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Colorado - Thu. 05/29/25 |
A Free Business Publication from Alpine Bank
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TRADE COURT STRIKES DOWN PRES. TRUMP'S GLOBAL TARIFFS
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A federal trade court ruled President Trump didn’t have the authority to impose sweeping tariffs on virtually every nation, voiding the levies that have sparked a global trade war and threatened to upend the world economy. The decision on Wednesday from the Court of International Trade blocked one of the Trump administration’s assertions of executive power, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
Shortly after the decision was handed down, lawyers for the Trump administration notified the court they will appeal. U.S. stock-index futures rose sharply following the decision. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 all stood more than 1 percent higher in early trading Thursday. European and Asian stocks also rallied. The extension offers the EU a reprieve, after President Trump threatened a 50 percent tariff that was set to take effect on June 1. Congress typically holds responsibility over tariffs but has delegated many powers to the president over decades. Wednesday’s ruling said it would be unconstitutional for Congress to delegate “unbounded tariff power” to the president.
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WEEKLY MONITORING: INCREASED CITATIONS FOR SPEEDING, CARRYING CHAINS
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The Colorado State Patrol held a news conference on Tuesday to provide an update of the increased chain law enforcement program implemented by CSP, along with local law enforcement agencies, on Interstate 70 this winter. The program had officers conduct weekly enforcement operations beginning in February. Commercial vehicles are required by law to carry chains from Sept. 1 through May 31 on I-70 and other mountain roads, and during the weekly stops, 1,836 commercial vehicles were inspected, with CSP troopers issuing 109 citations for failure to carry chains, or about 6 percent. While the focus during those weekly operations was on commercial vehicles, law enforcement officers also contacted passenger motor vehicles, especially to enforce speeding infractions.
Law enforcement officers contacted 760 passenger vehicles during the weekly operations, issuing speeding citations to 399 passenger vehicles, or about 52 percent of the passenger vehicles stopped. The Colorado State Patrol also conducted chain law enforcement at ports of entry, active chain-up stations and during daily roadside contacts. Anytime a state trooper stops a commercial vehicle, there is a specific focus on checking for chains. Enforcement operations at the Dumont port of entry alone have resulted in 1,382 citations for trucks not carrying chains, a 30 percent increase from the number of failures to carry citations issued last year. Law enforcement officers this winter issued 374 citations to commercial vehicles that failed to chain up when the chain law was in effect due to adverse conditions and 122 citations to commercial vehicles that did not chain up and ended up blocking a portion of the road.
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INTRODUCED WOLVES NOW COVER THE WESTERN SLOPE VIRTUALLY BORDER-TO-BORDER
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Colorado Parks and Wildlife released the latest map of Collared Gray Wolf Activity, covering April 22 to May 27, 2025. The latest map shows an expanded number of watersheds on the Western Slope where wolf activity had been detected. Wolves for the first time pushed into southwest Colorado, including in watersheds northeast of Durango that include parts of San Juan, La Plata and Archuleta counties. The wolves’ territory now spreads from near the Utah border west of Montrose, to the Wyoming border north of Walden, to near the New Mexico border outside of Pagosa Springs. The canines also remained in watersheds just west of metro Denver in Boulder, Gilpin and Clear Creek counties.
Any Colorado wolves that wander into Utah, New Mexico or Arizona will be retrieved and brought back to the Centennial State, under agreements state wildlife officials inked with those neighboring states. Four of the 15 wolves captured in Canada and released here in January have died: two were killed in Wyoming, one died in Rocky Mountain National Park and a fourth died May 15 in northwest Colorado.
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COLORADO STATE PARK RECOGNIZED AS GOLD STANDARD SITE BY OUTDOOR ED GROUP
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The Boulder-based nonprofit, Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, an outgrowth of a partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Outdoor Leadership School to expand the outdoors education curriculum to educate visitors on the Leave No Trace philosophy, has named Cheyenne Mountain State Park as a Gold Standard Site, the highest recognition from the organization. The Gold Standard distinction is for sites that pay for training and develop an action plan, demonstrating how infrastructure and programming will educate visitors on Leave No Trace principles. Sites must apply every five years to maintain their status.
