Georgetown’s grubstaking grocery poised for change after 141 years

Sneak Peek of the Week

Change coming to one of Colorado’s oldest businesses

GEORGETOWN — The door creaks and in amble a couple of friends, smiling in their beanies and parkas.

“We just wanted to check in,” one of the women says. “We are so glad to see you in here, still doing this.”

Wendy and Smoky Anderson, standing at the same counter in the grocery store their great-grandfather and grandfather opened in 1893, chatter about neighbors and business. The Anderson siblings smile as they talk about their sister, Coralue, who died last month on her 87th birthday.

The women promise to return soon and head out. It’s a simple interaction and one that has been part of the Anderson family for four generations. Coralue, an avid skier and Georgetown historian, loved those little chats. Even as she lost a touch of her energy, she always had time to catch up and share some stories. For more than 30 years, she was at Kneisel & Anderson grocery every day.

“This store was her life,” says Wendy, who spent many years as professor of Swedish studies at the University of Washington before returning to the home where she was raised in Georgetown. “Skiing, the store and the history of Georgetown. Those were really important to Coralue.”

The loss of their sister has Wendy, 74, and Smoky, 77, thinking about a change. They think maybe it’s time to sell their family’s historic business and the building built by their great-grandfather Henry Kniesel in 1893. Kneisel and his son-in-law Emil Anderson — Smoky and Wendy’s grandfather — opened the Kneisel & Anderson grocery in 1883 and moved it across the street 10 years later. In 1912, the two men bought the hardware store next door.

And now, for the first time in 141 years, there might not be an Anderson behind the till in Georgetown.

Smoky and Wendy aren’t going anywhere though.

“I can’t imagine where I’d go,” says Smoky, who still skis regularly at Loveland, where, on opening day this season, they draped Coralue’s worn ski parka on the first chair.

“We both really like Colorado weather,” Wendy says.

“And we like small towns, and Georgetown is a real special community,” Smoky says.

The two siblings often speak like that, finishing each other’s sentences and voicing each other’s thoughts. They get quiet as the words of change drift through the store that has anchored not just their family, but the historical integrity of Georgetown.

“We have tried to maintain the store as long as we could,” Wendy says.

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Breaking Trail

Vail Resorts sold 2.3 million passes and lift tickets heading into 2024-25 ski season

Vail Resorts’ stock has been trading near a five-year low for several months after recent earnings reports that fell below investor expectations. But the company lost less than expected in the first quarter of its fiscal 2025. (The first three months of the company’s fiscal year –August through October – is typically a losing span.) With decent early-season snow fueling a final surge in Epic Pass sales for the 2024-25 season, the country’s largest resort operator looks ready for a Wall Street rebound.

In its quarterly report to investors this week, Vail Resorts said it had sold 2.3 million of its pass products — from advanced-purchase day tickets to full season passes — generating $975 million heading into the ski season. The pass sales mean about 75% of all the visitors to the company’s 43 ski areas are using passes or tickets purchased in advance. Last season, Vail Resorts reported 15.8 million visits to its 37 North American ski areas, down from a record 17.2 million in the 2022-23 ski season.

Pass sales for the 2024-25 season are about 2% below the previous season, but with an 8% increase in Epic Pass prices, revenue from sales is up 4%. Over the last four seasons, Vail Resorts has increased Epic Pass sales by 59% and revenue from those sales is up 47%.

The advanced sales give Vail Resorts “meaningful stability,” company CEO Kirsten Lynch told investors Monday in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 earnings call.

The company plans to invest $249 million to $254 million in its ski areas next year, including investment at its two recently acquired European resorts and planning for the new West Lionshead base village at Vail ski area.

A major part of the company’s 2025 plan includes multiyear projects at Park City and Vail ski areas. A new 10-seat gondola at Park City — alongside improvements to on-mountain dining and ski school terrain — and a new 1,800-spot parking garage are part of the plan to prepare Park City for hosting events at the 2034 Winter Olympics.

The company also is planning to renovate its Arrabelle at Vail Square hotel as part of an overhaul of Vail ski area’s base villages, which includes the fourth base village being developed in partnership with the Town of Vail and East West Partners.

