Pressure cooks

In response to Lorenzo's editorial:

"At its heart, Aspen is a tourist town, a ski resort. The focus should be on short-term visits… Recently...there has been a paradigm shift from renting to selling Aspen — as in permanently. …  Personally I’m a little more comfortable with renting Aspen — when you’re done with it, I want it back."

Yep, at it's inflated squeaky balloon 2008 level there was a realtor in every other downtown building.  By the  2009 we'd lost over 40 of those downtown businesses realtor and retailer alike.  It's even simpler than penthouses vs hotel rooms… it's putting all your eggs in one basket and those of us with Depression era parents  know all about the wisdom of putting all your eggs in one basket. Don't. Just don't.

Yep, I'd rather have tourists for 6 months high service industry pressure followed by 6 months of glorious I can turkey bowl down Durant off season than 2 weeks of second homeowner cyclone followed by 50 weeks of  dark dusty silence. 

Oh but there is soooo much construction now and everybody wants to tear down and build something new and it's sooooo tempting just to try and monkey wrench it all. Monkey Wrenching is nothing new.  Fritz chained himself to the tree in front of the Miner's Building construction site.  For years we've waved our zoning code stick in the face of the great big development elephant.  How is that stick waving strategy working for the "no development" contingent? The Miner's Building went up, the Ritz (Saint Regis) went up, the Art Museum went up. 

Now we're going to spend $20K on a public vote on Base 1. Heaven forbid we should spend that time and money on developing a community with more diversity or on fixing the draconian code- but that's different letter.

Saying "NO" to development now only means bigger and badder development next time. That's our track record. 

FYI Lorenzo, AirBNB- not so bad. Of course you can't advertise there if you're in affordable housing so the chances of it being "affordable" lodging in Aspen is nil.