The Outsider | Nederland ponders purchase of Eldora

Sneak Peek of the Week

Nederland “coloring outside the lines” with dream of buying Eldora ski area

Since Powdr announced plans to sell its Eldora Mountain Resort in August, the town of Nederland has been scrambling. Could the 1,500-resident Boulder County community raise the money to buy the 680-acre ski hill just outside of town?

“When this opportunity came up, it was important for us to think about it seriously,” Nederland Town Administrator Jon Cain said in a meeting with trustees Tuesday.

Nederland would need to raise somewhere between $100 million and $200 million to fund the acquisition of the ski area, which opened in 1962 near the former mining town of Eldora. Arapahoe Basin, which is twice as large as Eldora, sold this week to Alterra Mountain Co. for $105 million.

That’s a big bite for a small town.

Nederland officials have yet to complete a financial analysis of a potential bid and the cost of operating a ski resort, but they are in contact with Powdr and hope to make the second round of bidding that will allow the town to review the resort’s financials. A source with an investor group interested in acquiring Eldora told The Sun that Powdr rejected their initial bid below $100 million. A Powdr spokeswoman declined to comment on the sale process.

“It’s not our first choice to take on debt,” said Nederland Mayor Pro Tem Nichole Sterling during the Tuesday meeting. “But the (funding) vehicles as a public entity are different than the private sector. We will consider anything.”

There are several ski areas owned by local governments in Colorado. Durango opened its 7-acre Chapman Hill in 1966. That same year, Gunnison took over the previously privately owned, four-run Cranor Hill. Steamboat Springs took over its downtown Howelsen Hill in 1937. Silverton revived the dormant 35-acre Kendall Mountain — which first hosted skiers in 1963 but closed in 1982 — in the 1990s. Lake City opened its Lake City Ski Hill in 1966 but it was closed for 24 years before reopening in 1998. The tiny, free Lee’s Ski Hill in Ouray opened in the late 1940s. A nonprofit Lake County recreation board inked a 99-year lease to run Ski Cooper in 1942, after the Forest Service bought the former 10th Mountain Division training area from the military. And of course, the city of Denver opened the Winter Park ski area in 1940.

The Denver-owned Winter Park resort is now managed by Alterra Mountain Co. in a deal that seems to be a sort of model for Nederland. Except the city of Denver did not pay more than $100 million for Winter Park before negotiating a long-term deal that returns a chunk of annual revenue collected by Alterra back to the city. In 2023, Alterra Mountain Co. delivered a record-high $3.37 million to the city, based on total revenue collected at the 3,081-acre Winter Park ski area.

Early plans call for the town partnering with a private operator to run the ski area. Money for the purchase could come from crowdfunding, sponsorships, philanthropy, impact investors and federal and state grants that “have the potential to help us raise tens of millions of dollars,” according to an online document outlining the town’s interest in acquiring Eldora.

>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story

In Their Words

Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd takes his first job as a politician for Colorado’s state-sized 3rd District with a promise to listen and engage

Rep.-elect Jeff Hurd, the newly elected Congressman representing Colorado’s sprawling 3rd Congressional District, hopes to be a representative “who will listen and who will engage.”

“And if I disagree with you, I will do so without being disagreeable,” the Republican said this week from Washington, D.C., where he was learning the ropes of his first job as a politician. “I want to listen and be open to different perspectives and possibly change my approach to an issue based on what I hear from the people I represent.”

The 3rd Congressional District covers almost half of Colorado and is larger than some 23 states. He recognizes the diversity in his district, which ranges from mountain towns to agricultural communities to midsize cities including Grand Junction, Pueblo and Glenwood Springs.

Hurd cautions against looking too hard into Project 2025 for guidance on what a second term for President-elect Donald Trump might mean for Colorado’s rural communities and Western Slope. (The Colorado Sun looked at the 922-page Project 2025 document – written by staunch conservatives as a guide for a new president – as a potential roadmap for what may be coming under a second Trump administration.)

“I viewed it when I was running as a menu of options a Republican administration can take. Whether they take any of the proposals in that menu will be up to the new administration,” said Hurd, a lawyer who is 45 and raising his family of five in Grand Junction. “My general approach is to wait and see.”

Still, Hurd would support the Project 2025 recommendation that Trump move the Bureau of Land Management headquarters back to Grand Junction. (So does Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, according to a social media post Thursday morning from the governor.)

“Grand Junction offers proximity to public lands and better access to stakeholders and it ensures that taxpayer dollars are being used more efficiently,” he said. “I would expect that would improve accountability when it comes to land management decisions. I think decentralizing agencies like the BLM creates an opportunity to better engage local stakeholders and taxpayers. I expect we will be hearing more about this in 2025.”

Hurd remains opposed to calls for President Joe Biden to use the Antiquities Act and designate a new national monument around the Lower Dolores River in Mesa and Montrose counties. If Biden does create new national monuments — as departing presidents often do — Hurd said he would expect a response from the new president. He said he hopes that Biden does not move to create a new monument around the Dolores River.

“My primary concern is that unilateral designation like this fails to take into account input from stakeholders and local communities that would be most impacted by this designation,” Hurd said, noting strong opposition to the monument proposal in rural communities in Montrose County. “I support collaborative land use decisions developed through Congress. Using presidential action bypasses a critical role for Congress and, more importantly, local communities.”

Hurd said he wants to take a closer look at the impact of repealing Biden’s withdrawal of mineral and energy leases in the 221,000-acre Thompson Divide, which is another suggestion offered in the Project 2025 document.

