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Colorado - Thu. 03/13/25 |
A Free Business Publication from Alpine Bank
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DENVER’S LARGEST LAW FIRM OPENS PHOENIX OFFICE
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Holland & Hart, Denver’s largest law firm, announced Tuesday that it has added an office in Phoenix, marking its expansion into the company's 14th U.S. market. Holland & Hart will team with environmental lawyers Christopher Thomas and Andrea Driggs formerly of Perkins Coie to open the Phoenix office. Several more environmental lawyers are expected to join the Phoenix office in the coming weeks. Holland & Hart is Denver's largest law firm, with over 250 attorneys practicing in the Denver area and about 500 attorneys firmwide. Most of the firm's locations are concentrated in the West and Southwest, with other offices in Aspen and Boulder, Billings, Boise, Cheyenne, Jackson Hole, Las Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, Anchorage and Washington, D.C.
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CSP, DENVER PD TO STEP UP ENFORCEMENT OPERATIONS THIS WEEKEND
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More than a half million revelers are expected to be on the streets Saturday for this year’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in downtown Denver. It will be the 63rd year of the Denver St. Patrick’s Parade and it is one of the largest in the country with 10,000 marchers, more than 200 floats and a post-parade pub crawl. The Denver Police Dept. has released a statement saying parade-goers should expect to see “a significant uniformed officer presence on the 16th Street Mall and throughout all of downtown.” Denver PD officers will be on foot and using bicycles, patrol vehicles and motorcycles, and will take enforcement actions, if necessary.
Over the St. Patrick’s Day weekend, Denver PD will conduct DUI patrols within LoDo, as well as the Broadway-Speer-I-25 corridor. Likewise, the Colorado State Patrol will increase DUI patrols throughout Jefferson and Clear Creek Counties from Friday through Sunday, also focused on deterring impaired driving on major traffic arteries and feeder roads during the St. Patrick’s Day holiday weekend. Denver RTD spokesperson M. Marta Sipeki said the best bet for parade goers is to take any Union Station-bound train: E and W light rail lines or A, B, G and N commuter rail lines or Union Station-bound buses. People can also use RTD’s Plan A Trip application found on RTD's website, which will show transit options.
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BLOOD MOON RISING, WITH A TOTAL ECLIPSE
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For the first time in three years, there will be a chance for viewers in North and South America to see the moon turn a rusty red during a total eclipse. It is a phenomenon known as the “blood moon.” Late Thursday into the wee hours of Friday, Earth’s shadow will fall across the moon, blocking it from the sun’s light, as the three align. If the skies are clear, people in the Western Hemisphere, including the entire continental U.S. and most of Alaska and Hawaii, are in for a celestial treat. Total lunar eclipses last longer than total solar eclipses, and the eclipse this week begins at 11:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday and ends at 6 a.m. Friday.
For roughly the first 2½ hours, the moon will slowly enter the Earth’s shadow, resulting in a partial eclipse lasting from 1:09 a.m. to 2:26 a.m. During the next hour or so after, the moon will be fully within the umbra, or the inner, darkest part of Earth’s shadow, and totally eclipsed from 2:26 a.m. to 3:31 a.m. This is when the entire body looks red. The spectacle then plays out in reverse. Unlike a total solar eclipse, you can look at a total lunar eclipse with your naked eye. Binoculars and telescopes aren’t required for viewing but can enhance the experience.
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BRACKETOLOGY: THE MADNESS IS AT HAND
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March Madness, the 2025 version, is at hand as Sunday, March 16 is Selection Sunday. The NCAA basketball tournament ranks as the top-watched and top-wagered sporting event. With more states having legalized betting, there are more wagering options, with NCAA Tournament bracket pools available to enter on major media sites like ESPN, CBS, Yahoo and NCAA.com bracket challenge. Also, top online sportsbooks like FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesars, Fanatics and ESPN BET have bracket contests while also offering daily college basketball odds, props and promotions for betting each game during 2025 March Madness.
The American Gaming Association estimates, out next week for NCAA Tournament betting, will show Americans wagering nearly $3 billion on the NCAA men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments. Those gigantic sums of money do not include bets placed outside of the U.S. The amount wagered on 2025 March Madness will be three to four times that amount when including offshore, online sportsbooks outside the U.S. like Panama-based BetOnline, which has been a market leader for more than 30 years providing more betting options, contests and NCAA bracket pools for fans.
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ASPEN WILL CONDUCT NATIONAL SEARCH FOR NEW CITY MANAGER
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At its regular meeting Tuesday, the Aspen City Council agreed to proceed with preparing a request for proposals for executive firms to conduct its search for a new city manager. The council is seeking to move as quickly as possible by securing a firm to conduct the search for a manager to replace Sara Ott, whose last day was Feb. 28. The city expects the bid process to be open for about four weeks to select a finalist for the recruitment process. Once a firm is chosen, a national search will begin for the next city manager. It is the same process the city conducted in 2019, when Ott was ultimately chosen to helm the city. The application at that time garnered 64 applicants. The entire process, including recruitment, evaluation and selection, is expected to take six to nine months.
