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Minturn at crossroads

By Joanne Kelley, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 29, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated February 29, 2008 at 6:27 a.m.

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Older buildings near a newer house are a sign of the times in Minturn. More change is coming to the small town near Vail. Florida resort developer Bobby Ginn plans a billion-dollar project on 4,300 acres, which the town council voted to incorporate within Minturn's boundaries.

Photo by Ed Kosmicki / Special to the Rocky

Older buildings near a newer house are a sign of the times in Minturn. More change is coming to the small town near Vail. Florida resort developer Bobby Ginn plans a billion-dollar project on 4,300 acres, which the town council voted to incorporate within Minturn's boundaries.

John Martinez, who owns a liquor store in Red Cliff, walks on a snowpacked street. He said he paid $1,100 for the building in 1968.

Photo by Ed Kosmicki / Special to the Rocky

John Martinez, who owns a liquor store in Red Cliff, walks on a snowpacked street. He said he paid $1,100 for the building in 1968.

Brendan and Virginia Olson and their children, Camille, 9, and Nicholas, 4, stand in front of their two-story duplex, which fronts the Eagle River just off Main Street in Minturn.

Photo by Ed Kosmicki / Special to the Rocky

Brendan and Virginia Olson and their children, Camille, 9, and Nicholas, 4, stand in front of their two-story duplex, which fronts the Eagle River just off Main Street in Minturn.

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This small Colorado town could get a lot bigger soon.

After years of being bypassed by real estate developers in the Vail Valley, the well-worn former railroad town has expanded its boundaries to make room for a private ski area, golf course and 1,700 million-dollar homes.

The Town Council's vote late Wednesday to make 4,300 acres of unincorporated Eagle County land part of Minturn allows Florida resort developer Bobby Ginn to seek approval for a more densely built development than he otherwise would have been allowed to put on the mining claims he bought atop Battle Mountain.

The billion-dollar plan poses a dilemma for some residents and business owners.

The town badly needs the money it will get for everything from water main and street repairs to such nonexistent amenities as a recreation center. But some fear it could bring too much change, far too quickly.

"It's so hard to get your hands around the development and the implications," said Andy Kaufman, who owns the Minturn Saloon and views the development with skepticism. "They are doubling the size of the community."

Town leaders hammered out a deal with Ginn that will bring about $180 million for infrastructure improvements, an amount that dwarfs Minturn's tiny annual budget of about $1.5 million.

"We've had a hard time paying our bills," said Tom Sullivan, one of the six town council members who voted for the annexation. "I don't think we really had a whole lot of options."

Sullivan acknowledged Minturn "will take a hit with all the traffic" that will funnel through the town's narrow Main Street, where about half the residents live. "It will affect everybody in town," he said.

Ski bums priced out

A referendum fight remains an option - locals struck down a proposed RV park a few years ago when the town initiated a vote - but even opponents of the project are becoming resigned to it.

"We never diversified this town, and we've been left prey to the developers," said resident Liz Campbell, founder of Radio Free Minturn. "The people who live here are tired of the lack of services. Generally speaking, most of the town feels we have to annex this thing."

Even before the project won its first approvals, the proposal has pushed up real estate values amid speculation about the impact of the upscale development. And residents say higher tax bills have priced out some of the "ski bums" and others who have long inhabited the aging wood-frame homes.

Locals refer to the rising cost of housing as "the Ginn Effect."

Brendan and Virginia Olson moved to Minturn about 10 years ago and are raising their two young children in a duplex home with a yellow picket fence. The building is tucked behind Main Street along the Eagle River. The Olsons bought the home with relatives 10 years ago for about $300,000, but they say it's now valued at $1.5 million.

Brendan Olson said the trend has encouraged some longtime residents to cash in. He expects some of the old houses along Main Street to be torn down and replaced with stores or other businesses.

"I'd rather have neighbors than shops," Olson said as he sat at his kitchen table and explained his uneasiness about Ginn's plans for the property that stretches from just south of town for several miles up the snaking road that eventually leads over Tennessee Pass to Leadville. "Vail's on steroids. Can't we have Minturn not be on steroids?"

The developers have spent 21/2 years working to get the approvals they need to get started on their venture.

One of the first questions townspeople had: Will there be change?

"Bobby looked at them like, 'You've got to be kidding me? Yeah, sure there's going to be change. First, Indians were fighting, then it (Minturn) was a mining town, then there was a railroad town,' " said Bill Weber, Ginn's point man for the project.

