High praise for Ice Castles' first year in Cripple Creek, but return still to be decided

This week, the ice was melting at a first-of-its-kind attraction in the hills west of Colorado Springs, and optimism seemed high as the sun.

Ice Castles’ debut winter in Cripple Creek was “overwhelmingly successful,” said the city’s mayor, Annie Durham.

The sentiment was shared by the Utah-based company that was enjoying a retreat in Miami, where bosses reflected on the season that was for Ice Castles in other states including Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Hampshire.

No location performed better than newcomer Cripple Creek, said company founder and owner Brent Christensen.

“It exceeded any expectations we had by quite a bit,” he said.

That was in terms of how long the icy, Technicolor complex stayed open. Christensen has come to be satisfied by five or six weeks elsewhere. Cripple Creek’s high-altitude elements allowed artisans to spray water and build up walls, slides and tunnels for touring before Christmas. The structure remained firm and open until March 9 — an 11-week run.

Christensen’s expectations also were exceeded in terms of visitation.

The company guards ticket sales, but he suggested more than 100,000 people flocked to the small, isolated casino town that became accustomed to such crowds during the Pikes Peak gold rush.

For small businesses that have long feared the seasonal downturn, it might have been the best winter ever, said Jeff Mosher.

“I would say so unless you go back to the early 1900s, when Cripple Creek was booming,” said the man who courted Ice Castles as the city’s special projects director.

Christensen said visitation was likely helped by the proximity to a major metro and pent-up anticipation across the Front Range. In Colorado, Ice Castles last set up in Summit County before a three-year absence.

“I don’t know if we’d have that kind of turnout next year,” Christensen said. “But we’ll definitely, definitely want to come out.”

A potential return will be the talk of internal discussions over the coming weeks, Cripple Creek officials said.

“We would happily consider bringing them back,” Durham said. “It’ll just involve some conversations.”

Those conversations will be with what Mosher called “our response team,” including residents, public works, state patrol and Teller County’s Sheriff’s Office.

“Usually during the winter we have kind of a lull,” said Sheriff Jason Mikesell. “This year we didn’t see a lull in anything, from crime related, to traffic flow, to anything.”

He said he and his short-staffed team braced for the impact of as many as 600 more cars an hour on roadways due to Ice Castles, as previously projected. Concerns “came to fruition; there are issues that come with that,” Mikesell said.

But “for businesses, I truly think it did help the community in a lot of ways,” he said, adding he would be in support of an Ice Castles return.

That was on the condition of the melt-off underway.

In a cost-sharing deal between the city of Cripple Creek (25%), the casinos (25%) and the company (50%), Ice Castles estimated it would use 8 million gallons of water to form the attraction.

“Eight million gallons is a lot of water,” Mikesell said. “As it really starts to melt off, especially with all our snow now, how that’s going to affect things downstream, I don’t know. But we’re about to find out.”

It will be among “factors that we’ll be very mindful of going forward,” Durham said.

She said the city’s financial support came to about $18,000. Asked about that cost and the amount of water used, “Considering the positive benefit on the community, I feel like it was an agreeable trade-off,” Durham said.

Damage and water use became rising concerns around Dillon, where Ice Castles previously set up. That was in a public park, unlike the privately owned, hilltop fields that were agreed to in Cripple Creek.

Mosher in other ways differentiated the town from Ice Castles’ other stops in Breckenridge and Silverthorne.

“Ski towns,” he said. “Another 1,000 people coming in for Ice Castles, that creates parking issues and traffic issues on top of what they already had. ... We had the capacity to absorb traffic and absorb parking.”

He recognized traffic was much heavier than usual — on par with Cripple Creek’s annual two-weekend ice carving festival. “This was basically an Ice Fest for the entire winter,” Mosher said.

Durham said she heard “minimal complaints” from locals. She said the most resounding complaint came from visitors saying there weren’t enough restaurants beyond the casinos. Family options were reportedly often packed and under-staffed.

That underscored the town’s long struggle to attract year-round businesses and its more recent push to diversify the local economy beyond gaming.

Ice Castles was but one idea, Mosher said.

“This definitely helped us say, ‘Hey, look what could happen,’” he said.