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September 30, 2004
A BIG KID'S TREEHOUSE
The design and inspiration for the Treehouse, a tall, rambling house set in the aspen woodlands of the Ski Ranches, grew in part out of Ernie Graham's recognizing a blank spot in the million-dollar home market in the Mountain Village. He showed houses in the Mountain Village in the $3 to $4 million range that were "majestic," as he described them, but not "cozy and homey." For less than $3 to $4 million he could not find all of these qualities in one home.
"So I set out to build a great home to live in full-time and one that you could entertain in," he said on a recent tour of the home. "Something you could live in and have house parties in." The result: the Treehouse, a spec house built by Graham and designed by Bruce Wright of ONE Architects. From the exterior the house, clad in gray barnwood siding and tall and narrow in the middle, is reminiscent of a mill building. From the inside the house lives up to Graham's expectations; it is at once big enough to entertain in, but not so big that a family of four living in the house would lose track of each other.
Eager, youthful and easygoing, Graham arrived in Telluride two years ago with his wife and two children, by way of Lexington, Ky.; Tulsa, Okla.; and Las Vegas, Nev. Along the way he sold networking hardware to Wal-Mart, worked for a tech start-up during the go-go days of the late 90s Internet boom and for two years commuted from Tulsa to company offices in Vegas. Though the Vegas-based start-up launched the second biggest IPO in 1999 - "we were all gazillionaires for about five minutes," said Graham, laughing - the commuting and intense pedal-to-the-metal workstyle threw his family "out of kilter."
When the company tanked, Graham and his family were ready for a change. They picked up and moved from Tulsa to their second home in the Knoll Estates in Mountain Village.
"It was like fantasy land," said the self-described recovering workaholic about the transition to the San Juan Mountains. "When I first arrived, I was basking in the healing power of Telluride."
Though bathed in Telluride's healing rays, the workaholic in Graham found ample opportunity to take up old habits.
"I learned over the first two years it takes as much time to get out of bad habits as it does to get into them," he said.
He moved to Telluride with the intention of taking some time to relax and reevaluate his work life; however within six months he joined Alpine Lodging and Real Estate, urged to come on board by Michael Salamon, Graham's real estate agent when he bought the Knoll Estates home.
"I thought I could be measured," Graham said of the move. Within a short time though, he was working full tilt, until he broke his femur while skiing under Lift 9 last winter.
"I don't mean to sound Pollyanna-ish," he said, explaining what the break meant to him. "But I was in the emergency room lying on the table and I realized that even though I thought I was a new thinker, and creating new balance in my work and my family, I was falling back into old ways."
That emergency-table revelation may have been the other reason for Graham's undertaking the Treehouse project.
Though Graham conceived the project of building a house that would fill an unmet niche in the market, he approached the project with an intention of working with problems, not against them.
"We looked at a lot of practical issues when designing this house," Graham said. "Everything that would have otherwise been cumbersome and difficult - we made it right." A bridge to the garage became a spacious mud room. Extra height in a downstairs closet became… well, read on.
"People want to buy something that moves them," he said, describing a trend he has noticed in the post-9/11 world. "They can afford something really, really nice because they have been working hard." But instead of a 10,000 square foot house with a cavernous great room, Graham saw a need for a more modestly sized home.
Indeed, the house, constructed by Greg Hanshaw of Vogon Construction Management, works. The entry is roomy, but does not echo. The great room is more cozy than colossal. And the reasonably sized kitchen, as Graham said, is "not ridiculous."
Throughout the house the thoughtful consideration given to the layout, as well as to each detail, is apparent. From the tucked away powder room and shower, easily accessed from the hot tub placed on the side of the house (so guests don't have to traipse through the living room after leaving the tub) to the glass walls in the master bath (that allow the bather to take in the surrounding views), Graham and Wright lavished attention on this house.
Graham began the tour in the open-floor-plan-style living and dining area. In the yet-to-be-furnished living area, one can imagine a comfy sofa and several armchairs snuggled around the stone hearth. The living area is big enough for a party, but the sofa and chairs will be close enough that two can have an intimate conversation.
From the dining area double doors open onto the "sky deck," a cantilevered, wood-planked deck with metal railing constructed by Chuck Choate of Southwest Valhalla Steel. The deck affords sweeping views of the San Sophia Ridge, of Emma and Dallas, and Iron and Campbell Mountains.
Wrapping around the house from north to east, the deck on east side, called the "sundeck" is easily accessed from the kitchen.
"This deck is drenched with sun from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.," he said. "The whole hot tub thing, for instance. It is usually situated in front of the great room," leading to the outcome of a blocked view and a less- than-private hot tub.
For the Treehouse, Graham situated the hot tub on the sundeck. The hot tub gets sun during the day, and has a great view to the north. For privacy it is snuggled up against a retaining wall.
From the deck, the kitchen is easily accessible (what cook would not want to duck out from his or her chores and step into a hot, achy-muscle-relieving soak?). Designed by Jade Graham, Graham's wife, the kitchen, with its terra-cotta tiled floor, red, black and gray flecked granite counter tops, and maple butcher block on the island, is warm and welcoming.
