colorado to the national conservation stage
5,000
Number of urban parks created or protected by the Trust for Public Land within a 10-minute walk of 10 million Americans
For 25 years, I’ve been visiting — and tuning into — town council meetings across the Western Slope. The one thing I’ve heard most from residents during public comments: “We don’t want to be the next Aspen.” (Sometimes it’s “Moab,” or “Breckenridge” or “Vail.”)
But in the past four years or so, the most common refrain I’ve heard in small town meetings is “We are not being heard. We are being listened to.”
As metro area voters and policymakers influence big decisions about water, wolves, land protection, housing and more, rural residents are feeling left out. The urban-rural divide is not shrinking.
Carrie Hauser knows this. She chaired the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission as it toured the state to plan wolf reintroduction. She guided Colorado Mountain College for 11 years as the school honed programs at 11 campuses that better met the needs of mountain communities.
And now she’s taking the reins at the Trust for Public Land, one of the nation’s top land conservation groups with 32 diverse offices spread across the country. The Trust for Public Land works in urban and rural communities to protect open, green spaces. Hauser, who lives on the Western Slope, deftly navigates both rural and urban concerns, with experience at Denver’s Metropolitan State University and the Daniels Fund.
Few people are better suited to help fill the growing chasm that separates rural and urban citizens. And she’s shepherding one of the few issues that galvanize all Americans: protecting land and water.
“I think we need to think about not just protecting land or opening a park. It’s also, ‘What are the long-term impacts?’” she said. “How do you think about these things in the way of systems and not just sort of one project and move to the next project. How do they also connect together?”
>> Click here to read this story and here to listen to the Daily Sun-Up podcast with Hauser
— j
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