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Colorado - Thu. 07/10/25 |
A Free Business Publication from Alpine Bank
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TOWN OF NEDERLAND SIGNS AGREEMENT TO BUY ELDORA SKI AREA
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On Tuesday, the town of Nederland announced that the town had signed a letter of intent to purchase Eldora Mountain Resort, the ski area in Boulder County about five miles west of the town. The agreement between the town and Park City, Utah-based Powdr, the selling owner of Eldora Mountain Resort will be financed through municipal revenue bonds backed "solely" by Eldora's earnings such as lift tickets, Ikon Pass revenue, food and rental sales, and no tax dollars, the town said in its press release. Although the sale price was not disclosed, previously the town said the price would be between $100 million and $200 million. Nederland plans to annex the ski mountain to allow for expanded land use and potential sales tax revenues estimated to be $1 million to $2 million annually. The town will then reinvest any excess cash into community infrastructure such as streets, sidewalks and water systems after bond obligations are met.
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DIA WILL OPEN DROP-IN CHILDCARE CENTER IN 2026
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Officials at Denver International Airport announced Wednesday that DIA will open a small, drop-in childcare center in 2026. The plan is to study the possibility of opening another childcare center that would serve more employees in the future. The drop-in center will have room for 20 children and be located on the fourth level of the airport’s hotel and transit center, within a new training facility called the Center of Equity and Excellence in Aviation. The childcare center is meant to provide occasional care and will primarily serve the children of airport employees or community members who are participating in training center activities. While the planned center would serve only a tiny fraction of the airport’s more than 40,000 employees, it represents a first step toward boosting the number of childcare seats in an area with limited supply.
Officials at the airport, which is the nation’s third busiest, began studying the possibility of a childcare center at or near the airport’s far northeast Denver campus earlier this year. DIA's drop-in center will have two classrooms, one for babies and toddlers and one for preschoolers, and a separate play area. It will be open 10 to 12 hours a day Monday through Friday year-round, including on holidays, according to the airport’s recent request for proposals, which seeks an operator to run the childcare center.
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DENVER’S OLDEST FOSSIL FOUND: AT MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE, OF COURSE
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Officials of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science announced Wednesday that during geothermal drilling to test the capacity of changing to geothermal energy, crews discovered a new dinosaur fossil buried hundreds of feet under the museum parking lot. The fossil, found at about 760 feet below the surface belonged to a 67.5-million-year-old dinosaur, making it the oldest and deepest dinosaur fossil ever found in Denver. In the museum statement, Curator of Geology James Hagadorn said, “This is a scientifically and historically thrilling find for both the museum and the larger Denver community. This fossil comes from an era just before the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, and it offers a rare window into the ecosystem that once existed right beneath modern-day Denver.”
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GOODWILL COLORADO TO OPEN TRAINING PROGRAM FOR CLEAN TECH JOBS
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Goodwill of Colorado has launched a new Clean Tech Accelerator, a free, fast-track training program aimed at preparing Coloradans for in-demand jobs in the clean energy sector. Participants receive paid training along with support services such as transportation vouchers and career coaching. The four-week program is part of a nationwide effort by Goodwill Industries International to help communities tap into emerging green jobs. The first local class began this week at Goodwill of Colorado’s Excel Center campus in Aurora.
Created to meet the growing need for workers who can maintain and repair electric vehicle charging stations and other clean energy systems, the program offers hands-on training, industry certifications and clear pathways to employment. Graduates earn credentials such as OSHA-10, CPR and EVSE technician certifications from ChargerHelp! Job placement support is available for up to a year after training. Participants also receive a stipend and help with transportation, food and other basic needs.