"This is the kind that is meant to be cut on," Graham said of the butcher block. "It should have grooves from cutting after several years."
Downstairs on the ground floor the house has two bedrooms (one could be a children's bunk room, Graham points out) and two baths separated by a room that could easily hold a pool table and which is wired for high-definition TV.
Upstairs again Graham, smiling like he has a great secret, opens the door to a bedroom located on the same level as the entry. This room is for a guest or parent for whom the altitude is a challenge, he says. To reach the bedroom from the entry they don't have to walk up or down stairs, and the room is a short half-flight of stairs from the living area and kitchen. The powder room is another of the house's small, but important, details. Located to the side of the entry, not off the living room, the room is private, Graham points out. With a door to the sundeck, it also accommodates modest hot tub bathers, who after leaving the hot tub want to step into a shower to rinse off. The powder room has that shower, as well as hooks for towels and robes.
One problem the design team encountered seemed to pull in nearly everyone on the job site. One of the downstairs closets had a 20-foot ceiling. What to do with that extra space, Graham and Wright asked themselves.
Always looking for a way to make sweet out of sour, they noticed the top of the closet was behind the built-in bookshelves in the living room. Ah haa. Build a fake ceiling in the closet and a secret door in the bookshelves. Graham opens the door with a twinkle in his eye and I peer in. If I were a kid, with blankets from the bunk beds and cushions from the sofa, I could make the perfect fort.
Though consideration of the use of the room went through several incarnations - someone called it a panic room ("But why panic? We are in Telluride."), others said it was a safe room for valuables - the crew settled on a fort for kids as the "highest and best use," said Graham.
Up the main stairs to a closed door, Graham, his hand on the knob, pauses for a moment, then opens the door with fanfare.
The room does have great views, its own fireplace and his and her lavatories. The shower and bath, built on the northeast corner of the house, however, are the crown jewels. The shower, with its double showerheads and glass shelves spaced perfectly so a bottle of shampoo fits, Graham points out, has glass walls. Bathers can look through the glass and through the windows to the San Sophia Ridge; their privacy is protected by the aspen woodlands to the east. Still recovering from the broken leg when he designed the house, Graham made sure the shower had the perfect size bench for sitting and showering.
Whether fussing with details or addressing each obstacle as it arose, building this house has been a huge project. Has he slowed down any? Since breaking his leg and his emergency room realization that "it takes as much time to get out of bad habits as it does to get into them," Graham says, "I work hard and play hard."
In between starting his own real estate business with Salamon, Telluride360 Real Estate, and building the Treehouse, he says he really has found more time to play. Recently he and his family rode the narrow gauge train from Durango to Silverton and took a trip to Santa Fe. Graham also did the sound for the Telluride Repertory Theatre's performance this summer of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"We are just a couple of guys who have an overwhelming attention to detail," he said.
"I am not an ex-Olympic skier. I am a recovering workaholic. Mike is a good influence on me. He goes out and plays tennis in the middle of the day. It takes patience and time to unwind bad habits."
Somehow the process of building the house, of paying attention to the details and of yielding to problems as they arise has made its own healing impression on Graham.
"I am a Republican who sees an acupuncturist," he says. "I have come to realize it is not about overwhelming the situation and controlling your environment. It is about going with the flow."
Visit the following link for more information on this incredible home.
http://www.telluride360.com/listings/propdetail.cfm?pid=40
Posted by Adam at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2004
‘The Most Unique Place You’ll Ever Call Home’
Traditionally, luxury homes in the Telluride region lack for little, with choice finishes and fixtures, spectacular layouts that drink in Telluride’s legendary sun and scenery, and plenty of square footage. The Ridge, a single-family home development currently under construction atop Coonskin Ridge, is no exception. The only thing that’s missing is the parking.
Perched high above Telluride and Mountain Village, The Ridge will eventually boast 24 homes located directly adjacent to the Telluride Ski Area’s Lower See Forever ski run near the gondola’s St. Sophia station. To access The Ridge, homeowners will simply hop on the gondola for a four-minute ride from the Mountain Village or a six-minute ride from Telluride. At the top they will load themselves into a golf cart for the quick trip to their residence.
“There is nothing else like this anywhere in North America,” says John Horn of St. Sophia Partners LLP (the project’s developer).
While the individual homes at The Ridge will deliver similar amenities as other regional luxury homes, explains Horn, the overall experience of living at The Ridge will be as unique as it gets.
Development of the 17-acre parcel has been in the works for more than 20 years. Original design regulations for the project were approved in 1998 and construction companies broke ground this spring. Partial completion of the project is tentatively scheduled for next year.
“We knew we were going to have to create our own unique format here, considering certain physical constraints of the land,” says Horn. “We spent a long time determining how a development like this could work, and how we could build it so that it made the most sense.”
