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Colorado - Tue. 01/14/25 |
A Free Business Publication from Alpine Bank
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COLORADO AGENCY APPROVES $475M IN BONDS FOR PURCHASE OF THE STANLEY HOTEL
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The state of Colorado is moving forward with its plans to purchase Estes Park landmark The Stanley Hotel and fund a substantial makeover of the property. The Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority approved issuing up to $475 million in bonds for the eventual purchase of the hotel. The bonds, which will be issued through a subsidiary called Space LLC, will help retire debt and acquire the existing Stanley properties, including all of the related land, the Hotel, the Aspire, the Concert Hall, the Carriage House, the Cryogenics Museum and everything related to the Stanley Hotel. The CECFA project will also help fund a $61 million addition to the hotel with 65 new guest rooms, along with a new covered entryway and lobby, and a new $66 million events center, which will be built near the existing Concert Hall and Carriage House. CECFA stepped up with a plan to buy the hotel after a deal to sell the Stanley to an Arizona nonprofit fell through.
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COLORADO LAWMAKERS OFFER $34 MILLION IN TAX INCENTIVES FOR SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
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Colorado lawmakers want to sweeten the pot in the campaign to land the Sundance Film Festival. “Our sights are set on raising the curtain for Colorado as the new home of the world-famous Sundance Film Festival,” Gov. Jared Polis said in his State of the State address Thursday. Legislation introduced this week, House Bill 1005, would offer $34 million in tax incentives to a film festival that sells more than 100,000 tickets and lures more than 10,000 out-of-state visitors. While the legislation does not specifically name the Sundance Film Festival, there are few film gatherings that would qualify. And only one major film festival is considering Colorado.
The Utah-based Sundance Institute in September named Boulder as one of three finalists to host the vaunted Sundance Film Festival from 2027 through 2036. Cincinnati and the festival’s 39-year host Park City — partnered with Salt Lake City down the road — are also vying to host the world’s second-largest film festival. The legislation allocates $4 million and $5 million a year in incentives through 2030 and then $3 million a year through 2036, with a maximum of $34 million.
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TROUT TOURNEY RETURNS TO BLUE MESA: $10,000 IN PRIZE MONEY
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Colorado Parks and Wildlife will once again offer $10,000 in prize money for the Blue Mesa Reservoir lake trout tournament winners. The tournament runs from Jan. 1 to April 30. The ice is thin but should continue to develop and likely extend to the lower two basins of Blue Mesa with more cold weather in the coming weeks. To participate, anglers who harvest a lake trout 24 inches or smaller should cut the fish’s head off behind the gills and turn the heads in to a collection point. The collection points are at the Elk Creek, Iola and Lake Fork marinas. Heads can also be turned in at CPW’s offices in Gunnison and Montrose. The angler who turns in the most fish heads will earn the first-place prize of $3,000. The second-place award is $1,500, third place will take home $1,000 and fourth place will earn $500. Anglers participating in the tournament must possess a valid Colorado fishing license and follow all Colorado boating and fishing regulations.
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NEW FOOD TRUCK WILL BE PERMANENT FIXTURE AT FENCELINE CIDER IN MANCOS
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Fenceline Cider in Mancos reopened Friday after being closed for 10 days with a new addition out front: A wood-fired pizza food truck called Sweetwater Gypsies. Sweetwater Gypsies is “a permanent fixture at Fenceline Cider.” The new food truck plans to stick to what it does best – make wood-fired pies – and eventually put more energy into expanding the menu and add salads once they’re more settled, said Monica Marty, owner of Sweetwater Gypsies. They also plan to bring in a lot of local products; the menu will change with what’s available locally. Just last year, Sweetwater Gypsies secured its first enclosed trailer with a wood-fired oven; 14 years prior, it had operated with a mobile oven under a pop-up canopy tent, Marty said. Both establishments will now be open Monday, Thursday and Friday – for lunch. Both are closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and open at 2 p.m. on the weekends.
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VEHICLE RECOVERY TO CLOSE EASTBOUND I-70 NEAR EAST VAIL FOR AT LEAST 6 HOURS
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The Colorado Dept. of Transportation will close eastbound Interstate 70 at Exit 180 to East Vail on Tuesday, Jan. 14, to remove commercial motor vehicle wreckage. The closure will begin at 9 a.m., when traffic volume is typically the lowest. The eastbound closure for the recovery operation is expected to last about six hours. Traffic will be detoured off I-70 at Exit 180, which will send drivers traveling east on U.S. 24 to Leadville before directing them onto Colorado Hwy. 91 north to rejoin eastbound I-70 at Copper Mountain. Motorists should be prepared to add an additional 90 minutes to their travel time.
The vehicle recovery follows a crash that occurred Jan. 8 around 8 p.m. Colorado State Patrol and local fire and emergency services responded to the crash that involved a commercial motor vehicle traveling westbound that crossed the median and collided with another commercial motor vehicle as well as passenger vehicles that were traveling east. Fuel leaking from the diesel tank required hazmat cleanup, preventing vehicle recovery at the time. For the latest road closure updates, travelers can visit COTrip.org.
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EAGLE RIVER FIRE PROTECTION SENDS TWO FIRE TRUCKS, CREWS TO LA FIRES
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The Eagle River Fire Protection District is sending two wildland fire trucks and their crews to help battle the multiple fires devastating the Los Angeles area. According to an email from district public information officer Tracy Trulove, the trucks, equipped with type 3 wildland gear left Friday for Southern California to a mobilization center to be assigned specific duties. The crews will be on assignment for up to 14 days. The crew from Eagle River Fire will join crews from around the nation in fighting the fires in the Los Angeles area that have burned thousands of acres and destroyed thousands of buildings.