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CITY OF ASPEN TO CONTRIBUTE $1 MILLION TO HOUSING COALITION
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The Aspen City Council Tuesday gave unanimous approval to a resolution to contribute $1 million to the West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition’s Good Deeds program. The contribution will come from the city’s 150 Housing Development Fund and will be used to support voluntary deed restrictions that ensure homes remain permanently occupied by full-time, locally employed residents. Through the Good Deeds program, eligible homebuyers can receive financial assistance worth up to 30 percent of a home’s purchase price in exchange for a permanent deed restriction. These restrictions prohibit short-term rentals and second-home ownership, effectively converting free-market properties into stable, price-capped housing that supports the local workforce. In 2024, $2 million in public funds helped the coalition convert eight free-market homes into permanently affordable housing, securing long-term ownership for twelve local workers employed between Aspen and Glenwood Springs.
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BLM APPROVES UTAH LOADOUT EXPANSION WITH NO PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD
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The U.S. Bureau of Land Management Monday approved the proposal from Coal Energy Group 2, LLC to expand the Wildcat Loadout Facility outside of Price, Utah. The Wildcat Loadout facility is used to transfer Uinta Basin crude oil from tanker trucks to rail cars, and with the approval, the number of rail cars carrying crude oil through western Colorado daily will increase. The BLM approved the expansion of the loadout facility following a 14-day environmental assessment that included no public comment period. This project is unrelated to the controversial 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway that would connect remote oil fields in Utah to existing rail tracks.
The approved project includes additional unloading areas, a tank farm, loading systems, and related facilities that will increase the amount of oil that can be loaded on trains each day. It is expected that environmental groups will file lawsuits to object to the process used to approve the project and it is not expected that there will be increased numbers of tank cars carrying crude oil through western Colorado in the short term.
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D&SNG TO BRING HISTORIC RIO GRANDE SOUTHERN RR NO. 20 BACK TO LIFE THIS WINTER
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Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Vice President Jeff Johnson announced that the D&SNG, in partnership with the Colorado Railroad Museum, will bring back the Rio Grande Southern No. 20 steam locomotive into operation with rides this winter. For select days in January and February, No. 20 will provide photographers and train enthusiasts with the chance to experience a piece of Colorado’s railroad history. The No. 20 made its last runs in 1951 when the Rio Grande Southern railroad was abandoned. No. 20 originally worked on the Florence & Cripple Creek railroad, which ran between Cañon City and the mining town of Cripple Creek, until the railroad was destroyed by flooding.
No. 20 was then sold to Rio Grande Southern railroad in 1916, and for the next 35 years, ran from Durango to Ridgway via Mancos, Dolores, Rico and Telluride. The locomotive served as a museum exhibit at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden until 2006. Then it underwent a 14-year, $2 million full restoration. No. 20 will run special 60- to 70-seat trips in early 2026. The train will stop at various locations along the Durango-Silverton route, where photographers will be able to capture this historic locomotive on the rails it once called home. Tickets to ride will likely sell out quickly.
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IT IS HOT, NOT MUCH RELIEF IN SIGHT: N.W. COLORADO ABOVE-AVERAGE FIRE DANGER
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The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center indicates that all of Colorado will see temperatures above average in July. This comes as there have been triple-digit temperatures in the Grand Valley, Denver and across Eastern Colorado. The state’s northwest corner, according to the Climate Prediction Center, will see the highest chance for temperatures above normal. The prediction for rainfall is there are equal chances of being wetter or drier than normal. The National Interagency Fire Center’s national fire potential outlook for July indicates that the majority of Colorado will have “normal” fire potential, with above-normal potential in the state’s utmost northwest corner. In these forecasts, “normal” is based on the trend for the past three years and still carries a high risk of wildfire.
All of northwest Colorado is experiencing drought conditions, according to the July 3 Colorado drought monitor from the National Drought Mitigation Center. There are extreme drought conditions in portions of Routt, Rio Blanco and Garfield counties in the northwest.
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INTERNATIONAL VISITORS TO PAY HIGHER ADMISSION FEES IN NATIONAL PARKS?
