Big parking garage debuts in Jackson
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. -- The 280-car parking garage, located adjacent to the $35 million Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, has been completed. An array of lights atop the garage will use light emitting diode technology, which lasts longer and uses less energy. The cost is higher, but Larry Pardee, the public works director, estimates the payback period of only 2.4 years.
Town officials had originally hoped to put solar collectors atop the parking structure, but discovered that the extra weight would increase cost of steel and concrete by $250,000 in a project already well over budget. Instead, town officials now hope to create a solar-collecting farm near the community sewage treatment plant.
Hearburn in Telluride about missing Lynx
TELLURIDE, Colo. -- At least for now, Frontier will not be flying its new Q-400 turboprop planes from Denver to either Telluride or Montrose, the latter being the primary gateway for Telluride. The flights are offered under Frontier's new subsidiary, Lynx.
That omission is causing some heartburn in Telluride, where The Telluride Watch quotes several local business leaders as saying that the local direct-flight organization was not as aggressive as it should have been.
"To me, as someone who is responsible for bringing people to the region, it is concerning that a number of competitors will have lower fares and more modern equipment specifically designed for mountain travel," said Scott McQuade, chief executive officer of Marketing Telluride.
Not only is Denver a crucial gateway for visitors from outside Colorado, but Denver itself is an important market for Telluride, he said, with 29 percent of summer visitors coming from metropolitan Denver and 12 percent in winter.
Dave Riley, the relatively new chief executive of Telluride Ski and Golf Co., the operator of the ski area, suggested that Telluride should have offered cash guarantees, in addition to the "significant amount of marketing support."
The Telluride-Montrose Regional Airport Organization collects money in Telluride and Mountain Village, with supplemental funds from Montrose, which is 65 miles from Telluride.
Half of bark beetles killed by cold snap
CANMORE, Alberta -- Temperatures in the Bow River Valley, where Banff and Canmore are located, dipped to 25 below zero this winter, good enough to hold the populations of mountain pine beetles in check.
"We've moved from a situation of impending disaster to a much-improved situation of just uncertainty," said Barry Cooke, a scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. Computer models suggested mortality of 50 percent among the beetle larvae in southern Alberta.
Alberta has more marginal habitat for mountain bark beetles, but the relatively warm winters of the last decade have worked to the advantage of the beetles. Cooke said weather that causes mortality of 97.5 percent keeps the beetle populations at endemic, or normal, levels. But to achieve that requires more than just blasts of mid-winter Arctic air, he said. Early and late-winter cold snaps also help, as do woodpeckers.
