Ireland: Let Vail have its ‘win’

Rah. Rah. Rah. Sis Boom Bah! Grow, Aspen grow! Beat Vail!

I read with amusement a letter recently advocating for a new airport on the grounds that we are falling behind Garfield and Eagle counties.

States the writer:

“Just as my children compete against teams from other regions, Aspen competes against other mountain towns for tourism, business, and global recognition.” He also asks for a “…home field advantage, ensuring that Aspen remains a premier destination for international competitions and an accessible hub for local businesses.”

Is Vail “winning” because its downtown between the Highway that runs through it and their mountain is 13% occupied and features minimum height requirements of 60 feet in some sectors to foster ever more fifth homes? Vail can boast of a 14% occupancy rate for its 1,400 units downtown, a core population of about 200. Is that what we need, an ever emptier downtown?

Judging from the ability of SkiCo to command $266 for a day of skiing, it would seem that further tourism demand is not needed to sustain the booming economy. More, bigger planes from ever more distant places are hardly needed to keep an already prosperous economy afloat. Let Vail have that as a win.

The writer gives away his true goal, more growth, when he claims, “…flights are diverted to other airports because ours can’t accommodate them.” Some of us aren’t thrilled to ride a bus from Grand Junction to make way for large private aircraft bringing a single dog or chef to the big house on the hill.

Yes on 200 ensures the letter writer and I get to vote on a wider runway. A no on 1C ensures that right we exercised in 1978, 1982, 1988 and 1995 is not taken away.

Mick Ireland, former Aspen mayor and Pitkin county commissioner

Aspen