February 20, 2009
Written By: Samantha Tisdel Wright
Posted By: Erin Eddy
www.ourayland.com
www.ridgwayland.com
After doing without for several years, Ouray is poised to get its own medical center once again. Ouray Family Medicine will open its doors at 824 Main Street in mid-March.
"We've been scratching our heads thinking about it for years," said Dr. David Olson, a family practice physician who with his wife and nurse practitioner Shirley Olson, will be running the clinic. "The time just seemed right."
Once the decision to open a practice had been made, it took the Olsons a little longer to find the right place. Buying their own building was not an option, so when the current location, which used to house the hair salon Shea Studio, became available, "...We were like, 'Yeah, baby... it's perfect,' David laughed.
The location wasn't dialed in until December. Since then, there's been some serious remodeling going on, to transform the once chic salon into a medical clinic with a reception desk and waiting area, three exam rooms, a trauma/x-ray room, office space and more.
An open area up front will double as a waiting room for patients and their families, and an after-hours theater and lecture area, where guest lecturers will be invited to give talks from time to time, the Olsons said.
Shirley, who has been an RN for 15 years, has spent the past few years completing her master's degree to become a family nurse practitioner, training which she anticipates completing in May. She has recently been working at a women's health clinic in Montrose.
"I like primary care more than accute care, because you're working toward enhancing a person's overall health," she said.
David, who received his medical education at Northwestern University in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, and completed his family practice residency at Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, has been practicing family medicine since 1980 at the age of 25.
He formerly had small private family practices in Denver and Michigan. This past year, he's worked at a family practice in Montrose.
It's work that he's well-suited to. "Family physicians are in short supply," he noted. "They have the hardest job, they make the least money, they have to know the most."
The Olsons, who moved to Ouray in 2004, intend to flesh out their offerings by bringing in specialists on a rotating basis.
Shirley herself is currently obtaining certification training as a foot care specialist. "And we recently obtained our aesthetic medicine credentials and will likely offer Botox injections and chemical peels initially, and perhaps other aesthetic procedures later," Olson said.
In addition to his time in family practice, David spent a considerable period of time in high-level medical management. "I wanted to have a bigger effect; I wasn't happy with the way medicine was administered," he explained. "I was ready for something new." Now, he has come full circle, back to family medicine.
"We are committed to living in Ouray for the rest of our lives," he said. "And you can't be a medical director in Ouray." But there's certainly a need here for a medical clinic, a need which he and Shirley are now poised to fill. Together, they envision creating a family practice in Ouray that can care for all of the town's citizens, from birth on up.
The Olsons also look forward to creating an ultra-modern "micro" practice, incorporating the latest developments in medical practices that have been made possible by the Internet.
"We will have an interactive web page where patients can log in or fill in their demographics, and make or change an appointment," David explained. Patients, once they are logged in, can also securely e-mail David and Shirley questions and information about their medical backgrounds. All records will be kept electronically.
"The 'micro' model is very hands-on, and can dramatically decrease administrative fees," Shirley explained. "You might often have one of us answering the phone." And yes, the Olsons will do house calls.
"A micro-practice is the perfect model for us," Shirley added. "Our style is to spend more time with each patient. That's the way medicine should be practiced."
Friday, February 20, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Regional 5 star motel opens
Posted by Erin Eddy
www.ourayland.com
www.ridgwayland.com
Written by: Seth Cagin
Nine years and a reported $200 million later, there is a major new hotel in the Telluride region.
The Capella Telluride was scheduled to open its doors today to fanfare, high hopes, and, it is safe to say, some measure of relief as well. The opening of the Capella could be deemed to be the region’s very own economic stimulus. But as is true of President Obama’s national stimulus plan, there is no way to know in advance how well it will work.
The road from conception to completion of the largest construction project ever undertaken in the Telluride region was not only long and expensive, but fraught with peril, including an arduous approvals process that saw numerous compromises with respect to the structure’s mass, scale and design and more than a few occasions when it looked like it would never break ground.
Today’s grand opening could be taken as evidence that long-range community planning can sometimes yield a result. But it remains to be seen whether the economic impact will be all that has been hoped. That is true particularly since the Capella opens its doors in the midst of a deep and possibly deepening local, national and global economic slump.
The most recent data provided by the Telluride Visitors Bureau are not encouraging. Hotel occupancy in the Telluride region was down 17.5 percent in January compared to last January, with revenue per available room down by an even more impressive 30 percent, due to falling room rates. Advance bookings for the next six months are down by a whopping 32 percent compared to last year at this time, with only one bit of hopeful datum: in January, 18.6 percent more visitors booked their accommodations in the same month they planned to arrive compared to last January.
That last statistic suggests an opportunity for recovery ahead, and one that a sparkling, new, full-service hotel like the Capella might help to realize. Bookings at the Capella for the rest of this ski season are encouraging, the hotel’s general manager John Volponi said this week, and the summer looks strong, particularly around major festivals. As an example, this year’s bigger Gay Ski Week, which starts Feb. 21, has booked rooms and has scheduled a number of events at the Capella.
