Sneak Peek of the Week

Legislation easing regulations on backcountry cabins, huts worries counties

“What is the thing we want to solve?”

The Colorado Senate on Wednesday approved legislation that would prevent counties from regulating backcountry cabins and huts under short-term rental regulations.

“I do think when you have an increased population and you have people discovering your secret spots around the state, part of the secret sauce has the potential of disappearing or getting overturned and ruined,” said Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg, the primary sponsor of Senate Bill 213 , at an April 25 hearing for his legislation with the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee . “Part of the solution is making sure we are regulating correctly … but not over-regulating in a way that removes that special sauce.”

County commissioners are opposing the legislation, which is heading to the Colorado House for review, saying they cannot find any examples of a county rejecting a short-term rental license for a backcountry hut or cabin. But the legislation is connected to the wealthy owner of a backcountry hut outside Crested Butte who is suing Gunnison County after the county limited occupancy in the remote cabin, which rents for $1,500 a night.

“The question we have is what is the issue? What is this thing we want to solve? We have asked all our hut operators and they don’t say they have any issue with county regulation,” said Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr in an interview, who described the legislation’s language as “really sweeping with what it would allow from an operator’s perspective and what it would disallow from a county perspective.”

The primary lobbyist for the legislation is Denver-based public affairs firm The Capstone Group. On the Colorado Secretary of State website, The Capstone Group lists its client for work on SB 213 as Connecticut-based investment firm Marshall Street Management, the family investment firm of Jesse Fink, the late 1990s co-founder of Priceline.

Fink’s son, Drew Fink, lives in Boulder and testified at the April 25 committee hearing “as a hut user and recreation property owner” urging the senators to approve the legislation. He said he had acquired a recreational property to use personally and to share with visitors.

“This bill takes an important step that these remarkable places remain available to everyone and not just those privileged enough to own them,” Fink said at the committee hearing. “It is not a free pass to create unsafe or unsanitary spaces. It simply says if you built it legally, you have the ability to share it.”

Fink is the owner of a backcountry cabin in Washington Gulch outside Crested Butte. The cabin is managed by the new Campfire Ranch, which offers stays and guided adventures at three remote cabins including on the Taylor River and on Red Mountain Pass. Fink is suing Gunnison County after the county concluded Fink’s three-bedroom backcountry cabin up Washington Gulch — which is located a 4-mile skin or snowmobile ride in the winter from the trailhead and rents for $1,500 a night — was operating last year in violation of multiple septic, building code and land use regulations.

The 3,122-square-foot cabin at 6001 County Road 811 was a single-family home before Fink purchased the property in August 2022. In late December, the county told Fink that leasing to as many as 12 people violated regulations concerning the capacity of the cabin’s on-site septic system. The county told Fink he could have no more than six people in the home. The county also told Fink that his overnight parking for guests at the Washington Gulch winter trailhead was illegal and the commercial operation in the drainage violated county land use regulations.

The county’s notice of violation forced Fink to cancel reservations at the cabin, causing him to lose $68,000 in booking revenue. Fink sued the county in February and filed multiple open records requests for thousands of pages of documents with the county.

“Mr. Fink currently faces civil and criminal penalties should he use the property for his own personal and family use and have more than six people stay at the property, precluding him from using his own home for family gatherings of which there are more than six members and should he short term rent the property to more than six people,” reads the lawsuit filed by Fink and Campfire Ranch in Gunnison County District Court.

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In Their Words

New survey shows growing opposition to Dolores River national monument proposal

“I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.”

There’s vehement antagonism in some parts of western Colorado toward a call to get President Biden to use the Antiquities Act to create a 390,000-acre national monument along the Dolores River in Mesa and Montrose counties. And the opposition appears to be growing.

An April survey by Magellan Strategies for Mesa County polled 1,272 residents in Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel counties, indicating a majority of residents oppose a national monument and think it would restrict access to public lands.

The survey showed overwhelming support — 72% — for conserving public lands like other national monuments in Colorado. But how those lands should be managed varied from previous surveys. The survey released this week shows more voters supporting county management of public lands and open space than federal or state management. About 62% of survey respondents said they did not trust the federal government to effectively manage and protect the proposed national monument and 31% said they did.