St. Sophia Partners recognized that building the 168 condominiums originally zoned for the project did not make the most sense. They instead decided to limit development to 24 single-family homes. By choosing not to build out the entire 17-acre parcel, the developers could avoid clear cutting a substantial portion of the property, says Horn.
“We felt it was important to be sensitive to the [tree cutting] situation, and though we have needed to cut trees, our final design allowed for many more to be saved” than the original plan, he says.
And with an eye toward reducing impact on the land, the San Sophia Partners decided to keep cars out of the development and require homeowners to use golf carts and the gondola to access their homes.
“Our primary reason for choosing golf carts as transportation was that by using them instead of regular cars, we would be able to use a much smaller road and therefore impact the hillside to a lesser degree,” Horn says.
The golf cart path currently under construction crosses Lower See Forever and will eventually wind under the gondola line (on the Mountain Village side) to the homesites near Coonskin Ridge. The path requires a 14-foot-wide right-of-way, including shoulders, in contrast to the 26-28 feet required for a typical road. In the winter months, a snowmelt system will be used to keep the paths free of snow and ice.
Each homeowner will be required to purchase at least one golf cart for their residence, which will be stored full-time at The Ridge. For maintenance purposes, all homeowners will have the same type of cart, which members of St. Sophia Partners will choose based on downhill braking ability, among other factors. Horn says The Ridge golf carts will be similar to the Telluride Golf Resort’s new fleet of high tech golf carts.
During shoulder seasons, when the gondola shuts down for maintenance purposes, Ridge homeowners will still have access to their homes via Ridge-owned vehicles, which will have access to the maintenance road from the Telski maintenance facility on Prospect Creek Drive in Mountain Village to the top of the gondola. And when the maintenance road is impassable (generally for only about two-three weeks in early April and two-three weeks in late November), The Ridge will offer a snowcat to haul people and supplies.
Horn anticipates that off-season transportation will not prove overwhelming, estimating that most Ridge homes will be owned by second homeowners, who don’t frequently visit Telluride during its shoulder seasons.
During construction, access to The Ridge did require some additional planning. St. Sophia Partners put several thousand dollars into road improvements this year, and plans to further upgrade the road in the future.
“Basically, we just have to make sure that we get everything we need up there before the snow falls, and once it is all staged up there, we can continue to build throughout the winter,” Horn says.
Skiers and snowboarders riding the gondola will be able to watch the construction progress throughout the winter. They will also soon enjoy a newly constructed Ridge ski trail that will take skiers from the top of the gondola to the Ridge development, next to Lower See Forever.
“It’s the ultimate ski-in, ski-out location,” says Horn. Homeowners will be able to access Chair 4 and Chair 7 runs just steps from their door.
Horn explains that the design and planning for such a one-of-a-kind development has required many hours, but he’s confident the end result will be well worth the effort.
“It has been my good fortune to work on development of the Mountain Village and Aldasoro Ranch, and now [The Ridge],” says Horn. “There is no question in my mind that this will be the crown jewel of Telluride. It is totally out of the mold, and I’m sure that plenty of people will think it’s crazy to buy a house somewhere you can’t drive your car to. But there is a unique group of people out there that will see it for what it is – a home in a community where, from the moment you get here until the time you leave, you never have to drive a car, find a parking space, or even get into a car if you don’t want to. It’s a safe haven, the most unique place you’ll ever call home.”
Posted by Adam at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2004
Telski Anticipates A Record Season
Under the new ownership of Chuck and Chad Horning, executives at the Telluride Ski and Golf Co. say they are quietly laying the groundwork for what could be a record-breaking ski season. But in just a few months, the fruits of their labors over the past few months will become highly visible.
In October, and at a cost of over $100,000, both Ski and Skiing magazines will feature a seven page “advertorial” headlined “Fantasy Mountain Does Exist.” The two magazines have a combined circulation of upwards of 750,000. The spread will introduce Telski’s new approach to advertising, jettisoning Cellphone Sam and his ersatz storybook cronies in favor of ads that return to the tried-and-true message of Telluride as a place of unparalleled beauty, expressed in the tag line “a world unto itself.”
The spread plays off of a feature article that Ski ran last year in which a ski mountain planner imagined the ideal ski mountain and the ideal ski town. The fantasy mountain in that article, said Telski VP for Sales and Marketing Pete Woods, looked a lot like Telluride.
But the splashy reintroduction of Telluride as a kind of skiers’ paradise is just the start of an overall marketing campaign aimed at producing over 400,000 skier days. (That compares to 367,000 skier days last year, and 380,000 in 1998-99, Telski’s record year.) In addition to careful plans, said Telski Chief Executive Officer Ray Jacobi in an interview this week, there are early indications that this winter will be strong.
In this still-young selling season, season pass sales are up five percent over last year at this time. Group sales, another key early economic indicator, are also up enough for Jacobi to confidently predict that the company will hit its goal of 32,000 skier days from group sales, up from 28,000 last year and 13,000 the year before.