Vail Resorts also said it was investing in the Breckenridge Peak 8 base area. At Keystone, the company is opening a hotel at the base of the River Run Gondola in the new Kindred Resort complex.

In 2024, the company invested $189 million to $194 million at its resorts, which does not include $13 million to launch the new My Epic Gear rental program at 12 of its ski North American areas.

Lynch told investors that the company saw “really strong” spending by guests last year and the My Epic Gear “innovation is really critical” as the company works to collect more revenue from its skiers. With transportation, lodging and now rental gear, the company is expanding the number of ways it can harvest money from visitors.

The company has $1.02 billion in accessible money, including $404 million in cash and $620 million in available credit.

One investor asked if the company planned to spend any of its cash on new ski areas. Lynch said the acquisition of two Swiss ski areas in 2022 and 2023 was a successful first step into Europe and the company is always looking for “more families or owners of assets who want to make a transition.”

“We do believe there are specific areas in North America we would like to acquire,” she said. “Europe is huge. Asia is a big opportunity as well.” Lynch, obviously, declined to name any ski areas the company would be interested in buying.

Another investor asked about how the company balances the pricing for its lift tickets with the cost of its season passes. The walk-up ticket price for a peak-season day at Vail reached $329 this season. The Epic Pass for the 2024-25 season cost $982 when it went on sale in March.

“We are not focused on lift ticket pricing being lower to drive volume,” said Lynch, adding the company sets the price of a lift ticket to “reflect the value” of a day of skiing and “encourage people to buy a pass. Right now, where we’ve landed with our pass results and our ticket pricing, I’m very pleased with the balance we have between those two.”

The coming fiscal year, which started Nov. 1, Vail Resorts told investors to expect the company to make $240 million to $316 million, which is higher than what was projected earlier this year thanks to $16.5 million bump in revenue from selling 23 acres in East Vail to the town of Vail following a fight over whether the company should develop the property into housing.

The Playground

Could this be Cuchara’s chance?

The Colorado outdoor recreation office has doled out more than $3.7 million to 49 projects in 27 counties in the last two years. The latest dollop of pandemic-recovery dollars from the U.S. Economic Development Administration is heading to the Cuchara ski area, which closed 24 years ago.

The $250,000 from the state is not going toward getting the shuttered ski area’s long idled chairlift running. It’s going toward operating expenses to support a now eight-year community-based effort to breathe new life into the southern Colorado ski hill.

“This one was a real learning curve,” said Conor Hall, the director of the state’s outdoor recreation office. “The grant for Cuchara was a great example of adapting and learning together to find a way that ultimately helps this project in a pretty big way.”

Last winter, after struggling to get the ski area’s base-area chairlift running and approved by the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board, the volunteers behind the effort to fire up Cuchara Mountain Park bolted 11 school bus seats to a car-hauling trailer on skids and attached it to PistenBully snowcat donated from the city of Denver and its Winter Park resort.

“It takes about five minutes for the ride up and then you get to ski back,” said Ken Clayton, with the nonprofit Panadero Ski Corp., which operates the ski area for Huerfano County.

The $250,000 Colorado State Outdoor Recreation Grant could not go toward work on the ski area’s Chair 4 because of federal guardrails on the funding. The nonprofit Cuchara Foundation that has driven the revival of the small ski hill since 2017 applied for the outdoor recreation grant last year, asking specifically for $162,000 to replace the electrical system for Lift 4 so it could pass state muster.

That request got mired in federal guidelines. This year, the Cuchara Foundation tweaked its application to ask for support for operational costs around the volunteer-run ski area, which charges $40 for a day of skiing on about 50 acres. On a snowy winter weekend, it’s not uncommon for more skiers to be skinning up the groomed track — accessing 230 acres of trails on the upper portion of the old ski area in the San Isabel National Forest — than riding in the sled. Uphill access is free — and welcomed — at Cuchara Mountain Park.

“The compliance was so complicated that the decision was made to not spend the federal money going through the state on the lift,” Clayton said. “That allows us to spend the grant money on operations and then we can put our operational funds we have set aside … toward the lift.”