About 61% of the survey respondents said they were either very or somewhat familiar with the proposal to create a national monument on public lands around the Dolores River in Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel counties. When asked how a national monument designation would change access to lands around the Dolores River, 55% said a monument would restrict access and 25% said it would enhance access. And 45% said a national monument designation would have a negative impact on the local economy and job market, compared with 31% who said it would have a positive impact.

After seeing a map of the proposed national monument and reading about the bipartisan National Conservation Area proposal in Congress and learning about how the national monument might influence mining permits in the west end of Montrose County, 60% of respondents said they opposed the Dolores River national monument proposal, compared with 37% who supported the plan.

That’s a big shift from a March 2023 poll by Keating Research of 750 residents in the 3rd Congressional District and Dolores, Montrose, Mesa, Montezuma and San Miguel counties. That poll, commissioned by supporters of the nascent Dolores River Canyon Country National Monument plan, showed 29% of residents in the five counties opposed to a new national monument and 64% supporting Biden using the Antiquities Act to create a new national monument like he did for the Camp Hale Continental Divide National Monument in 2022.

On Thursday Biden announced he was expanding two national monuments in California , adding 109,000 acres to the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and 13,753 acres to the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. Biden has created, expanded or restored protections for 11 national monuments in his first term.

The Dolores River national monument proposal is controversial, with opponents fearing increased protections could hinder ranching, mining and motorized access and supporters arguing the increased level of protection for federal land could better mitigate the impacts of increased visitation.

Scott Braden, whose Colorado Wildlands Project has shepherded the Dolores River Canyon Country proposal for the past year, said “undoubtedly some opinion has shifted and hardened as more people are aware of the proposal,” but noted different survey-taking methodologies between the Keating Research and Magellan Strategies polls.

“I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle,” he said.

Breaking Trail

Federal appeals court delivers first-ever win for 37-year plan to build the Wolf Creek Village

“Now that we’ve got road access, it opens the door to start studying future possibilities.”

In the nearly 40 years that a legendary Texas investor has spent trying to build a massive village atop Wolf Creek Pass, not a lot has gone his way.

Until last month.

After almost a quarter century of lawsuits challenging the late Red McCombs’ proposal for a 1,700-unit village on 300 remote acres next to Wolf Creek ski area — and three court decisions siding with environmental groups battling the plan — the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver on April 19 threw out previous rulings and affirmed the Forest Service’s approval of the access road connecting U.S. Highway 160 with the island of private land.

“We are obviously pleased and feel like this was the right decision,” said Clint Jones, who has worked for the McCombs family on the Wolf Creek Village project since 2008.

Lawsuits have stalked the Wolf Creek Village plan since its inception as McCombs reworked his project, abandoning a plan for a second land swap and focusing on an access road to the inholding surrounded by the Rio Grande National Forest. McCombs argued that the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act — known as ANILCA — required the Forest Service to provide “adequate access” to islands of private land surrounded by public forest.

Environmental groups across the West have spent decades arguing that the clause in ANILCA that requires the Forest Service to allow “adequate access” so private landowners can have “reasonable use and enjoyment” of inholdings does not apply outside of Alaska. The 1980 legislation protected 104 million acres in Alaska and left about 800,000 acres of private land surrounded by federally protected land. (Environmental groups most recently have sued the White River National Forest over its ANILCA-anchored approval of a 2.4-mile paved access road to a 680-acre inholding where developers plan 19 luxury homes above the town of Edwards in the Eagle River Valley.)

The ANILCA fight over the Wolf Creek Village access road is the latest in a nearly 30-year battle to block McCombs and the village. The Rio Grande National Forest in 2019 approved an access road from U.S. 160 and a consortium of environmental groups — including Rocky Mountain Wild, the San Juan Citizens Alliance and Wilderness Workshop — sued to overturn the approval, marking more than 20 years of lawsuits seeking to block McCombs. The Forest Service also filed appeals seeking to overturn district court rulings that rejected the agency’s approval of the road. Three judges agreed with those groups, saying the Forest Service “failed to consider important aspects of the issues before them,” according to an October 2022 ruling by U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello .

Those issues are broad and reach beyond ANILCA. The environmental organizations raise concerns about endangered species like the Canada lynx and potential missteps by the Forest Service as it conducted its review of the access road plan under the National Environmental Policy Act. The groups first sued to overturn Mineral County’s 2000 approval of the village, which the Colorado Court of Appeals rejected in 2007.

