Author: David O. Williams for Colorado Politics

VAIL – Talk to mountain-town managers across Colorado and many of them will tell you the same thing: “We don’t want to become the next Vail or Aspen.” Unless, of course, they used to manage one of the state’s iconic ski towns. “Like in Winter Park, they’d say, ‘We don’t want to be like Vail…

VAIL — For nearly 20 years, Glen Ellison, a landscape contractor in Eagle, sponsored a core group of 35 workers, many of them from one city in Mexico, to create some of the most spectacular lawns surrounding the high-end homes of the Vail Valley. Ellison started out in 1981 with a wheelbarrow, pick, rake, shovel…

BEAVER CREEK – In December, one of the most decorated ski racers in American history sat in a conference room at a posh slope-side hotel. He smiled slightly, and then threw some serious shade at Colorado’s ski industry, specifically its reliance on the woefully outdated stretch of east-west interstate known as Interstate 70. Ted Ligety,…

Colorado ski towns are amazing places to unwind from the stress of life in the city. They’re also great places to live and maybe raise a family – if you can afford it. For the most part, only the very wealthy can afford it these days. And that’s forced mountain-town workers farther away and has priced…