Telski has also announced new pricing aimed at combating the impression that Telluride is pricier than other resorts, has announced the opening of a superpipe and new hike-in terrain under Palmyra Peak, is aggressively marketing new nonstop jet service from Los Angeles, and is kicking off the season by hosting the Jeep King of the Mountain competition on Thanksgiving week.
“We guarantee the slopes will be white at Thanksgiving,” Jacobi said, counting on snowmaking to compensate for any shortfall from the clouds. The early ski competition will afford Telluride national exposure on CBS early in the season.
And if it fails to snow or, as it was a couple of years back, is too warm to blow snow? “Sometimes you’ve got to roll the dice,” Jacobi grinned. “If there’s no risk, there’s no reward.”
Other Telski initiatives that Jacobi cited include merging the Telski website and the Telluride and Mountain Village Convention and Visitors Bureau website, an early example of Telski’s new emphasis on “marketing the resort,” rather than focusing its energies on winter tourism; and a season-long series of afternoon concerts at Gorrono. The company is also putting energy into building the second full week of January into a full-fledged “college week,” enticing students whose classes have not yet resumed to ski together here in Telluride. There is already one group of over one thousand students booked for that week.
“We’re pretty excited,” Jacobi said. “We’re hoping that the community is feeling that the Jacobi-Horning approach is to focus on the short- and long-term needs of all the parties involved.”
In the short-term, he said, Telski has recently made over $3 million in capital investments, including over $1 million on the golf course this summer, three new snowcats, ten snowmobiles, and the new superpipe machine.
This summer was the first opportunity to test Jacobi’s proposition that Telski’s underutilized assets should be made more accessible. The company gained over two thousand new rounds of golf, he said, primarily through its program of offering discounted twilight and sunset golf, open not just to golf club members but to the general public. The course’s notorious hole 10 is being rebuilt, and the company bought new golf carts and installed a GPS system in them this summer.
Opening things up through aggressive pricing will continue this winter. Telski has announced three new pricing options: a $69 season pass for children six- to 12-years old, with no blackout dates; transferable five-packs of lift tickets for just $175 (no blackout dates); and, what may be the most innovative of all, a “limitless lesson pass” for just $149 for the season (some date restrictions).
“We have this big, beautiful mountain that is just 45 percent utilized,” Jacobi explained. “So we don’t gain anything from restrictive pricing.”
If the pricing and the ad campaign are aimed at drawing families and reassuring intermediates, Telski is not ignoring the expert skier, and has announced the opening of Mountain Quail, accessible after a half hour hike from the top of Lift 10 from the highest point the Prospect Ridge. Access to the 1,100-feet of steep vertical will be via guided tours only, following a safety orientation, with skiers outfitted with beacons and shovels. There will be special locals’ days, Woods said, at greatly reduced rates.
Likewise, the new Superpipe will enable Telski to host major competitions, with an added benefit of providing training for homegrown competitors, Woods pointed out.
Woods also expressed optimism regarding the new direct flight from L.A.
“Historically, Southern California has accounted for 5.6 percent of our skier days, and that’s without a nonstop option,” Woods said. “We have the capacity there to grow.” Telski has tested its marketing efforts promoting its new products in L.A., Woods said, and is deploying the campaign there and in other cities with nonstop direct flights to Telluride and Montrose.
Long term, Jacobi said, the goal of the ski company and community alike has to be sustainability.
“People may think that Telski has been a profitable entity,” he said.
“It is not. It will be one day.” As for this season, “barring unforeseen international events, it looks like it will be good.”
Posted by Adam at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2004
Inside the true Telluride
By Hal Clifford
Ski Magazine
(Ski Magazine) -- This was to be the end, but it is not the end. It is the beginning. Deep in the pillows in the pre-dawn darkness, I hear the sound that gladdens the hearts, even the deep-sleeping hearts, of skiers. It is the sound of a snowplow. A big snowplow. Very big. You can judge the virility of a ski town's winters by the size of its snowplows. In diminutive Telluride, average snowplows don't cut it. Here they use machines as big as the houses.
The wished-for thing has come. At dawn more than a foot of new snow is on the January ground. The announcer on public radio station KOTO gives the good news over the bedside clock radio. His voice evinces a trace of glee: "Highway 145 over Lizard Head Pass is closed, and Red Mountain Pass is closed."
We will not be leaving today, after all. We're going skiing. Big time. In the 15 years I've been visiting Telluride, the wonder of the place has not diminished. If you drive Colorado Highway 145 over Lizard Head Pass on a winter evening, the experience is like winding your way into a secret redoubt. Clouds drift through the close, broad-shouldered peaks of the western San Juan Mountains. The 13,113-foot neck of Lizard Head Peak, a volcanic plug shaped like a chimney, pokes through the mists in the San Miguel massif. It appears and disappears in the evening sky like a dream remembered.