Cheyenne Mountain State Park is Colorado's sixth state park to be named a Gold Standard Site. The others are Golden Gate Canyon, Roxborough, Castlewood Canyon, Barr Lake and Highline state parks. The city of Colorado Springs' Parks Dept. and Jefferson County's open space program also hold Gold Standard titles. Cheyenne Mountain State Park tallied 192,616 visits last year. Visitation pales in comparison to Golden Gate Canyon, which is one of Colorado's busiest state parks with nearly 1.8 million visits reported in 2024 but is comparable to other state parks with Gold Standard status.
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KSL PARTNERS TAKE A MAJORITY STAKE IN LUXURY MALDIVES RESORT OPERATOR
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KSL Capital Partners, the Denver-based private equity firm with investments focused on the travel and leisure industries, acquired a majority-interest in the Bangkok-based hospitality company, Soneva Group that owns multiple luxury resorts in the Maldives. The resorts include a variety of amenities including organic gardens, outdoor cinemas, open-air bathrooms and private observatories. KSL Capital Partners owns several hospitality brands and resorts including Pennsylvania-based Apple Leisure Group, Denver-based ski giant Alterra Mountain Co., Denver-based glamping company Under Canvas, Australia-based Baillie Lodges and Beaumier, a European boutique hotel business. Last month, it purchased a luxury, five-star resort in Venice, Italy, in a move to strategically expand its presence in Europe.
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RTD WILL HOLD A JOB FAIR FRIDAY, MANY JOB OPENINGS
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The Regional Transportation District will host a career fair on Friday, as the bus and rail operator is looking to hire as many as 85 bus operators, as well as people for maintenance, technical and supervisory roles. The RTD Bus and Rail Career Fair will take place from 3-6 p.m. Friday at the agency's Platte Division, 3333 Ringsby Court in Denver. Those who are hired as bus or rail operators will receive a $4,000 signing bonus, paid training and a wage starting at $25.96 per hour. Qualified candidates need to have had a domestic driver's license valid for at least two years. RTD will have kiosks on-site for applicants to fill out forms, and RTD staff will be available to assist with the application process. Based on applications, selected candidates will be invited to a pre-hire session for bus and rail operators. More information is available at rtd-denver.com.
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DRO STILL OPERATES WITHOUT AN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TOWER, EVEN WITH GROWTH
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Currently, the Durango-La Plata County Airport (DRO) is a “non-towered” airport, and pilots use a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency, an open radio frequency, to communicate their positions and flight intentions to other aircraft and any vehicles on the ground. The airport has one asphalt runway measuring 9,201 by 150 feet. With CTAF, or pilot-to-pilot communication, a protocol is used to let other pilots know step-by-step flight status and current location using call signs for takeoff and landing, finishing with the code word “Durango.” At controlled airports, tower personnel make the calls. Air traffic control at Durango is monitored by the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center in Longmont. As a result, everything is based on radio communication with other pilots.
DRO has 22 full-time employees, but none are involved in air traffic control. The airport now handles about 40,000 aircraft operations annually, including private flights, recreational flying and other non-scheduled flights; scheduled commercial flights; air taxi flights operated by smaller airlines or companies providing transportation services; and military flights. Durango has been efficient and there has never been a permanent control tower at the airport, although temporary towers have been installed during wildfires. Montrose Regional Airport operates as a non-tower airport. According to Tony Vicari, director of aviation at DRO, there are no current plans to add a control tower. Building a control tower would cost $10 million to $20 million, plus significant staffing and operational costs.
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ARE YOU UP ON THE LATEST TRAVEL TERMS? LAND SNORKELING? TOWN SIZING?
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The lexicon of travel is always changing, as destinations, travel interests, maybe even social media adopt new descriptions of travel interests and trends. While most know that bleisure is a trip that combines business with pleasure, here is a guide for some of the current travel terms:
- Detour destinations: very simply, “less well-known and less crowded than tourist hot spots”
- Land snorkeling: coined by Montana-based artists Clyde Aspevig and Carol Guzman, land snorkeling is paying attention to where you are, instead of where you are headed, just as you might focus looking for tropical fish and other features of a reef when snorkeling
- JOMO travel: basically, the counter to FOMO, or fear of missing out, JOMO is the joy of missing out by taking a vacation for just relaxing and ditching your phone and work
- Live tourism: travel new site Skift came up the “live tourism” to describe the increase in people booking trips around live events in entertainment, sports or natural phenomena…think Taylor Swift and the total solar eclipse
- Townsizing: your next vacation is townsized if instead of big-city buzz you opt for small-town vibes in easygoing destinations. Popular townsizing destinations include Stowe, Vt., Mackinac Island, Mich., and Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.
