Vail Resorts announced its summer plans at its major resorts last week and one thing was conspicuously absent. Ziplining and canopy tours, once the foundation of an industry-wide expansion of summer amenities, have been dropped from the resort operator’s offerings at Vail and Breckenridge, apparently a victim of the labor crisis strangling ski areas. Company […]
Bonsai Design
Posted inBusiness, Education, Environment, Growth, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
The Western Slope’s outdoor recreation economy had everything but a bachelor’s degree. Colorado Mesa is changing that.
Sarah Shrader, the co-owner of the Grand Junction-based international zipline course developer and builder Bonsai Design, in November gathered a team of Colorado’s outdoor recreation industry executives. She had a simple question: What do they need from the next generation of outdoor industry leaders? The answers they gave — a robust grasp of the outdoor […]
Posted inBusiness, Growth, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
The Western Slope economy was already improving. Then Opportunity Zones added a power boost.
MONTROSE — David Dragoo leans over a balcony of the new headquarters for his Mayfly Outdoors. Inside, workers are forging high-end fly-fishing equipment. Outside, earth movers crawl across a dusty tract near cyclists leisurely pedaling along the lush banks of the Uncompahgre River. “Ten years ago, it just wasn’t cool to be here. It didn’t […]
Posted inBusiness, Energy, Environment, Growth, Outdoors
Are Colorado’s oil and gas and recreation industries all that different? Economists say no — and we need to protect them both
When the mines closed and the railroad left town in the 1980s, “pretty much everyone in Salida was unemployed,” Mayor P.T. Wood remembers. And when the West Slope oil and gas industry took a nosedive in 2014, sales tax revenue in Fruita plummeted 90%. Both communities have filled at least part of the void left […]