As you descend into the hanging, glaciated San Miguel Valley, the westering sun kindles a glow upon the flanks of the Sneffels Range the color of melted strawberry ice cream. The spur into Telluride seems like a wrong turn. There are no fast food shops, no strip malls, no outlet stores, no neon signs. The bucolic, two-lane, dead-end road was given by the state of Colorado to the town of Telluride, which didn't want state highway engineers overbuilding the approach route. It leads for two miles past wet meadows sprinkled with cottonwoods and willows. At its end, set like a jewel deep in the folds of 13,000-foot peaks, is Telluride, home to about 1,400 people.
Because the town was designated as a National Historic District in 1964, Telluride has largely avoided the excessive development and tasteless construction that characterizes too many ski resorts. Some architectural mistakes have been made, but the town exudes a pedestrian-friendly, Victorian mining town ambiance. It was a place built without automobiles, and it remains quintessentially functional for those on foot.
The ski resort opened in 1972 (six years before the last gold mine closed) and encompasses 1,050 acres. It climbs steeply up the conifer-draped, double-black slopes south of town to Coonskin Ridge, then folds over the ridge to the gentler, west-facing slopes above Mountain Village. While not the most euphoniously named community in Colorado, Mountain Village is the youngest, incorporated in 1995 (it was established in 1987). Today the Village is home to some 1,000 permanent residents.
Its architecture is derided by some Telluride locals as "Swiss Hopi," but Mountain Village will serve a critical function for Telluride: bed base. Construction has gone in fits and starts in the Village, which currently is booming. When finished, Mountain Village is expected to offer about 9,000 guest pillows, almost twice the current inventory of Telluride and Mountain Village combined (now about 5,000 pillows). In 1996, Telluride Ski & Golf Co. (Telski) opened a $19 million gondola connecting Mountain Village, the top of the ski area and downtown Telluride. The gondola serves both as a ski lift and a free commuter service from dawn to well after dark; it cuts the travel time between the two towns in half (reducing it to 11 minutes) and has done much to nip parking and traffic problems in the bud.
The Village exudes the smell of new money; it's a bed-base ghetto for the rich that physically separates new construction from the historic town. Mountain Village did not come into being without its share of controversy; the town's charter allows nonresident property owners to vote in Village elections. This is an unusual but not unknown arrangement whereby a second-home owner earns the right to vote in local elections in more than one place. Several full-time Village residents sued to have the charter overturned, but courts have upheld the buy-a-house, buy-a-vote arrangement.
Standing up to rock and ice
Telluride is small enough to walk across in 15 minutes, but you want to be wearing fleece-lined jeans when you do. The "jewel box," as miners called the twinkling town in the box canyon, is not for the faint of heart; winters in the 8,700-foot-high valley are long, dark and cold. Consequently, Telluride's attractive forces seem to pull strongest on those who view mountains as more than a pretty setting.
Telluride is also in the heart of Colorado's ice-climbing country, and anchors backcountry hut systems that lead east to Ouray, Colorado, and northwest to Moab, Utah. Runners and mountain bikers clamber over passes as high as 13,113 feet. Plenty of mountain towns are full of raccoon-tanned jocks, but Telluridians seem a little grubbier, a little less interested in finery and comfort, a little more committed to proving themselves against rock and ice.
Telluride experienced an Aspen echo in the '90s when celebrities such as Oliver Stone and Oprah Winfrey bought homes there. But those two and others have come and gone; Telluride has not taken off as the next Hollywood East. It remains high, cold and relatively hard to get to. Plenty of residents seem to like it that way.
On my first day of skiing, the score to Stanley Kubrick's "2001" rings in my head as I take in the drama of the crenellated peaks circling the ski area to the south, east and north. To the west, 100 miles across the Uncompahgre Plateau, Utah's La Sal Mountains rise from beyond the horizon. We hop the chairlift up to the 12,247-foot crest of Gold Hill. This is double-black, terrain that skiers had to hike to in the past. To the east lies the deep cleft of Bear Creek, a jagged slice ripped through the mountains.
Shoestring-thin gullies drop through cliff bands on 12,804-foot Ballard Mountain, which lies on the opposite side of Bear Creek from the ski area. I can spot several lines, noting they've all been skied by resident hard-core alpinists. From this perspective they appear absolutely vertical and seem to be about 6 feet across -- it seems like just about any downhill line has been tested by skiers.
I turn my attention to the west and the steep slopes of Gold Hill. Once the patrollers have thrown their bombs, some of these runs can provide 1,000 vertical feet of uninterrupted fluff. Right now, in a dry January, the story's somewhat different.
Booming market
In the meantime, Telluride's real estate has been booming. As at Aspen, Whistler, and other high-cache ski escapes, savvy developers have come in and created luxury homes and condominiums. This has meant better places to stay in recent years, such as the upscale Peaks Spa & Resort and the Hotel Telluride.
Despite its flashes of luxury, however, Telluride often feels like a throwback to the '70s version of a ski town: Locals, many in their 20s, live in Gore-Tex and polypro for months on end. At Leimgruber's Bar on West Pacific Avenue they laugh over glasses of wickedly potent Paulaner Salvator Ale. The truly connected have their names written on one of the 100 personal mugs hanging over the bar.