The foundation also received $100,000 from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Outdoor Equity Grant Program, which directs support toward projects that reduce barriers to outdoor recreation. The grant at Cuchara Mountain Park will create two four-day ski and bike camps for students in Huerfano and Las Animas counties, with environmental education lessons alongside training on skis and bikes.

“This will help them envision possible future careers for themselves connected with the outdoors,” reads the foundation’s application for the grant.

A Great Outdoors Colorado grant also supported infrastructure improvements at the ski area.

The confluence of funds flowing into the Cuchara Valley and its struggling ski hill “perfectly captures the impact we are hoping for,” Hall said. “That community has been so inspirational with all the tenacity they have for this project. The benefits from reviving that ski area are long and multifaceted. It will be a source of jobs, community pride and in terms of access to the outdoors, just a tremendous opportunity for their quality of life.”

Cuchara was hosting 30,000 skiers a year when the Texas owner suddenly shut it down in 2000. It was one of several shutdowns by a series of Texas owners since the ski area opened in the 1980s and the Forest Service in 2002 yanked its permit to operate on about 345 federally managed acres. There have been attempts by investors in the past 20 years to fire up the lifts, but nothing has come to fruition.

The Cuchara Foundation raised $150,000 in 2017 to buy 47 acres at the base of the ski area, creating the county-owned Cuchara Mountain Park and sparking a now eight-year effort to get the base-area Chair 4 running.

“It’s going to be a new lift on old lift towers,” Clayton said. There are a lot of older chairlifts running in Colorado, but none of them were shut down for nearly 25 years.

“Now we have to meet modern standards to get that lift running again,” said Clayton, whose group is aiming to enlist lift workers this winter and have Chair 4 running by next summer.

Optimism is high around Cuchara. There’s a groundswell of community support for local ski hills. Nederland is vying to buy nearby Eldora Mountain Resort. Locals in Bend, Oregon, are corralling investors to buy Mt. Bachelor ski area. As behemoths battle for dominance in the ski industry, small nonprofit and municipally owned ski areas — like Lake County’s Ski Cooper, Steamboat Springs’ Howelsen Hill, Silverton’s Kendall Mountain and Durango’s Chapman Hill — are luring more skiers.

Could this be Cuchara’s chance?

“There is quite a bit of disruption in this space right now. Disruption is a powerful force that can drive lasting change,” Hall said.

U.S. Supreme Court justices explore the role of courts in NEPA review

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court this week seemed especially interested in an 88-mile stretch of proposed railway in rural Utah. Well, maybe not the actual tracks, but the federal process required to get the Uinta Basin Railway approved.

“Eighty-eight miles of track should not require more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis,” said attorney Paul Clement, arguing in support of the struggling railroad plan before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday in a case that could overhaul the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

Supreme Court justices peppered a trio of lawyers, including one representing Eagle County, with nearly two hours of questions, exploring not just the NEPA process, but how to balance the role of courts with federal agencies tasked with conducting ever-expanding NEPA reviews.

Should those federal agencies look at every possible impact — like, for example, the effect on a warming climate when refineries thousands of miles away from an oilfield process crude? Or the threat of oil spills into the Colorado River as that crude is hauled across the country?

Or should agencies just look at the specific project — like 88 miles of railroad tracks connecting the Uinta Basin oil fields to the national rail network — and let other agencies handle stuff like oil spills and pollution?

“What I worry about with your test is that you’re suggesting that the agency can’t even look at the, you know, effects of the project outside of the very piece that it has sole responsibility for,” Justice Elena Kagan told Clement. “And I don’t know that NEPA was actually designed to be that narrow.”

As more and more controversial NEPA reviews are dragged into court, federal agencies are pushing their analyses ever-further afield. So NEPA reviews often run into the thousands of pages and require several years of work.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said there was “an important distinction” to be made between the role of agencies using “reasonableness” in reviewing projects under NEPA and the role of the courts in reviewing the work of those agencies.

“It seems to me the deference of the courts has to be huge with respect to how the agencies think about the scope of what they’re going to consider,” Kavanaugh said. “By the courts taking an overly aggressive role, it’s in turn created an incentive for the agencies to do 3,000-page environmental impact statements.”

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