Among the opportunities the Capella should afford the region is the possibility of booking more groups utilizing the adjacent Telluride Conference Center. With the addition of the Capella, Mountain Village now offers a far larger assortment of rooms suitable for hosting groups, and, of possibly even greater importance, there are now break-out meeting rooms at the Capella for groups that use the conference center as their primary venue.
“The group market is extremely challenging right now for not only destination markets but all conference markets,” Scott McQuade, CEO of the Telluride Visitors Bureau said this week, explaining that corporate travel has been severely cut back due to the economy. “But there is hope on the horizon,” McQuade added. “We are already seeing both large and small groups book for 2010 and the Capella has certainly been of primary interest for many of these group leaders. The Capella has also helped the group effort in giving customers more options, and the destination the ability to accommodate larger groups.”
Once a Muddy Parking Lot
The Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association, then called Mountain Village Metro Services, quietly acquired the bulk of the property now occupied by the Capella in the fall of 2000, precisely with the objective of ensuring it would be developed as a hotel, and that it would incorporate other needed community amenities, and would not be developed as condominiums. Then, as today, there was a concern, expressed at that time by Telluride Ski and Golf Co. CEO Ron Allred and expressed today by current Telski CEO Dave Riley, that creating bedbase is essential to the region’s economic sustainability. But the last remaining sites in Mountain Village and Telluride that were suitable for hotel development were being developed instead as condominiums, which generally have a far lower occupancy rate than hotel rooms do.
Metro Services subsequently entered into an agreement with Robert Levine, who developed the adjacent Inn at Lost Creek, to take on the project. There were then hundreds of hours of public meetings to hammer out details of the project, specifically how big it would be and what it would include.
Twice in 2004, as the project neared final approval, Mountain Village voters rejected arguments that the project was too big, first defeating a measure (with 73 percent opposed) that would have restricted the town council’s ability to award height variances and the second defeating a measure (80 percent opposed) that would have overturned the town council’s final approval of the project. The project also survived a legal challenge from the developer of the neighboring Franz Klammer Lodge.
After all of that, what was long a muddy parking lot at the center of the Mountain Village Center, and was once the location for trailers where lift tickets were sold and skis and boots were rented, is today a complex of two large structures containing 100 hotel rooms, 48 condominiums, two restaurants, a ballroom, a spa, new retail space, an underground parking garage, and an ice rink in a new public plaza.
The Capella Telluride is the first Capella hotel to open in the United States, the American flagship of a new international luxury brand founded by Horst Schulze, the legendary founder of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel chain. Capella hotels will be less formal than Ritz-Carltons, somewhat smaller in size, and will deliver an even more highly personalized level of service, Schulze has decreed.
For example, each Capella guest will have the use of a “personal assistant,” who will first contact them even before they arrive to determine the guests’ interests and to begin making arrangements for their stay. Rather than a grand public lobby, the hotel has a “living room,” whose access is restricted to hotel guests, where the personal assistants maintain their desks. The two restaurants, Onyx, featuring fine dining, and the Suede Bar, with a more casual menu, are open to the public.
New staff was busily training this week, as an army of construction workers scurried about to meet the deadline for today’s opening, with Schulze, who began his career as a waiter in his native Germany, on hand to personally lend a hand. The hotel has a staff of about 100 people, about half of them recruited locally, Volponi said.
“It’s all about service,” Volponi said, and indeed this reporter and a photographer were greeted warmly as we toured the facilities. “‘We, the service professionals of Capella place our guests at the center of everything we do,’” Volponi added, quoting an excerpt from the company’s “service training” that is reviewed with all employees.
“I think that sums up our philosophy. The significant idea that is emphasized over and over again in our training is that we provide ‘warm and caring service.’”
The Capella Telluride is offering an introductory rate of $295 this winter and for much of next summer. In an interview a year ago, admittedly before the scale of the current economic downturn was clear, Schulze expressed confidence that the Capella would be successful within three years, building that success on his philosophy emphasizing guest, employee and owner satisfaction, and commitment to community.
The hope expressed by Schulze then and by Volponi this week is that the Capella will someday be as strongly identified with Telluride as the Little Nell is with Aspen, the Sonnenalp is with Vail, and the Hyatt Regency is with Beaver Creek.
www.ourayland.com
www.ridgwayland.com
Written by: Seth Cagin
Nine years and a reported $200 million later, there is a major new hotel in the Telluride region.
The Capella Telluride was scheduled to open its doors today to fanfare, high hopes, and, it is safe to say, some measure of relief as well. The opening of the Capella could be deemed to be the region’s very own economic stimulus. But as is true of President Obama’s national stimulus plan, there is no way to know in advance how well it will work.