Mark Pearson with the San Juan Citizens Alliance said the environmental coalition is studying the federal appeals court decision and has not made any decisions about appealing or seeking a rehearing.

Regardless of any legal action, the Wolf Creek Village plan will require many more years of planning, with the developer needing a permit from the Colorado Department of Transportation to access U.S. 160 and permits from Mineral County.

“There are a lot of opportunities for public participation on upcoming decisions that will probably stretch out for quite a long time,” Pearson said. “There are enormous physical and structural limitations for a village up there. Is there enough water to support the city they are proposing to build? How are they going to get power up there? All this will require some significant planning and public scrutiny.”

VF Corporation downsizing space — not people — at its global headquarters in LoDo

VF Corporation last week listed two floors to lease atop its global headquarters at 1551 Wewatta St.

While the 30,000-worker company last year launched a new strategy that includes selling some brands and laying off workers as it navigates declining sales for its top brands, the leasing of space in the headquarters, first reported by BusinessDen , is not a sign of more layoffs.

“We are just trying to optimize our space in the building based on the patterns of office attendance during the week,” said company spokesman Colin Wheeler, noting how the company’s roughly 1,000 employees based in Denver are in the office only three days a week, which has freed up space on the top floors.

VF Corporation in 2018 announced it had selected the former Gates Building in LoDo for its new global headquarters and would take over the entire 10-story Wewatta Street building. The company said it would renovate the 285,000-square-foot building — which is certified as LEED Gold by the U.S Green Building Council — with plans to move staff in by early 2020.

The company’s move from North Carolina — championed as a coup for Colorado’s nascent outdoor recreation industry and the state’s effort to establish itself as a national hub for the industry — was meant to consolidate brands under a single roof to stir innovation and collaboration.

The building has a capacity for about 1,200 workers and VF Corporation in 2018 said the Wewatta building gave the company room to grow beyond the 800 it expected to employ in Denver by 2026. The company employed about 70,000 in 170 countries in 2018.

Those were heady days for VF when the move to Denver and a portfolio shuffling marked “the most significant transformation in VR Corporation’s 120-year history,” according to then-CEO Steven Rendle’s note on the 2019 annual report . VF Corporation soared in the early 2000s, with revenues doubling and profits growing even faster in the decade leading up to a record year in 2014.

Revenue for fiscal 2019 reached $13.8 billion, a 12% increase over the previous year. The company reported $1.7 billion in earnings in fiscal 2019, when VF Corporation spun off its three jeans brands as their own publicly traded company, acquired the footwear Altra and merino wool icebreaker brands and sold its Nautica, Reef and Van Moer brands.

The pandemic challenged VF Corporation and revenues dropped to $9.24 billion in 2021. For fiscal year2023 the company reported $11.6 billion in revenue, a slight decline from 2022, with earnings reaching $1.56 billion, a steeper annual decline due to continued drops in sales for the company’s active brands like Vans and Supreme and work brands like Dickies and Timberland.

The apparel conglomerate’s latest financial report to investors in February showed continuing declines, with revenues through the first nine months of fiscal year 2024 down 9%, led by a 24% drop in revenue from Vans, a 13% drop by Timberland and 15% drop by Dickies. In 2019 the company’s stock price was trading for more than $90 a share, and it’s now at $13 a share.

In late 2023 the company launched a new strategy — dubbed Reinvent — that included cost reductions and cutting about 500 salaried positions. The company is selling its backpack brands Kipling, Eastpak and JanSport. VF Corporation’s new CEO Bracken Darrell, in a profile in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year , lamented the company’s move to consolidate power and said that “people running the brands started to feel like they had to ask for permission to do everything.”

The article noted fewer employees than expected transferred to Denver as part of the consolidation. Vans workers chose to stay in southern California and workers at The North Face remained in the Bay Area. Many workers at VF Corporation’s Smartwool chose to remain in Steamboat Springs, with the company’s former high-level employees seeding new companies and joining other brands in northwestern Colorado .

Office-space vacancy in downtown Denver is reaching record highs, topping 32% in the first three months of 2024, according to CBRE . The Downtown Denver Partnership late last year reported that only about 60% of downtown Denver weekday workers have returned to the office, compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. In October 2023 the partnership reported around 56,240 workers in downtown Denver every weekday, compared with more than 93,250 workers in October 2019.

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Type of Story: News

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