MOUNTAIN VILLAGE – With the national economy in a dismal state, continuing construction and fewer tourist-attracting events, this summer season looks to be a tough one for merchants and retailers in Mountain Village.

Recently, nearly a half-dozen merchants and restaurants have closed their doors due to the lack of foot traffic in the Village Core, and after three seasons in Mountain Village, the Telluride Cajun Festival will be moving to the streets of Telluride this summer. The Full Tilt mountain bike race will also be absent, cited by many as the biggest economic boost for Mountain Village retailers during the summer season.

According to a number of merchants that have experienced the struggles of trying to make it in Mountain Village, there is no one element to blame for the town’s economic woes.

The Capella Telluride project continues to be a burden, as its construction site lies in the heart of the Village Core. The town’s pavers project in Heritage Plaza, initially scheduled to be complete before the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, is now expected to take until the end of summer. The Peaks, although open, remains an uncertainty, pending sale.

And for some, the three main entities of Mountain Village – Town, Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association and Telluride Ski and Golf Co. – aren’t working together well enough to find solutions for bringing much needed foot traffic to town. All that, combined with relatively high rents, makes doing business here even harder.

“After over nine years, we have moved out of our space up there,” said Will Thompson, owner of the now-closed Mountain Gallery. “My lease was up and I had to say, ‘Well, do I want to continue doing this?’” Thompson, who also owns Telluride Gallery of Fine Arts on Telluride’s main street, cited the fact that his rent in Mountain Village was $250 per square foot a month and that the limited business conducted there didn’t cover his costs.

“The numbers say it all,” he said. “Some of us think that rent is getting too high. I pay even more in Telluride, but there I am doing 11, 12 to 14 times the business.”

Molly Poiset, owner of the now-closed Forebears furnishings, which had been a mainstay in Mountain Village for 14 years, said her problems began last year when The Peaks Hotel and Spa closed for an unspecified time.

“The nail in the coffin for me was two-fold,” Poiset said. “One, The Peaks closing down. The Town of Mountain Village should have never allowed The Peaks to shut down without penalties. That is a debacle and that is the reason why everybody is closing.”

Poiset added that she struggled with the “bigger issues” in Mountain Village but it was the “little things,” like ticketing, that pushed her over the edge.

“The second part of the equation was the code enforcement,” she said. “The ticketing is so obnoxious up there. As merchants we were lucky to have people drive into town, and what happens? They get a parking ticket. People are spending thousands of dollars to drive there and they get a ticket. It is really incredibly unpleasant to visitors and to locals.”

Also closed now are Azadi Rugs, Bistro Isabelle and the Winston Gallery.

But some merchants remain, including Slopestyle, with hopes of an economic upturn.

Bob Franzese, owner of Black Bear Trading Co., said a healthy collaboration between the town’s three entities could provide a solution.

“The real problem is that the town, the ski area and the owners association are not working together for the same goals,” Franzese said. “Because of that, there are some serious issues. It is tough right now. There is no traffic, none. We were told that the pavers project was going to be done by this summer. It is not going to be done this summer, it is going to be done this fall, and it is very difficult to get around.

“The ski area’s lack of support of Full Tilt has a huge impact. The merchants up here, they really do a good job. Boot Doctors does a great job. Telluride Sports does a great job, but we are all getting impacted. It has been really tough and we don’t see any end in sight.”

Telski CEO Dave Riley agreed that Mountain Village’s retailers are in a tough situation, but added that the town’s economic woes don’t come from one cancelled event. Instead, he pointed to the lack of hotel rooms as the main problem, an issue both Telski and town council have addressed in project approvals.

“I would have to agree that the situation is going from bad to worse and I think it is much more systemic of a situation than may be obvious on the surface,” Riley said. “I don’t believe the Full Tilt would have kept this from happening. This is a much more macroeconomic problem. The solution, I think, is going to have to include some short-term actions but also some significant and meaningful long-term changes. This is not something a few events is going to fix.”

Riley added that when the Village Core was originally conceived, it was intended to drive pedestrian traffic.

“What happened over the last 20 years is the wrong type of units have been built,” he said. “We now have an overabundance of large empty condominiums and a shortage of hotel properties that create foot traffic in the Village. The heart of the problem is the bed base mix.”

Over the past couple years, town council has addressed the problem of the bed-base mix and has approved several large-scale projects including Capella Telluride, Silverline I and II, and Rosewood. So far, the only one to get off the ground has been Capella. (For an update on the status of the Rosewood project see story on page 10.)

While hot beds may be a part of the problem, Councilmember Jonathan Greenspan said even more needs to be done to get people into Mountain Village.

“We kind of have an identity crisis going on up here,” Greenspan said. “We are still trying to figure out who we are and what we want to be. For businesses to survive, they need traffic. We need things to draw people in and we have nothing to pull people in – except for the concert events that we have at this time.”

Greenspan said Mountain Village lacks many of the amenities that Telluride has, like town parks.

“We have no traffic going on in front of these stores,” he said. “We are lacking these things for people to do.” Greenspan cited a bike program with bike events, a biking trail system, an indoor/outdoor climbing facility, horseback rides, and bungee trampolines as ways to get more people into Mountain Village. “We need more recreational-based anchors up there.”

Greenspan said various circumstances have added to the problem.

“It is rumored that rents are going up. When you have this many vacant storefronts, I don’t know what that motivation is. All of these pieces to the puzzle, along with the economy and construction projects it is a tough year to survive up there.”

Mayor Bob Delves agreed that better cooperation among the three entities is needed to revitalize the Village Core.

“The land-use decisions in the past five years were made for economic vitality in the core as its centerpiece,” Delves said. “It starts with Capella. Unfortunately that project ended up getting delayed. We approved the remodel at The Peaks along with Silverline I and II and Rosewood with the same intent that it would help the vibrancy of the core and none of the timing on those has worked at all.

“Over the past couple years, I would agree that the three largest entities in town have not necessarily been working out of the same playbook,” he continued. “The town will be discussing creating its master plan at our next meeting, which will incorporate anything that has been done by the owners association but we want to take control of creating it. Right now, it’s a tough summer and that is being created by a lot of isolated events.”