- Noctourism: this is travel for nighttime adventures, such as stargazing, swimming in phosphorescent bays, etc.
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ONLY THE FRENCH OPEN AT ROLAND-GARROS STILL USES HUMAN LINE JUDGES
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Only in France. Championship tennis has embraced technology, as now the Australian Open, the U.S. Open, and even the fiercely old-school All-England Club, and its Wimbledon Championships, have adopted electronic line-calling for all matches. The only Grand Slam tournament which still uses human line judges is the French Open on the red clay at Roland-Garros. The clay surface does provide more evidence where a ball may land, as ball marks on the clay are visible. However, decoding the clay remains an art. A lob that lands straight down, for instance, will make a smaller imprint than a wicked forehand that streaks across the surface. A shot that hits a line might only leave a faint trace. Another could bounce inside a footprint.
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BOOKER AWARD WINNER REPRESENTS REMARKABLE AUTHOR-TRANSLATOR ACHIEVEMENT
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Last week, the International Booker Prize was awarded to “Heart Lamp,” a collection of stories from Banu Mushtaq. Ms. Mushtaq’s translator Deepa Bhasthi selected the stories that make up “Heart Lamp” from among Ms. Mushtaq’s collection of more than 60 stories written over three decades and first published in Kannada-language journals. The collaboration that won the two women the world’s most prestigious award for fiction translated into English represents an extraordinary empowerment of Ms. Bhasthi in the author-translator relationship.
Finding translations for such vernacular language can be a challenge and Ms. Bhasthi made her migration of Kannada to English an act of creation, which was recognized and lauded by the Booker evaluators. The Booker jury chairman, Max Porter, a writer, called the book “something genuinely new for English readers.” He said the work was “a radical translation” that created “new textures in a plurality of Englishes” and expanded “our understanding of translation.”
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ONCE ONLY KNOWN FOR CRIME, THIS ITALIAN PORT CITY HAS BECOME A TOURIST SPOT
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Most U.S. tourists going to Italy are focused on Rome, or Milan, or Florence and if, for any reason, they were to head to Puglia, the region of the boot of Italy, it would be only because they had relatives there or they were going to beach resorts in the Adriatic Sea or to Greece by ferry. Bari, the capital of the Puglia region, is a town of 330,000, but its only real claim to fame was that it was a center of mob crime and its old town was so dangerous that even residents considered it off-limits. However, Puglia has a stunning coastline, beautiful architecture, and a very relaxed, laid-back feel. Bari has a nine-mile seafront promenade and the tomb of the real Saint Nicholas. Some famous visitors, like Madonna, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep, were regular visitors, but it certainly was not known as a tourist stop.
Last year, Italy picked Puglia for the Group of 7 summit, hosting dignitaries in the luxury resort of Borgo Egnazia. Italian carrier Neos announced direct flights between Bari and Kennedy International Airport in New York. Flights will begin in June, with seasonal flights operating once a week through October. Bari is transforming, but problems remain. There are more shops and cafes, and the most radically changed part of Bari is Bari Vecchia, or Old Bari, the historic center once ruled by criminal clans. Now, there are walking tours of the two grand churches, the cathedral and the Basilica of St. Nicholas. Visitors throng to Arco Basso street, where women sell ear-shaped orecchiette pasta. However, there still remain problems. For example, since the tourists to date have been affluent, it is easier to rent a Ferrari in the airports of Puglia than to find a bus.
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USA TODAY 10BEST SUMMER TRAVEL DESTINATIONS IN U.S. 2025
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USA TODAY’s 10 Best Summer Travel Destinations, 2025:
- Mackinac Island, Michigan
- Ocean City, New Jersey
- Catalina Island, California
- Saratoga Springs, New York
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Tybee Island, Georgia
- Rock Island, Rhode Island
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Cody, Wyoming
- Amelia Island, Florida
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MARKET UPDATE - 05/28/2025 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 05/22/2025)
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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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