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MORGAN MINING OPEN IN GJ, BEGINNING FIRST PHASE HIRING
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Morgan Mining has begun expanding its operation in Grand Junction and will continue to take over buildings at the former Haliburton campus near Clifton as it is in the process of hiring 893 new workers over the next eight years. Morgan Mining is a contract mining and labor service provider and has already begun sending some 50 people to work at sites in Colorado and Utah.
President Joseph Morgan said, “We are hiring right now. A lot of that’s going to be mostly people with current experience in underground mining. We’re heavily invested in the coal industry but are also expanding into minerals every day. A big focus of ours is growing in all things mining. We have a very specific focus in underground. That’s where we have the experts and expertise that helps us stick out the most. You’ll hear about us growing not just in Colorado but also in the neighboring states.” Morgan added that most of the training will go on in Grand Junction. "We’ll be bringing people from neighboring states and across the country to be doing training at the facilities in Colorado and at the office there in Grand Junction.”
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HABITAT FOR HUMANITY VAIL VALLEY RAISES $1 MILLION AT CARPENTERS’ BALL
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Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and at its annual fundraiser, the Carpenters’ Ball on Saturday, March 8, the nonprofit raised $1 million. Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley plans to deliver 30 homes this year and has had 248 applications for the homes. In 2024, there were 170 applications submitted for the 24 homes built. Habitat has been working to find more creative ways to provide affordable housing, and in addition to traditional-site built homes, it is using public-private partnerships, modular construction and other means. Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley built 100 homes in its first 26 years and the next 100 will be built in seven years.
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FIRST HOLLYWOOD, THEN BOLLYWOOD, THEN MOLLYWOOD
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It took a decade to produce, but Zoya Akhtar, a filmmaker in India, whose father also wrote many film scripts, finally released her film, “Superboys of Malegaon,” a Hindi-language film based on the life of Nasir Shaikh. Shaikh is a cinematic legend for his no-budget, handmade films that turned his hometown of Malegaon into a rags-to-riches locale.
Some thirty years ago, Shaikh was an attendant in his family’s “video parlor,” a very loose term for dingy small buildings that showed pirated and unlicensed movies. Shaikh, with his friends joining in, decided to make movies which were recreations of popular films, making sure to change them just enough to avoid copyright infringement.
Shaikh's dream was to make Malegaon, which is some 200 miles from Mumbai, into “Mollywood.” The VHS camera Shaikh, now 52, used to make his early movies was also used to record weddings. Costumes came from thrift stores. Actors were friends who got no pay, though Shaikh tried to find substitutes for their shifts at the mill or the restaurant. For a spoof of “Superman,” Shaikh cast a scrawny textile worker as the hero. At one turn, Malegaon’s Man of Steel fights a local tobacco don who is ruining people’s health; at another he dives into a canal to save children. (It mattered little for the edit that in real life he could not swim.)
This Superman could fly, by tying him horizontally to a pole extending from a moving wagon, with an assistant flapping his cape to simulate wind, or by shooting him in front of a green screen that was a sheet hung from the side of a truck. This Superman could lip-sync and dance with the heroine in a field of yellow flowers. Shaikh's movies, most of them parodies of Bollywood hits, became wildly successful in Malegaon. When his first film ran in the parlors, it brought in four times the few hundred dollars in borrowed money that he and his friends had spent to make it.
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FINAL INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL DATA FOR 2024
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The National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) Wednesday released its final report of international travel volume for the calendar year 2024:
Arrivals to U.S. 2024
- Total international visitor arrivals of 72,390,321 increased 9.1 percent from 2023 to 91.1 percent of arrivals in 2019
- All world regions reported an increase in visitor volume to the United States from 2023 to 2024
- The largest region in visitor volume was Western Europe with 13,067,365
- Asia recorded the largest percentage increase of 21.6 percent
- The world region that reported the smallest percentage increase in 2024 was Oceania with a 6.3 percent increase
U.S. Departures 2024
- Total U.S. citizen international visitor departures from the United States for calendar year 2024 of 107,713,681 increased 9.2 percent from 2023 to a level of 108 percent of 2019 departures
By world region, U.S. departures in calendar year 2024 were as follows:
- 4 surpassed 130 percent of 2019 levels: Africa (160 percent of 2019 departures), Central America (145 percent), South America (141 percent), and Middle East (131 percent)
- 3 were between 100 percent and 125 percent: Caribbean (121 percent), Europe (117 percent), and Asia (103 percent)
- 2 were below 2019 departures: North America (98 percent), and Oceania (94 percent)
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FORECAST OF INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL TO THE U.S. 2025
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Although some major U.S. airlines this week released statements lowering expectations for domestic travel in the U.S., on Monday, the National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) released its official forecast of international visitation to the United States. The NTTO forecast:
- International visitors to the U.S. will increase to 77.1 million in 2025
- Up 4.7 million, or 6.5 percent, from 72.4 million in 2024
- Projecting out, international arrivals are forecast to reach 85 million in 2026, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 visitation of 79.4 million
- International arrivals for 2027: 90.1 million and 96.7 million by 2029
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MARKET UPDATE - 03/12/2025 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 03/06/2025)
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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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