These cliched images of an old-style ski town are notable for their rarity when you see them in Aspen or Vail. In Telluride, the cliche isn't cute, it's real. Everyone owns a dog; at least one in five people has dreadlocks; and the town's navel is The Steaming Bean, an exceedingly groovy coffeehouse on Colorado Avenue. Residents do business face-to-face by walking down Colorado and running into their colleagues.
Everyone is ridiculously friendly, too -- until it snows. Then the true nature of the Telluridian shows its face, and people become competitive. Nice, yes, but get out of my line.
On the day of our aborted departure hundreds of locals lined up outside the gondola and the maze into Lift 8. Snow poured from the sky; the tension was palpable. "Which lift?" people wondered aloud. Which lift would get them to the greatest snow before everyone else?
My wife and I crammed into a gondola car with six others, and at the top we exploded out of the gondola station onto Coonskin Ridge and raced to clip into our bindings. Our co-riders vanished into the snow storm ahead of us. We turned into the big bumps of Coonskin. The icy humps of the previous three days were supplanted by pillows of snow knee deep, sometimes thigh deep. I careened through sheets of powder, drinking in mouthfuls of snow, hardly bothering to turn.
There was tangible joy amid the dark shapes cutting lines down the slope, the same joy that comes to farmers standing in a soaking rain at the end of a long drought. Yet there was something more. As the snow fell at the rate of an inch an hour, hour after hour, there was a sense of awe, and of great privilege.
We skied until we couldn't ski any longer, and then skied some more. In the end I was down to six-turns-and-stop, six-turns-and-stop. My wife dragged her demo skis back to the shop and turned them in. The ski tech, a dead ringer for a circa 1971 Paul Simon, appeared insulted. "What are you doing, dude?" he demanded. "Tomorrow's going to be just as good!"
Posted by Adam at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2004
Luxury home builders dig into The Ridge
By D. Dion and Kara Tatone
Passengers on the gondola or mountain bikers riding between St. Sophia station and Mountain Village may wonder when they missed a meteor striking the earth - huge dirt swaths have been cleaved from the upper slope, leaving giant dirt holes below the gondola station. But it is The Ridge construction project, not a meteor, that has landed just below Coonskin Ridge.
But the appearance of the broken ground should not be a surprise impact to anyone tracing the path of the development - the original design regulations were established for The Ridge, a 17-acre residential development, in 1998. Those design regulations, amendments to the city's land use ordinance, are sometimes referred to as "covenants."
According to John Horn, one of the principals of St. Sophia Partners LLP, the project's developer, the project's specifications have changed in the intervening six years, even while the design regulations remain in place.
According to Horn, the number of commercial condominium units allowed by zoning - 168 - has been scaled back in their design to 24 single-family houses. The dwellings will be luxury accommodations, from 4,000-10,000 square feet, with an owner's private spa and club and heated pathways for year-round golf cart access from the gondola station. Five of the 24 lots have already been sold.
Although The Ridge project has those covenants, or specific land use code amendments, dating back to 1998, it was still required to go through Mountain Village's design review process with planners. Mountain Village Design Review Board member Mark O'Dell said he was surprised that this project has remained "under the radar," despite the public process, and especially given the extreme public scrutiny of another recent large project in Mountain Village, the Lots 50/51 development, which has been the subject of lawsuits and two special elections.
"I know people are surprised to see that up there," said O'Dell, "but the thing about those lots is that they've always been zoned for development."
Even in Mountain Village's brief history - the town itself didn't incorporate until the mid-1990s - the lots have always been platted for development, and development has even been pushed down from the ridge so as not to be visible from the Telluride, as per the covenants.
This development has a shared history with the town of Mountain Village, and with the ski area that abuts the ridgeline lots. According to Horn, the concept of The Ridge has existed since the late 1980s.
Horn also has a shared history with the town of Mountain Village and with the Telluride Ski & Golf Company. His company has had to work cooperatively with Telksi to break ground and build infrastructure - St. Sophia Partners was also the developer of the building shell that houses Allred's restaurant and the gondola station of the same name. That infrastructure, its tie-ins to municipal water and sewer systems and a power conduit, will help service the new development below.
Horn, a former attorney for Telski and a member of the Mountain Village Metro District board, has also been granted an easement by Telski to use the ski area's access road to bring up the bulk of construction materials this summer before snowfall encumbers the road. His project will give back 20,000 cubic yards of the removed dirt to help construct this season's terrain park, and will reconstruct and reroute the trails on the property that have been displaced during construction.
Building a large-scale project just below a ridgeline, especially without standard access, has posed some challenges for developers, and some concerns for environmentalists.
Although it abuts U.S. Forest Service land (leased to Telski on a long-term, year-round basis) and is located uphill of the ski area and The Ridge development's traffic, water and wildlife flows between private and public lands - the project does not require an environmental analysis. District Ranger for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison forests, Judy Schutza, said private lands is exempt from performing such a study.