“I think there is a way to balance environmental stewardship and responsible energy development,” said Hurd, a regulatory law attorney who focused on rural electric cooperatives, telecommunications providers and other businesses dealing with complex regulations. “We need to support energy security but we also need to make sure we account for local input and for conservation.”

The Outsider now has a podcast! Veteran reporter Jason Blevins covers the industry from the inside out, plus indulges in the fun side of being outdoors in our beautiful state.

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Breaking Trail

U.S. recreation economy tops $1.2 trillion

The t-word is back for another year of heavy rotation in the outdoor recreation industry.

The country’s surging outdoor recreation economy is sustaining a mighty bounce after the pandemic, reaching $1.2 trillion in economic output in 2023, up from $1.1 trillion in 2022, according to the latest numbers by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA. Since 2012, the outdoor recreation economy has grown by 36%.

“Consistency is part of our strength,” said Jessica Turner, the president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable that represents 110,000 outdoor businesses.

The seventh annual report from the federal government shows the outdoor recreation economy is bigger than agriculture, extractive industries and utilities, accounting for 2.3% of the nation’s total economic activity.

Recreation accounts for 5 million jobs, or 3.1% of all U.S. workers. The 3.6% annual increase in the outdoor recreation economy in 2023 surpassed the 2.9% overall growth in the U.S. economy.

The annual numbers released by the federal government support the industry’s push for legislation like the Explore Act, the nation’s largest-ever outdoor recreation bill that will streamline federal permitting policies, support rural recreation economies, protect rock climbing in wilderness and link long-distance bike trails.

The U.S. House unanimously passed the Explore Act in April and outdoor industry champions are pushing the U.S. Senate to take up the act’s companion legislation — America’s Outdoor Recreation Act — before the end of the year.

“BEA’s numbers today will help us make better decisions and support many other other pieces of legislation,” said Glenn Hughes, president of the 900-member American Sportfishing Association trade group in a meeting with BEA economists Wednesday.

Turner, one of the recreation industry’s top lobbyists, feels confident the Explore Act will get through the Senate. She’s also hoping the SHRED Act — or Ski Hills Resources for Economic Development Act, which would allow forests to retain 60% to 75% of the ski area rent fees collected in their boundaries — will land as part of a legislative package approved by the lame duck Congress this year. (The SHRED Act could be particularly impactful in Colorado’s White River National Forest, where 11 ski areas leasing federal land send close to $20 million a year to the U.S. treasury while the national forest endures budget cuts.)

Outdoor recreation jobs in Colorado increased 4.4% to 132,594 jobs in 2023, with those workers earning $8.6 billion, averaging nearly $65,000 per outdoor recreation job. Of those 132,594 jobs, the BEA counted 37,000 in retail shops, 31,000 in arts, entertainment and recreation businesses, 30,000 in lodging and food service and 4,200 in manufacturing.

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story

The Guide

CPW commissioners defend staff tasked with shepherding new wildlife management strategies

After a loss at the ballot box, advocates for reform of mountain lion hunting in Colorado are focusing on Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

At a meeting last week in Lamar where CPW commissioners unanimously adopted a 10-year management plan for mountain lions on the Eastern Slope of the state, opponents of hound-assisted hunting of lions lined up to blast the agency. They suggested the agency colluded with opponents of the failed Proposition 127, which would have banned lion hunting. They said the agency was beholden to out-of-state hunters seeking trophy cats.

Commissioners empathized with staff tasked with developing and implementing new management approaches for both lions and wolves.

“I feel sorry for the people in this agency that are working on some of this,” commissioner Marie Haskett said, referring to a petition signed by conservation groups and rural counties asking CPW to halt the wolf reintroduction program, “because we put a tremendous amount of hours and a tremendous amount of pressure on them for everything we do. You can see it in every one of their faces.”

>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story by Tracy Ross

Durango weighs bid for 2030 Mountain Bike World Championship race

You ever watch videos of the first-ever mountain bike world championships at Purgatory in the fall of 1990? Lean pedalers in bubble helmets and neon lycra grinding steel-frame bikes up steep ski runs, steering through singletrack with narrow handlebars and horn-like bar ends, flying over jumps with rigid forks and seat posts raised high.

That contest seeded mountain biking in the American cycling culture. It debuted a new way to ride and a new type of cyclist. Within a year, thousands of kids were racing knobby-tired bikes in local contests across the country. Within a decade, mountain bikers everywhere were cruising carbon-fiber, full-suspension whips.

The first-ever internationally sanctioned Mountain Bike World Championships also established Durango as a cycling capital. The city has forged Olympians and fostered communitywide support for trails. Now, a group of big-name local cyclists is pushing the city to bid for the 2030 World Championships for the 40-year anniversary of mountain biking’s seminal celebration.

“I was here at the 1990 World Championships,” Gaige Sippy said Tuesday night in a presentation to Durango City Council. “I watched this event kinda transpire in front of me as a kid from out of town and was awestruck by what took place.”

Sippy is the former longtime director of the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, a road race from Durango to Silverton that turns 53 next spring. He’s campaigning for the 2030 World Championships alongside Durango’s Olympic mountain biking legend Todd Wells and other local cycling luminaries.

The campaign argues that the 2030 World Championships — five days long with 800 athletes from 55 nations racing in all sorts of disciplines with 45 million television-watchers across the globe — would boost Durango and Purgatory’s international profile as a mountain biking destination and rally the local community for several years of economic benefit. (Host cities have three-year lead-ups, with a national championship in 2028 and a World Cup in 2029.)

>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story by freelancer Ryan Simonovich

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