Despite Minturn's proximity to the Vail and Beaver Creek ski areas, it has grown slowly. In some cases, businesses have closed because visitors who once helped sustain restaurants and shops are spending more of their time and money in bustling spots such as Edwards, about 10 miles to the west along Interstate 70.

"They maybe have not had some of the opportunities" of other towns in the Vail Valley, said Weber, a Ginn senior vice president who moved to the area to oversee the development. "We think our project is going to revitalize the town. There's going to be some changes. There's going to be some benefits."

Among the challenges and potential upside of the development: the cleanup of one of the nation's Superfund sites.

Mining contamination turned Gilman into a ghost town along the route that leads to the biggest part Ginn's property. Ginn plans to revive it with affordable housing for his resort workers.

He wants to put more employee dwellings a few more miles up the road in Red Cliff, a tiny hamlet accessible from the highway by a spur road that appears almost too narrow in places to accommodate two-way traffic.

"People are very nervous about what's going to happen with this development," said Red Cliff resident Dan Mitchell.

In mid-February, lampposts along the snowpacked main drag of Eagle Street still had holiday decorations - huge bells fashioned from red and silver tinsel.

A ramshackle white building labeled "Town Hall" no longer houses the local government. Town offices and council chambers sit in the defunct red brick school at the top of town, sharing quarters with a bingo hall in the old gym and a museum that preserves the town's history.

Minturn's next phase

Snowmobiles are parked outside what appears to be the town's biggest business, Mango's Mexican Grill. Across the street, contractors work to finish a new hotel and liquor store complex backed by the owners of Mango's.

While the neon "open" sign glows red on the front door of the existing liquor store, longtime owner John Martinez had just a few six-packs of soda pop for sale on a recent morning. Sitting in a chair in a room behind the coolers, Martinez worked on his teeth with a toothpick as he told a visitor he paid $1,100 for the building decades ago.

"I think it was 1968," Martinez said.

Minturn officials have expressed concern that if they didn't annex Ginn's land, Red Cliff would have jumped at the opportunity for such a windfall.

"If this goes to a referendum vote," Councilman Sullivan said, "I just hope the residents recognize that the Ginn Company is . . . not going to pack their bags and go back to Florida. They're going to go eight miles up the street to Red Cliff" to get their annexation.

Red Cliff town attorney Ruth Borne said the main focus has been to make sure the developers "mitigate" any potential impact on the small community.

"This vote is just the beginning of a pretty significant project," Borne said.

With worker shortages hampering businesses throughout the region this winter, residents in other parts of the county wonder where all the additional employees will come from to fill jobs at the new ski area and resort.

"We don't have employees to fill the jobs we have now," said Ellen Eaton, who lives in Edwards and operates a real estate and property management business.

Because many Vail, Avon and Beaver Creek employees drive to the valley over Tennessee Pass from Leadville, Ginn's resort will give them the option to work closer to home.

"They're going to pull a lot of their work force from Leadville," she said. "We're going to have to deal with the employee shortage."

Eaton added: "I don't know why we have to have the mentality that we have to develop every available piece of real estate."

kelleyj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-9 54-5968

At a glance

Florida developer Bobby Ginn plans to build a resort community on mining claims he bought south of Minturn, an old railroad town between Vail and Beaver Creek.

The town voted to annex 4,300 acres of Ginn's property after striking an agreement that will bring infrastructure improvements and a cleanup of land contaminated by previous mining activity.

The project entails:

* A private ski area served by gondolas and eight chairlifts on top of Battle Mountain

* A golf course

* 1,700 luxury homes, both single-family and condos; some will be near the ski slopes and others near the golf course

The cash-strapped town of Minturn will get $180 million in "benefits," including:

* An overhaul of downtown Main Street

* A new recreation center

* Water-system upgrades

* Scholarship program for local kids

Comments

  • February 29, 2008

    7:44 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    KelcyCo writes:

    In ten years these people will be complaining of how the town is too expensive, workers cannot afford to live there and have to live an hour away, and it`s not the quiet little mountain town they loved. Boo-hoo. You get what you ask for.

  • February 29, 2008

    8:24 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Diff writes:

    Just what we need more resorts and more people driving an already over crowded hiway -
    When will we learn we need to limit and control growth!

  • June 25, 2008

    9:23 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    ntabbo writes:

    Your biggest worry should be if Ginn will actually clean up the land before he sells off the 1,700 lots he plans to build homes on.

    Is anybody asking how and when he plans to clean it all up? Ginn seeks out contaminated land because it is dirt cheap and he is protected by a new law which protects him from anybody coming after him if the land is still polluted because he was not the one who caused it originally.

    He has done this to folks in Florida. I am one of them.