The incredible growing (& shrinking) ski resort
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- Created on Monday, 28 March 2011 19:04
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
Here's an interesting recap of Rocky Mountain ski resorts that developers have been trying to expand - and what's become of those efforts.
Can you say Red McCombs and Wolf Creek, anyone?
Writes Sarah Gilman in the High Country News:
Do you remember those little packets of gel-cap pills? The ones that would, when submerged in water, swell to become little sponge dinosaurs? Only the little sponge dinosaurs were tiny and flat and lame and never came close to the awesomeness promised by the full-sized dinosaurs rampaging across the label?
Seems that could be the parable for lots of ski area development proposals these days. There's Battle Mountain, a private ski area proposed for Minturn, Colo., whose original developer pulled out and whose new developers, who came on the scene last year, have whittled it down considerably.
There's the infamous Bitterroot Resort just outside of Missoula, Mont., which fell into foreclosure in 2009, but whose developers are still, apparently, clinging to hope.
And then, there's a personal favorite of mine, at least as far as soap-operatic twists and turns go: The ambitious Village at Wolf Creek in Colorado, which came up in the news again earlier this month.
Packaging: Ever since the project surfaced in the late '80s, it has appeared to be something of a T. Rex. The baby of ClearChannel Communications cofounder B.J. "Red" McCombs, it roared ferociously in with enough space to house 10,000 people -- that is, 1,200 hotel rooms, 1,661 multi-family dwellings, 129 lots for single family homes, 4,525 covered parking spaces, and 220,000 square feet of commercial space -- on an inholding within the existing, relatively wee Wolf Creek Ski Area, deep in the San Juan Mountains.
This in a county with fewer than 1,000 permanent residents. (Run away! No, wait ... If you don't move, it can't see you ...)
Read the entire story of the fate of these ski resorts in the High Country News.
PHOTO: Enjoying a ski hill to oneself (or so it seemed) at Wolf Creek.
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