Vail facing a midlife crisis

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The hotel, located on Hansen Ranch Road, was torn down and rebuilt, and it has gone upscale, as a visit to a $1,500-a-night, one-bedroom suite with Gore Range views reveals. This, he said, is what visitors today want.

And Lazier, father of 1996 Indianapolis 500 winner Buddy Lazier, believes, as one might expect, that his hotel's "numbers will get quite a bit better now."

Entertainment is becoming an increasingly significant part of the economy, and Vail must grow proportionately, he said.

Midlife crisis

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Robert Aikens, owner of Verbatim Booksellers and a town resident since 1989, said Vail hit a "midlife crisis" and sought a more youthful look.

"You could go to places here that still had orange shag carpet," he said. "I'm serious."

The area is full of Caterpillar tractors, cones and burly men in white hard hats, and the sounds of drilling and trucks backing up drown out conversations on some of Vail's arteries.

Ask Aikens about the construction, and he'll say it has been a thorn in his side, discouraging pedestrians from heading into his shop. However, when the work is completed, and the dust settles, "Vail will rock," he added.

Preserving the original Vail

Not everyone is so wholehearted about the changes.

They stress they are not resistant to modernization and the pursuit of amenities that match those offered in any other ski town. What some longtime Vail denizens do loathe is the dimensions of recent projects, especially a controversial plan to revamp the drab Crossroads Mall on East Meadow Drive.

"Why would a woman get a face lift at 70 years old?" asked Sheika Gramshammer, a former New York model who runs an Austrian-style hotel in the village with her husband, Pepi. "Because she wants to look good. No one has a problem with that.

"You have to upgrade and to give people more, because other towns give people more," said Gramshammer, who opened her hotel in 1964 and has gradually added features in the rooms, such as heated bathroom floors. "We're not talking about development. The issue is the height, the size."

Inauthentic, but loved

The inn Gasthof Gramshammer is at the center of what she calls a "fake Bavaria, but a fake Bavaria people love."

She recalled a faux-German restaurant and hotel, the Old Heidelberg Inn, with plastic geraniums located not too far from Denver many years ago.

"It was packed," she said. It wasn't authentic, but that was OK.

Now Gramshammer said she is concerned Vail is losing its "village style."

Stockbroker Merv Lapin, a Vail town councilman from 1987 to 1995, echoed some of those sentiments.

"Change is good," said the businessman, who runs Vail Securities Investment. "But what isn't good is when people don't recognize the elements that have made Vail so successful. That's a European alpine village with buildings that have human scale, no more than four stories tall so you can see the mountains."

Lapin fled the Northeast in 1966 after earning a Harvard MBA and headed west, dragging a trailer behind his Austin Healey, dreaming of the slopes.

Progress in a helmet

Aspen was his intended destination, but he stopped to use the restroom at the Vail Village Inn and never left town. A pretty woman working behind the front desk noted they needed another employee, he said. Lapin was interested. And he got the job.

Vail, he said, has been "very, very good" to him. It is easy to see what he means. His home is situated by the creek slicing through Vail, on a property purchased for $35,000 in 1969. Lapin skis all the time and is the kind of local who can list the best times to hit Chair 26, the Pride Express Lift.

However, he bemoans what he says is a decline in the quality of the skiing - he bought a helmet for the first time this past season because he worried about being nailed - increasing waits to get tables at restaurants and a loss of the "ambience and uniqueness" that are Vail hallmarks.

Development issues in Vail, though some prefer not to look at it this way, pit the old-timers against the newcomers.

No one has been a Vail resident longer than Dick Hauserman, an original investor who led the architectural committee that designed the town. The founding father, 90, said he worries about developers who "build and build and are bottom-line oriented" with little regard for the people.

"Vail was a nice community, a little Austrian village that grew like mad, and you can't control that," he said. "But what you can control, and all I'm interested in, are the community relationships."

The Fassler family, behind the Sonnenalp Resort, should serve as the model, Hauserman said, because "when they build, they keep the original feeling, and nothing is so atrocious or too high and out of proportion.

