Thursday February 5, 2015 ASPEN: RECORD DECEMBER SALES; YEAR-END UP 10% December retail sales in Aspen hit $90.56 million, a 5.6% increase over December 2013 and a record for the month. December is Aspen's strongest sales month, reflecting about 15% of the year's business, and with the boost this December, retail sales in the city of Aspen ended 2014 about 10% higher than a year earlier. The city's largest sector, accommodations, posted a 13% gain for the year, with $173.6 million in sales. Restaurants and bars, the second-largest category, were up 11% to $111.5 million. The only sector posting a loss for the year was general retail, which was down 3%. -Aspen Daily News/Aspen Times, 02.05.15 GOLDEN HORN BUILDING SELLS FOR $6.6 MILLION The Golden Horn Building, located at the corner of South Mill Street and East Cooper Avenue, sold for $6.65 million to a limited liability company controlled by Beverly Hills, Calif. businessman Benjamin Nazarian, the managing partner of Omninet Capital, a real estate investment firm. The Golden Horn was built in 1956 and was once home to the famed restaurant bearing the same name. The restaurant was run by Aspen Hall of Famer Steve Knowlton in the 1950s and another Aspen Hall of Fame member, Jim Hayes, once ran a jewelry shop from a corner in the Gold Horn Restaurant. -Aspen Times, 02.05.15 COLORADO TOURISM OFFICE NAMED BEST The Colorado Tourism Office was named, "Best U.S. State Tourism Bureau," in New York City's 2015 Travvy Awards ceremony. Sponsored by travelpulse.com and Vacation Agent Magazine, the contest polled some 30,000 travel agents, asking for choices of top cruise lines, rail lines, tour operators, hotels, resorts, destinations, travel agencies and tourism bureaus. Visit Britain won the best country tourism bureau in Europe. -Denver Post, 02.05.15 DIA HOTEL ON TARGET FOR NOVEMBER OPENING Construction of the hotel and transit center at Denver International Airport continues to be on LA PLATA FACING TAX INCREASES The La Plata County commissioners Wednesday received a report from the county's Long Term Finance Committee recommending a property-tax increase. The property tax increase would help cover the decline in property-tax revenue resulting from falling natural-gas and oil production and property values associated with oil and gas production. The commissioners plan to poll residents about property tax increases and may ask about increasing sales taxes as well, with poll results expected by April. -Durango Herald, 02.05.15 MORE TOURISM MARKETING MONEY NEEDED Bob Kunkel, the executive director of the Durango Area Tourism Office, hosted the 2015 Durango Tourism Industry Briefing on Wednesday to about 100 local business people. Kunkel said tourism is doing well, with growth in revenue from the city and the county lodgerstax as well as city sales tax. DATO is funded largely by the city's 2% lodgers tax and the county's 1.9% lodgers tax. While tourism is strong, Kunkel said the tourism office needs more money to help tourism really take off. DATO has a $1.1 million budget this year. -Durango Herald, 02.05.15 TIME FOR SKIJORING IN MINTURN One of the events on the calendar of the World Alpine Ski Championships involves skiing, but is not part of the actual competition held in Vail and Beaver Creek…it is skiing behind a horse and will be held in Minturn today. It is Rocky Mountain Skijoring and will be held behind the Turntable Restaurant on Old Minturn Road. In 1928, skijoring was included as a sport at the Winter Olympics in St. Moritz. The first competitive skijoring event that is documented was in 1907, during a Swiss winter event called White Turf. Today in Minturn, the sport division starts at noon and the open professional division starts at 2 p.m. -www.vaildaily.com, 02.04.15 CELEBRATE 100 YEARS OF HOWELSEN HILL One of the showcase events in this year's Winter Carnival in Steamboat Springs is the 100th anniversary celebration of Howelsen Hill. Norwegian ski jumping champion Carl Howelsen arrived in Steamboat in 1913. track, with the 519-room Westin hotel at DIA still set to open before Thanksgiving. The hotel is now pegged to cost about $599 million and will include a medium-sized conference center and a large outdoor plaza which is designed to feature events such as concerts, car shows, beer gardens and the like. -Denver Post, 02.05.15 STAPLES BUYS OUT OFFICE DEPOT Staples Inc. has completed a $6.3 billion deal to buy rival Office Depot Inc. The deal is likely to receive close scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission as it would result in having just one chain of officesupply superstores in the U.S. In just a few years, there were 3 major office supply stores, but Office Depot acquired Office Max in 2013, and now Staples is taking over Office Depot. -Wall Street Journal, 