Options for continuing base area upgrades recieve a warm welcome from City Council

I am fortunate to be a part of the Urban Renewal Authority Advisory Committee that manages the funds for improvements at the base of the Steamboat Ski Area. We have laid the foundation for significant improvements to the base area and have had several breakthroughs in working through the designs and agreements necessary for construction of a new promenade linking the inside of the base area together.

To do this we need a second larger bond issue which has become more difficult to get and less comfortable given the current uncertain national market and uncertain city revenues. It looked like we would not be able to proceed and several naysayers asked why we even bothered to continue to meet. The answer was because we all care deeply about Steamboat and understand the importance of improvements to our base area. As business people it just wasn't in our nature to give up without looking at more options.

Several people on the team including myself suggested we see if there was a way to do this responsibly for the city. David Nagel stepped up to lead the effort and organize the team. With a lot of work in a short time we were able to put together a detailed analysis of how this could be structured to reduce risk on the original bonds and leave a comfortable margin on the new bonds given new properties that will be finished soon. It looks like we can proceed with minimal risk. City Staff and now Council agreed and we hope to have a final decision soon.

This is good for Steamboat now and sends a strong message about where we are going. I will look forward to seeing the council make a well considered choice from this group's recommendations on May 5th once we have new assessments of the base area property values that fund URA improvements to confirm we can safely pay the bonds.

You can read the Steamboat Pilot article by clicking here. If you have any questions about this project or how it will impact the base area and property values feel free to call me at 970-819-6930 or email jon@mybrokers.com. For more click back to the Steamboat Springs blog main page.