Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Ski towns ponder real estate base

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By ALLEN BEST - MTN TOWN NEWS SERVICE

ASPEN, Colo. (MTN) -- Is there a silver lining in these enormous economic storm clouds? Well, from the perspective of the ski marketing folks, they feel wanted again.

For the last decade, ski towns have been convulsed with the thinking that they were driven by real estate. "It's all about real estate," said an Aspen mayor at a conference several years ago, and a former town manager from Vail agreed with him.

In fact, economic studies done by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments several years ago showed that real estate had become the top economic driver in Vail, Aspen, and several other ski towns.

But real estate sales last year were down 40 to 50 percent in most of the major markets, and perhaps worse yet in the also-ran resort valleys. With that, the tourism sector is now feeling more important once again. It's a somewhat enfeebled muscle, to be sure, but what would Aspen and Vail look like this winter if the only ones bringing home the bacon were real-estate agents?

In fact, there always has been a symbiotic relationship between tourism and real-estate sales. Some ski towns, such as Aspen, Crested Butte and Telluride, existed before the ski areas, but real estate prices were inflated by the tourism economy. In other towns, such as Vail and Snowmass, real-estate development subsidized skiing operations.

David Perry, the senior vice president at the Aspen Skiing Co., obliquely noted this synergism in a recent appearance before the Aspen Chamber Resort Association. "We are a ski town, and tourism drives real estate," he said.