MOUNTAIN VILLAGE – “Mountain Village is at the teenage stage of resorts with only 60 percent of its accommodations built. Without facilities and programs to attract visitors on a year-round basis, annual occupancy is relatively low,” said Paul Mathews, president of Ecosign Mountain Resort Planners, at last week’s presentation of the inventory and balanced analysis report the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association hired the firm to complete almost eight months ago.

“Anyone who has had a teenager knows it doesn’t quite work,” he said. “This is partly temporal and we think if you keep building in the correct direction, it will help. Right now, the commercial core lacks diversity and variety. How can that be when you have huge galleries with bronze horse statues? Commercial businesses cannot survive in this environment. There are more empty spaces than full spaces right now. It makes you sort or wonder what may have went wrong.”

More than 100 residents, retailers and town officials attended the three-hour presentation at the Telluride Conference Center to hear the results of Ecosign’s research efforts that, so far, have included gathering inventory on the town’s retail space, hotbeds, employee housing, tourist amenities, parking, and overall design. According to Mathews, the town needs more diverse recreational activities and more hotbeds to increase visitation.

“Overall, we are quite below our benchmark for public beds,” he said. “Mountain resort communities rely on tourist dollars to support the facilities, commercial space and maintenance. Regulations should be implemented to ensure the majority of tourist accommodation units [hotbeds] remaining to be built be built in the Village Core.”

Mathews went on to say that on average, visitors while on vacation spend three times more than the average resident does. “One tourist has the value of three locals,” he said adding that increasing recreational opportunities, festivals and events is needed to bring more money-spending visitors to the town.

And while Mountain Village’s hotbeds may be taken in the busy winter ski season and partially during the summer months, Mathews said it is important to find ways to bring visitors into the town during the shoulder seasons, which would bring a need for year-round employment.

“You need year-round utilization, then you need people working,” Mathews said. “You need people running programs, conferences, musical events. It’s a long list. Conference season is exactly in your shoulder season. You also need more sports in town.”

Adding to the needs of Mountain Village, Mathews said that the town has a high demand for more employee/affordable housing, which should be concentrated in the Mountain Meadows area because it is hidden and employees know where it is rather than visitors.

“Density bonuses should be considered for building more employee housing,” he said. “Using the existing suitable undeveloped private land and open space in Mountain Village should be considered.”

What town officials already knew and Ecosign researchers soon discovered is the issue of parking, or lack thereof. How does Mountain Village solve the parking shortage problem? For starters, Mathews said, private underground parking should be utilized more.

“Underground parking should be pooled,” he said. “Pooled parking gets five times better utilization than private parking. We don’t think private parking works and the way to stop that is change the mindset to ‘let’s fill up under the buildings first.’”

Expensive Structural Changes Needed in Core

For retailers to survive in the Village Core, Mathews, along with Tom Moriarity, vice president of Economic Research Associates, said changes in the core’s view corridors are needed to improve the retail environment.

One of Mathews’s first observances of the Village Core is its number of plazas that create a discombobulated retail environment.

“I have never seen a place with five plazas anywhere,” Mathews said. “We are over plaza-ed.”

Moriarity suggested that the various plazas should be defined as certain areas, with retail shops concentrated in one, restaurants in another and activities in yet another. This concept, he said, would combat the confusion many first-time visitors have when they go into the Village Core.

Mathews said the lack of view corridors in the Village Core also confuses guests because they cannot see in one direct line where to go for retail establishments or restaurants. He used an image of the view from the Sunset Plaza area facing East to the Gondola terminal as an example.

“Here you are in Sunset Plaza and you are supposed to figure out where the hell to go,” Mathews said. “I don’t see anywhere to go.” To fix this, albeit an expensive proposal, Mathews suggested that a hill or bridge be taken out or moved at certain places in the core to make things easier to understand.

“These are preliminary concepts, not final answers,” Mathews said, adding that creating an arcade environment like those found in Italy and in Vail where pedestrians can find awnings for cover while shopping would help the core’s vitality. He also suggested that the storefront/retail sign regulations be modified to show the fact that retailers exist in the area.

Mathews reiterated through the evening’s presentation that Mountain Village was not a lost cause, but just needed some tweaking here and there.

“It is not all broken,” he said. “We have studied this whole organism and it is the heart that needs fine tuning.”

Where the Study Fits In

TMVOA Board President Mike Wisniewski said the community research has so far cost the owners association $200,000, with about $400,000 remaining in the budget. Mathews said all of the documentation that has been created in the process would be handed over to the town to provide assistance in its comprehensive master planning process it has recently started. Mayor Bob Delves, in an interview after the presentation, said the work Ecosign has already completed would be a huge help.

“When a municipality does a master plan or comprehensive plan, all perspectives are helpful,” Delves said. “The owners association has paid for some expertise that the town may not have been able to afford. Sometimes the best ideas come when you relieve yourself of the realities and think outside the box. When thinking isn’t limited, I think that is when the best ideas come out and that is what they are doing.”

Delves also said that many of the ideas expressed by the independent consultant Ecosign, give reason to the town council’s efforts to make Mountain Village economically sustainable.

“I think what these experts are putting on the table largely validates the behaviors of recent town councils and, for that matter, recent TMVOA boards that have been taking deliberate actions that lead to economic vitality in Mountain Village,” he said.

Mathews said the next phase of research will include Mountain Village’s hinterlands, residential areas. He said they will also make recommendations on a retail tenant strategy for the core with a 3-D model redesign of the Village Core.