"No permits are necessary if the land is private, we have no authority on it," she said. "We had no opportunity to comment or give input - that's the way private operates."
Monitoring of the project, however, will be voluntarily conducted in part by Telski officials.
"Of course we're interested, we're the downstream recipient," said Chris Hazen Telski's director of environmental affairs. "We're definitely, from my perspective, keeping an eye on it."
One central environmental concern for Telski is storm water management, or water from snowfall and spring runoff flows. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment required the developers to obtain a storm water management permit, and Horn is confident the plan is glitch-free.
"We've looked at cuts, disturbances to the ground," said Horn, "and our storm water management is working fine. We've had a few big storms already."
Some ski runs are flanked by houses, but this is the first development to include the construction of an individual ski run for access to homes, Telski Director of Mountain Operations Jeff Proteau said.
"What we've done is worked with them on a regular basis - to make sure they're keeping up," he said. "We get kind of nervous on timing, but they've performed."
Telski and St Sophia officials are meeting weekly to assure they're on schedule and that revegetation and erosion work will be complete before snowfall.
Proteau said St. Sophia Partners worked with Telski to complete a two-step hydrological assessment to "build lines of defense," such as sediment and retention ponds, and silt fences to manage storm water during construction.
"The concept we're asking them to promote is to break up and follow the natural drainages," said Proteau. "We're trying to monitor this holistically so there are no major discharges."
Telski, in its massive expansion into Prospect Basin several years ago, was responsible for similar environmental mitigations, under the scrutiny of the U.S. Forest Service. This time, it's Telski who will be eyeing the effects of the construction and development.
Posted by Adam at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2004
Town and county real estate numbers continue upwards
Town and county real estate numbers continue upwards
It took only the first 12 days of August for San Miguel County to beat its real estate sales totals for the entire month last August, and with record-breaking numbers already defining 2004, high July figures came in as no surprise.
Like the region's real estate spike in July of 1999, July of this year is helping break the county year-to-date sales record, now set at $352 million, according to data from Judi Kiernan of Telluride Consulting.
"We had the highest July we've ever had, barring none," she said, "this is an extraordinary July."
Kiernan reported that real estate sales are 24 percent higher then last July and in just seven months of 2004, real estate sales are 88 percent of where they were at the same point in 2003. Of the more than $350 million in sales for the year, July totals make up about $41 million of that, from 56 sales.
"This is the biggest year to date in terms of dollars," Kiernan said.
Real estate figures have also secured a 21 percent gain over the previous record-breaking year of 2000.
"2000 seems to be that peak year that everyone wants to measure by," she said.
July numbers represent sales completed in April and May, which says even more about the market, Kiernan said - off-season months usually mark a real estate calm, but not this spring off-season.
"It's usually a very quiet time. This equals an active off-season," she said. "The fall is usually strong, July is typically a weak month Š this represents how strong the market's been. I don't see it slowing down."
The market boom can be attributed to a couple of things, Kiernan said, but namely, Telluride is a resort town growing up. As Telluride, Mountain Village and the surrounding areas mature into development - with condos, new homes, 10-year-old homes, and older renovated structures - moving out of a market stocked with more vacant land, values swell, and sales balloon.
The region's real estate leaders continue to be condominiums, with 71 sales in Telluride, 93 in Mountain Village and 11 in the county this year. In Telluride, this year alone condo sales totaled more than $35 million. Mountain Village homes too are making a comeback after a slow period, and hitting a peaking cycle at 23 sales this year amounting to $87.7 million.
"As a resort matures there are less sales of vacant lands, more condos, homes that have been improved - it's a clear sign of a maturing resort," said Kiernan.
And as vacant lots disappear, the market turns to existing and renovated structures, which equates to high dollar amounts. Kiernan said some people estimate Mountain Village is 10 to 15 years from build-out and Telluride a little closer with less availability of land and fewer lots.
"It's not going to take any less time to fill in those holes [in Telluride] either," she said.
Real Estate Transfer Tax collected by the Town of Telluride through the seventh month of 2004 pushed the town past the $2.5 million mark in total RETT collections, ringing in at a hearty 112 percent of what was projected for the entire 2004 budget, according to Town of Telluride's Finance Director Lynne Beck. July 2004 totals also sit $90,000 higher than the total collected last July.
"We're above what the budget estimate is Š it seems to be a pattern every month beating the month of the year before," said Beck. "Last year we were steady until the end of the year, and this year every month has been pretty high. We're hoping that will continue the rest of the year."
At $276,461, RETT collections this July are up more than 50 percent from the same month last year. With year-to-date collections already past $2.5 million mark, the town is already at 112 percent of its budgeted intake of $2.25 million. Last summer, RETT in July stood at just 66 percent of its budgeted total.
July's RETT total beats all previous July totals and, at a little more than halfway through the year, RETT collections for 2004 stand at $2.5 million, just a half million shy of the 2003 total and nearly matching the total RETT for 2001.