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Last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the U.S. Dept. of Interior to increase entrance fees at U.S. national parks for visitors from foreign countries. However, the order does not indicate how much the new rates will be or when they will go into effect. It was also unclear how many of the agency's 433 park units would be affected. Only about 100 sites managed by the Park Service currently charge for admission and fees vary. The order also directs the Park Service to ensure that U.S. residents receive priority access over foreign visitors in any of its permitting or reservation systems. Visitors have continued to flock to national parks in record numbers in recent years, with admissions soaring to a new high of 331 million last year, up 6 million from 2023.
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PALEOPROTEOMICS: LOOKING BACK 24 MILLION YEARS
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Scientists in recent years have made progress in finding ancient DNA in fossils, gaining insight into organisms that lived long ago. But the oldest DNA obtained so far dates back about two million years. Proteins, a cell's molecular machinery, also offer valuable information and have the virtue of surviving much longer, as new research shows. Scientists have now extracted and sequenced proteins from dental fossils of extinct rhinoceroses, elephants and hippopotamuses, including from a rhino tooth 21-24 million years old. Separate research teams found protein fragments in fossils from vastly different environments - the frigid High Arctic of Canada and a scorching rift valley in Kenya.
Evolutionary biologist Daniel Green of Harvard University, lead author of the Kenya fossils study published by the journal Nature, says, "Together, these complementary projects demonstrate that proteins - fundamental building blocks of living organisms that preserve information about evolutionary history - can be found in ancient fossils the world over." The lead author of the fossil study in Canada in Nature, Ryan Sinclair, notes, "Ancient proteins can tell us about an organism's evolutionary history by providing molecular data from specimens too old for DNA preservation. This allows researchers to clarify evolutionary relationships across the tree of life, even for species that went extinct millions of years ago."
DNA and proteins are fragile and degrade over time, but proteins are more resilient. The oldest-known DNA is from organisms that lived in Greenland two million years ago. Until now, the oldest-known proteins preserved well enough to offer insight on evolutionary relationships were about four million years old, from the Canadian Arctic. The new research pushes the boundaries of ancient protein research, a field called paleoproteomics, back by millions of years.
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BUSIEST AIRPORTS IN THE WORLD, 2024
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The Airports Council International World produced a report of the Busiest Airports in the World in 2024. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is, once again, the busiest airport in the world, with about 108 million passengers in 2024. However, that is still some 2 percent fewer passengers than the airport processed in 2019. In 2024, global passenger traffic hit a record high, with some 9.4 billion people traveling by air, according to the report. That’s about 8.4 percent more passengers than in 2023, and 2.7 percent more than in 2019. Busiest airports, 2024, by total passengers:
- Atlanta, USA (ATL) – 108.1 million
- Dubai, United Arab Emirates (DXB) – 92.3 million
- Dallas/Fort Worth, USA (DFW) – 87.8 million
- Tokyo, Japan (HND) – 85.9 million
- London, U.K. (LHR) – 83.9 million
- Denver, U.S. (DEN) – 82.4 million
- Istanbul, Türkiye (IST) – 80.1 million
- Chicago, U.S. (ORD) – 80 million
- New Delhi, India (DEL) – 77.8 million
- Shanghai, China (PVG) – 76.8 million
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BEST PLACE IN THE U.S. FOR STARGAZING…COLORADO IS CLOSE TO NO. 1
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The Action Network, a gambling website, produced a study on the best state in the country for watching asteroids and meteors in the night sky. Here are the top states in the stargazing study:
- California
- Colorado
- Oregon
- Utah
- New Mexico
- Arizona
- Nevada
- Alaska
- Idaho
- Michigan
Colorado scored high in part because of its average elevation, 6,800 feet, the highest among the top 10 states, and the dark skies, with two Bortle 1 and 17 Bortle 2 sites. (The Bortle scale is a measure of how dark the sky is in a place, with a lower number indicating a darker sky where it is easier to see celestial objects.) It has seven observatories, providing more places where the public can access the skies. And its 28 reports of fireball activity in 2025 are useful data points, as past celestial activity is an indicator of where you will likely find future activity.
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MARKET UPDATE - 07/09/2025 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 07/03/2025)
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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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