"We should elect them to be in charge of all new development in the center of Vail," he added. "Everything they have done has been first class and accepted by the public."

At a crossroads

Conversation with Hauserman, like discussions with just about everyone else following the development, shifted to the Crossroads project.

Critics have complained that the new building would be "massive" and nearly 100 feet tall from the front of the site to the peak. They say it will stick out like a sore thumb, and they demand more concessions.

Developer Peter Knobel, however, said he already has compromised by scaling down the mass of the proposed site by about 20 percent. He also noted that the distance from the back of the property on Frontage Road to the very top is just shy of 88 feet tall, interpreting the height issue differently.

Knobel says the project, which calls for condos, an ice skating rink, a public plaza, bowling alley and movie theater, 55,000 square feet of retail space, and underground parking spots, would be roughly the same size as the future Vail Plaza and Four Seasons hotels, two other elements of the redevelopment.

He said he spent about $35 million to buy the land and personally plans to invest $250 million to make Crossroads a reality. Knobel admitted it is a gamble, that the market is unpredictable.

"There is no real estate project that is guaranteed," he said.

Opponents said the developer is driven by money. Knobel said he has another motivation.

"I have a family, and two kids, and Vail is lacking activities for families," said the former New Yorker, taking a break earlier this week in a Crossroads showroom on the edge of the site. "Why should a family have to drive to Eagle to go bowling or go to Edwards to go to the movies?"

Lapin, the 40-year Vail resident, said the local government should have pushed Knobel to include more benefit to the public in return for freeing him of zoning restrictions that would have precluded his proposal. Others fear Crossroads will pave the way for taller and wider structures in Vail in the coming years.

Time for a new face

Knobel, 49, was baffled by questions about the value to the people, pointing to literature outlining his "commitments to the community" and emphasizing other features, including public space that would be available for concerts and other events.

The town council has approved the project, and plenty of locals, such as the Tivoli's Lazier, back it, but opponents have not given up. They collected enough signatures to force a public referendum on July 11. That means Vail voters will decide whether Crossroads should proceed.

A lobbying campaign on both sides is in the full swing.

Still, even the detractors acknowledge blocking Knobel's ambitious overhaul is a long shot. Gramshammer said Knobel is so persuasive that if "he would run for president, he would win."

Lapin, meanwhile, called his own group the "underdogs."

It is unanimous that Vail could not wait until its 70th birthday for a new face. The community is in its mid-40s and, as town manager Stan Zemler said, is "ripe for redevelopment."

"We're run like a business, and businesses periodically have to reinvent themselves and change their product mix," he said.

Daedalus Real Estate Advisors in Phoenix, the company behind the One Willow Bridge Road project in Vail, wanted to be early and to capitalize on pent-up demand in town for condominiums. About three-quarters of its units, set to open in November, have been sold.

"Part of our goal is to be the first mover in a succession of new developments," said Daedalus' Bob McNichols. "You don't want to come in last or to overbuild."

Vail Resorts Development Co. also is betting heavy investment will pay off, with roughly $500 million of projects unfolding in Vail, including Arrabelle, said Paul Witt, a spokesman.

The mountain opened in December 1962 with two chairlifts and $5 lift tickets. The clock tower and the covered bridge, two landmarks, arrived a few years later, followed by scores of other properties.

"When they built these buildings in the late '60s and '70s, no one had any idea what Vail would become," said Aikens, the independent bookshop proprietor.

At the 50-year mark, in 2012, Vail will have a more modern look. Some hope the town and its newer generations will not forget its first one.

At a glance

• What: Redevelopment of Vail, which includes more than two dozen projects valued at $1.3 billion.

• Features: Hotels, homes, condos, restaurants, shops, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a public plaza, fountains, benches, underground tunnels, and heated streets and sidewalks.

• Completion: Some projects are completed. Others are due to come online through 2008.

• Largest project to date: Four Seasons hotel ($260 million).

• History: Vail Mountain opened in December 1962 with two chairlifts and $5 lift tickets. Two landmarks, the clock tower and the covered bridge, arrived a few years later.

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