VAIL — When executives from Vail Resorts and the nascent Alterra Mountain Company get together to discuss skiing, there are never fireworks. Or even a hint that the fiercely competitive rivals are locked in a raging season-pass battle. This is not surprising. Ski industry execs from competing companies do not gather in public meetings and […]
Jason Blevins
The Colorado Sun — jason@coloradosun.com
Email: jason@coloradosun.com Twitter: @jasonblevins
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, News, Politics and Government
Record number of special districts seeking voter relief from Gallagher stranglehold
Call volume to the Telluride Fire Protection District has climbed 30 percent since 2017, but the busy agency’s property-tax supported budget has dropped — to $119,000 next year from $250,000 last year. Chief John Bennett has delayed replacing 30-year-old fire engines. He’s cut and trimmed everywhere he can. Now, for the first time since 1996, […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Growth, News
Aspen’s workers are hitting retirement age. And that’s made the resort town’s employee housing program a ticking time bomb.
ASPEN — A surge of retirees in the nation’s most venerable and innovative resort-community affordable housing program is threatening to overwhelm 43 years of careful curation. It’s a demographic time bomb ticking inside Colorado’s priciest real estate market. “I’m hearing from business owners all over the place — restaurants, law offices, financial offices: ‘We can’t hire […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Politics and Government
Sudden opposition flares toward Amendment X, the hemp measure unanimously approved by the Colorado legislature
One of the authors of the law that legalized marijuana in Colorado is taking aim at a ballot question seeking to change the legal definition of hemp in Colorado. Attorney Rob Corry has ramped up 11th-hour opposition to Amendment X, arguing the legislature-floated ballot question could hurt Colorado’s nascent hemp industry if it passes. He […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
Colorado’s explosive outdoor industry growth is emerging as global model
Luis Benitez is the outdoor industry’s apostle. Carrying the message that the outdoors is a key to economic prosperity and a hale population, he’s helped spark outdoor recreation offices in a dozen states. Now he’s taking his outdoor gospel global. The inaugural boss of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office recently rolled his one-man revival through […]
Posted inEnergy, Environment, News, Politics and Government
Colorado gets new Bureau of Land Management director with a history of working in the state
Jamie Connell, a veteran land manager with a long history in Colorado, is returning to the state to direct the Bureau of Land Management as the agency grapples with a pending record oil-and-gas lease sale and a growing battle between conservation interests and energy interests. As part of a BLM shuffling by the Interior Department, […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News, Outdoors, Water
How Colorado’s ski resorts can continue making snow in drought years like this one
Reservoirs have turned to dust. Farmers have fallow fields. But don’t expect the skiing to languish. Ski resorts have spent many decades amassing water rights and water storage and continuously upgrading snowmaking systems to make the state’s vibrant, multibillion-dollar resort industry virtually immune to drought — so long as this winter, farmers and ranchers have […]
Posted inColoradans, News, Outdoors
“If I can prevent at least one kid from going through what my kid goes through every day, I will do whatever it takes. I have to.”
SURVIVORS: Part of a Colorado Sun series on close calls in the outdoors and life after a crisis Ian Lamphere was sitting in his home office when he was struck with an idea. He yelled down to his fiancée, Elizabeth. “I don’t know, he’d read something about someone dying, and all the sudden, he says, […]
Posted inEnvironment, Growth, News, Outdoors, Water
Plan to slow creeping Colorado River crisis could drain more water from Blue Mesa, Flaming Gorge reservoirs
Nearly two decades into a pervasive drought that has more to do with a warming climate than precipitation, the seven states that rely on the Colorado River are nearing completion of a seven-year plan to protect water in the West. The Upper Colorado River Basin Drought Contingency Plan — one of the most significant proposals […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Politics and Government
Plan to quadruple property tax rates for Colorado’s short-term rentals is nixed
The committee of Colorado lawmakers tasked with proposing fixes to a financial knot caused by conflicting state constitutional amendments has abandoned a plan to quadruple property-tax rates for homes rented to visitors on the short-term market. The Alternatives to the Gallagher Amendment Interim Study Committee on Wednesday punted a proposal to change the tax state […]