02.05.15 POWDERHORN: $5 MILLION IN UPGRADES Powderhorn Mountain Resort co-owner Andy Daly Wednesday announced a $5 million package of improvements and expansion at the resort outside of Grand Junction. Leading the list of improvements was a new, high-speed detachable quad lift that will replace the Take Four lift No. 1. The Take Four lift was initially built to be a high-speed lift, so the towers in place will be used for the new lift, reducing cost and time for installation of the new high-speed quad. The new lift will have an uphill capacity of 2,400 riders per hour, cutting the present 13-15 ride to about 7 minutes. -GJ Daily Sentinel, 02.05.15 GJ VOTERS TO DECIDE INTERNET OPTIONS, PARKWAY EXPANSION The Grand Junction City Council Wednesday agreed to put two issues on the municipal ballot in April, including the override of Senate Bill 152 which bars local governments from directly or indirectly providing Internet and broadband services. If the override is successful, the city would be able to enter into partnerships with the private sector, and apply for grant funding for broadband projects. The other issue for voters to decide, is whether the city can use excess tax dollars and incur new debt to complete a western beltway off Riverside Parkway. -GJ Daily Sentinel, 02.05.15 MOUNTAIN DRONES MOVING TO TELLURIDE Mountain Drones, a start-up company that uses drones to retrieve snowpack information remotely and perform avalanche mitigation, is a 2015 Telluride Venture Accelerator program, but plans to He had already started a ski club in Denver and organized a Winter Carnival in Hot Sulphur Springs. In February 1914, Howelsen organized the construction of a modest ski jump on Woodchuck Hill, where Colorado Mountain College is located today. He soon realized that a larger ski jump could be built on the steep north face across the Yampa River from that first jump and started clearing trees in the fall of 1914 to host Winter Carnival jumping in February 1915. The hill was named Howelsen Hill in 1917. -Steamboat Today, 02.05.15 FIRST THE BRICS, WHAT'S NEXT? An economic tsunami was created in 2001 when Jim O'Neill, the head of global economic research for Goldman Sachs, released a 16-page client briefing report titled, "Global Economics Paper No. 66: Building Better Global Economic BRICs." The paper, which outlined the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, resulted in the launch of BRIC mutual funds and ETFs, indexes, investment conferences and Wall Street research teams. O'Neill was prophetic. When Goldman coined the term BRIC, the four countries accounted for $2.7 trillion in GDP, or 8% of the world economy. They account for about 19% today. (In 2010 the 4 BRICs invited South Africa to join the group, making them BRICS) In 2001, China's $1.3 trillion economy was the world's sixth largest, now it is second only to the U.S. As for Brazil, Russia and India, none was in the global economy's top 10. India's GDP topped $2 trillion last year; Brazil's growth rate blossomed from 4.3% in 2000 to 7.5% in 2010; and Russia's middle class doubled in size. As quickly as those economies rose, all is changing now. China's economy is now growing at its slowest pace in a quarter-century; Brazil stands on the edge of recession; and Russia's economy is on track to contract 3.5% this year. Only India remains as a growing economy. What's next? Investors are looking at Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and sub-Saharan Africa. -FORTUNE, 02.01.15 MIDDLE EAST POPULATION BOOM Countries with the highest average growth rate, including immigration and migration, 2010-15: Oman: 7.9% Qatar: 5.9% South Sudan: 4% Niger: 3.9% Kuwait: 3.6% -USA TODAY, 02.04.15 stay in Telluride beyond the five-month duration of the business development program, and permanently relocate to Telluride. The company hopes their drones can provide ski patrols and departments of transportation with real-time, accurate snowpack information as well as a safer alternative to the expensive and dangerous avalanche mitigation work currently done by helicopter and Howitzer-launched explosives. -Montrose Daily Press, 02.05.15 MARKET UPDATE Courtesy of Alpine Trust & Asset Management 02/04/2015 Close Close Change 17673.02 +6.62, NC S&P 500 2041.51 -8.52, -0.4% NASDAQ 4716.70 -11.04, -0.2% 1.75 -0.03 1263.80 -4.10 Silver (CME) 17.38 +0.07 Oil (NY Merc) 48.45 ` -4.60 2.66 -0.09 153.00 -0.75 Prime rate 3.25 NC Euro (per U.S. dollar) 0.87 NC Canadian dollar (per U.S. dollar) 1.25 +0.01 14.83 +0.14 Dow Jones Industrials 10-year Treasury yield Gold (CME) Natural Gas ($/MMBtu) Cattle (CME) Mexican peso (per U.S. dollar) �2001 Alpine Bank / Member FDIC / Equal Housing Lender If you would like to be removed from our Alpine Fax email list, simply respond to this email and type the word REMOVE