Collected in real estate transactions in Telluride's district, RETT feeds the Capital Improvement Fund, which subsidizes municipal projects like road and park improvements. Telluride's Open Space Fund collects 20 percent of transfer taxes.
August already looks promising, Beck said, and the remaining part of the year should bring in enough collections to surpass the 2003 RETT bank.
"So much is going on with building, lots selling at new developments, there's a lot of construction going on, and a lot of resale and renovation," said Beck.
Beck also said vacant land prices are going high, selling to developers, then developed and sold again to buyers, doubling RETT collections on a single piece of land.
Last summer, $1.4 million had been collected by the end of July - already this year RETT has nearly doubled that amount.
Posted by Ernie at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
Real Estate Spike in April Follows Record Quarter
Reflecting a surge in demand once shackled by terrorism worries and a sluggish economy, real estate activity in San Miguel County swelled in April, marking a record high for sales and dollar volume for the month. Year-to-date dollar volume – logged from January to April – also set a record at $224 million, outpacing even the trophy year of 2000 when volume reached $174 million.
“I never though we could replicate the year 2000,” said local real estate broker T.D. Smith, of the Telluride Real Estate Corp. “I think pent-up demand is at the core of the sudden blast. A slowdown of the economy coupled with 911 basically made the person who could afford a change in lifestyle very conservative. Now that terrorism is somewhat contained and maybe a bit more predictable, and the economy has picked up, they are able to experience other lifestyles besides major metropolitan areas and freeways.”
Countywide April real estate sales bounced 165 percent over the last year, jumping from 58 transactions worth $27.5 million in 2003 to $72.8 million generated from 93 transactions last month. The impressive figures were helped by $10 million in high country sales.
April activity was pronounced in the Town of Telluride, with four homes selling for an average of over $2 million, according to Judi Kiernan of Telluride Consulting, who compiles local market data.
Other notable Telluride transactions that helped make April a banner month: 17 condo sales raked in $8,720,232 in sales while two vacant residential lots sold for an average of over $1 million each. Among the condo sales was the most expensive condo ever sold in Telluride: a residential unit in the new building known as Willows located near the Telluride Post Office. Price tag: $1.75 million.
A dearth of supply is likely to restrict Telluride activity at some point, said Todd Creel of Prospect Realty, who predicted that the upward run will continue for the remainder of the year.
“We are running into supply issues in town,” he said. “There is virtually no land left and people who have been waiting are realizing that with the land gone, if they don’t buy now it will only get worse,” he said.
One reason for the spike in Telluride’s segment was the convergence of two separate buyer segments, said Ray Bowers of Peaks Real Estate. Low interest rates gave locals a chance to purchase slices of Telluride’s lower end market, roughly the $250,000 to $500,000 range, putting them alongside second homeowners who would have reached for pricier properties had they not lost equity in recent years.
“You had these two groups converging on the same product,” Bowers said, adding that he expects interest rates to rise and pull the upswing down into a plateau.
All three market segments – San Miguel County, Telluride and Mountain Village – were strong in the first four months of the year.
Kiernan said the average Mountain Village home sold in April went for $3.6 million (five single family homes that month sold for a total of $18,070,400) and four condominiums changed hands for a total of $2,764,000.
Creel noted that Mountain Village had been “soft” for the past 18 months with several properties sitting on the market. Now the trend is shifting and the best properties are being bought first, just as buoyed buyer confidence is causing ranch lands and 35-acre ranchettes to be scooped up “in pretty significant numbers” in the county.
“Basically, there isn’t much land in the county that’s a good value and savvy people are realizing this,” Creel said.
In San Miguel County, seven single-family homes sold in April for $2,408,500, while six high-country vacant lots were sold for just over $10 million.
“It’s important to note that the high country transactions boosted the numbers, but even without it, we would have had a record month and a record year to date,” said Kiernan.
Experts noted that the spiked performance was helped by the relatively rare presence of new inventory in the region, such as new properties in the Mountain Village. And they point to future booms that could be tied to activity at the Idarado development east of Telluride.
In April, new inventory sales included five vacant lots that went for $1.5 million each in Mountain Village, part of a new subdivision near the gondola.
“They were the first five lots of a 23 lot subdivisions, which is all new inventory,” Kiernan said.
Looking beyond April to year-to-date statistics, or transactions recorded from January through April, dollar volume for 2004 was a whopping 118 percent over 2003, from $102.9 million to $224 million.
The number of sales during that period rose 33 percent from 193 to 257. In 2000, the year that had been a benchmark for the local real estate market, 304 transactions for the same period generated $174 million.
Since 1999, the lowest mark for YTD dollar volume occurred in 2002 with $99 million.
Experts are generally optimistic that the summer will churn along well, with some noting that the presidential elections could potentially slow the upward trend, a suggestion with which Creel disagreed.
“I think the market will continue its trend mostly regardless of who gets elected,” he said. “Real estate is getting pretty expensive around here and [buyers] are going to make their decision irrespective of politics. It comes down the economy and their confidence level.
Posted by Ernie at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)