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MORE WOLVES AS RELOCATION OPERATION BEGINS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
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Colorado’s next wolves from British Columbia are on the way to Colorado. The first of the transplants may already be in the state. On Saturday, Colorado Parks and Wildlife stated in a press release that the operations to capture and bring up to 15 more wolves from Canada started on Friday and would last up to two weeks. The next day, reports surfaced that a plane carrying wolves leaving Prince George, British Columbia, landed at the Eagle County Regional Airport in Gypsum.
Reports of the possible arrival of wolves surfaced Sunday on the Colorado Wolf Tracker Facebook page, which had been tracking possible wolf flights during the past week. The plane that landed in Eagle County on Sunday afternoon was identified as a plane from LightHawk Conservation Flying’s fleet. LightHawk is a Grand Junction-based nonprofit that flew the transport flights during Parks and Wildlife’s last wolf translocation efforts in December 2023. The plane flew directly from British Columbia to Gypsum. All 10 wolves brought from Oregon in 2023 were released in Colorado the day after their capture.
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LAND EXCHANGE IN GRAND AND SUMMIT COUNTIES COMPLETE
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The federal government announced Monday, Jan. 13 that it has completed a land exchange trading parcels of private land for public land in Summit and Grand counties. The Bureau of Land Management said that it has closed on the land exchange with Blue Valley Ranch, which is owned by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones II. The Blue Valley Ranch land exchange, decades in the making, trades nine parcels of federal land totaling 1,489 acres in Grand County for nine parcels of private land totaling 1,830 acres in Grand and Summit counties.
The land exchange was first proposed in some form in 2001, with the stated purposes of addressing the “checkerboard nature” of ownership in the area. Blue Valley Ranch has said that the public gains more from the land exchange than it loses. As part of the exchange, the ranch has agreed to cover the costs of river restoration work for a three-quarter-mile stretch of the Blue River near its confluence with the Colorado River, pay for the creation of the Confluence Recreation Area with more than 2 miles of new walking trails and wheel-chair accessible fishing platforms and provide Summit County with $600,000 for new open space acquisition.
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SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE TO COLORADO STUDENTS PURSUING ENVIRONMENT-RELATED STUDIES
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There are only a few weeks left to apply for the Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) Grossman Scholarships and My Outdoors Colorado (MOC) Scholarship. Available scholarship funds total $50,000 and will be distributed amongst seven individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to caring for our environment’s natural resources and are pursuing secondary education through an accredited environmental, natural resource, climate, or outdoor industry-related program in Colorado. For more information on eligibility, requirements, and applications, please visit voc.org/grossman-scholarship or email scholarships@voc.org. Applications are due by Feb. 2, 2025, at 11:59 pm MST.
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AMERICANS STILL FLOCKING TO THESE STATES BUT AT SLOWER PACE
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Americans are still flocking to Sun Belt states, but at a much slower pace than in previous years. All of the top destinations — Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida — saw a significant drop in domestic migration for the year ending July 1, 2024. To track state-to-state migration trends, the U.S. Census Bureau used data from the American Community Survey and anonymized IRS address changes. Meanwhile, states that have consistently had a net loss of residents, such as New York and California, saw fewer people leaving — suggesting that fewer Americans are moving overall.
Here’s a look at the states with the highest net influx of residents from other states between July 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024:
- Texas: 85,267
- North Carolina: 82,288
- South Carolina: 68,043
- Florida: 64,017
- Tennessee: 48,476
- Arizona: 34,902
- Alabama: 26,028
- Georgia: 25,321
- Nevada: 16,853
- Idaho: 16,383
- Oklahoma: 14,036
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AMERICANS ARE TIPPING LESS THAN THEY HAVE IN YEARS
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People are tipping less at restaurants than they have in at least six years, driven by fatigue over rising prices and growing prompts for tips at places where gratuities haven’t historically been expected.
- The average tip at full-service restaurants dropped to 19.3 percent for the three months that ended Sept. 30 and hasn’t budged much since. The decline highlights a bind restaurants find themselves in, as they face rising costs of ingredients and labor amid customer frustration over spiraling bills.
- Tipping at U.S. sit-down restaurants in the past six years peaked at 19.9 percent in early 2021, when Americans were likely to express gratitude as Covid-19 lockdowns eased.
- About 38 percent of consumers reported tipping restaurant servers 20 percent or more in 2024.
- That’s down from 56 percent of consumers in 2021, as budgets are weighing more on diners’ minds.
- Americans went to restaurants less in 2024 than they did in 2023.
- Restaurant chains and operators last year declared the most bankruptcies in decades, with the exception of 2020, when Covid-19 shutdowns decimated the industry. High-profile bankruptcies in 2024 included casual-dining chains Red Lobster and TGI Fridays.
- Restaurant workers didn’t fare much better. Waiters, bartenders, cooks and other restaurant workers averaged less time working per week last year than 2023.
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MARKET UPDATE - 01/13/2025 Close
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(Courtesy of Alpine Bank Wealth Management*)
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Canadian dollar (per U.S. dollar)
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Mexican peso (per U.S. dollar)
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30-year fixed mortgage rate (Freddie Mac 01/09/2025)
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*Not FDIC insured. May lose value. Not guaranteed by the bank.
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Alpine Bank is an independent, employee-owned organization with headquarters in Glenwood Springs and banking offices across Colorado's Western Slope, mountains and Front Range. Alpine Bank serves customers with retail, business, wealth management*, mortgage and electronic banking services. Learn more at alpinebank.com.
*Alpine Bank Wealth Management services are not FDIC insured, may lose value and are not guaranteed by the bank.
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