The road from conception to completion of the largest construction project ever undertaken in the Telluride region was not only long and expensive, but fraught with peril, including an arduous approvals process that saw numerous compromises with respect to the structure’s mass, scale and design and more than a few occasions when it looked like it would never break ground.
Today’s grand opening could be taken as evidence that long-range community planning can sometimes yield a result. But it remains to be seen whether the economic impact will be all that has been hoped. That is true particularly since the Capella opens its doors in the midst of a deep and possibly deepening local, national and global economic slump.
The most recent data provided by the Telluride Visitors Bureau are not encouraging. Hotel occupancy in the Telluride region was down 17.5 percent in January compared to last January, with revenue per available room down by an even more impressive 30 percent, due to falling room rates. Advance bookings for the next six months are down by a whopping 32 percent compared to last year at this time, with only one bit of hopeful datum: in January, 18.6 percent more visitors booked their accommodations in the same month they planned to arrive compared to last January.
That last statistic suggests an opportunity for recovery ahead, and one that a sparkling, new, full-service hotel like the Capella might help to realize. Bookings at the Capella for the rest of this ski season are encouraging, the hotel’s general manager John Volponi said this week, and the summer looks strong, particularly around major festivals. As an example, this year’s bigger Gay Ski Week, which starts Feb. 21, has booked rooms and has scheduled a number of events at the Capella.
Among the opportunities the Capella should afford the region is the possibility of booking more groups utilizing the adjacent Telluride Conference Center. With the addition of the Capella, Mountain Village now offers a far larger assortment of rooms suitable for hosting groups, and, of possibly even greater importance, there are now break-out meeting rooms at the Capella for groups that use the conference center as their primary venue.
“The group market is extremely challenging right now for not only destination markets but all conference markets,” Scott McQuade, CEO of the Telluride Visitors Bureau said this week, explaining that corporate travel has been severely cut back due to the economy. “But there is hope on the horizon,” McQuade added. “We are already seeing both large and small groups book for 2010 and the Capella has certainly been of primary interest for many of these group leaders. The Capella has also helped the group effort in giving customers more options, and the destination the ability to accommodate larger groups.”
Once a Muddy Parking Lot
The Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association, then called Mountain Village Metro Services, quietly acquired the bulk of the property now occupied by the Capella in the fall of 2000, precisely with the objective of ensuring it would be developed as a hotel, and that it would incorporate other needed community amenities, and would not be developed as condominiums. Then, as today, there was a concern, expressed at that time by Telluride Ski and Golf Co. CEO Ron Allred and expressed today by current Telski CEO Dave Riley, that creating bedbase is essential to the region’s economic sustainability. But the last remaining sites in Mountain Village and Telluride that were suitable for hotel development were being developed instead as condominiums, which generally have a far lower occupancy rate than hotel rooms do.
Metro Services subsequently entered into an agreement with Robert Levine, who developed the adjacent Inn at Lost Creek, to take on the project. There were then hundreds of hours of public meetings to hammer out details of the project, specifically how big it would be and what it would include.
Twice in 2004, as the project neared final approval, Mountain Village voters rejected arguments that the project was too big, first defeating a measure (with 73 percent opposed) that would have restricted the town council’s ability to award height variances and the second defeating a measure (80 percent opposed) that would have overturned the town council’s final approval of the project. The project also survived a legal challenge from the developer of the neighboring Franz Klammer Lodge.
After all of that, what was long a muddy parking lot at the center of the Mountain Village Center, and was once the location for trailers where lift tickets were sold and skis and boots were rented, is today a complex of two large structures containing 100 hotel rooms, 48 condominiums, two restaurants, a ballroom, a spa, new retail space, an underground parking garage, and an ice rink in a new public plaza.
The Capella Telluride is the first Capella hotel to open in the United States, the American flagship of a new international luxury brand founded by Horst Schulze, the legendary founder of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel chain. Capella hotels will be less formal than Ritz-Carltons, somewhat smaller in size, and will deliver an even more highly personalized level of service, Schulze has decreed.
For example, each Capella guest will have the use of a “personal assistant,” who will first contact them even before they arrive to determine the guests’ interests and to begin making arrangements for their stay. Rather than a grand public lobby, the hotel has a “living room,” whose access is restricted to hotel guests, where the personal assistants maintain their desks. The two restaurants, Onyx, featuring fine dining, and the Suede Bar, with a more casual menu, are open to the public.
New staff was busily training this week, as an army of construction workers scurried about to meet the deadline for today’s opening, with Schulze, who began his career as a waiter in his native Germany, on hand to personally lend a hand. The hotel has a staff of about 100 people, about half of them recruited locally, Volponi said.
“It’s all about service,” Volponi said, and indeed this reporter and a photographer were greeted warmly as we toured the facilities. “‘We, the service professionals of Capella place our guests at the center of everything we do,’” Volponi added, quoting an excerpt from the company’s “service training” that is reviewed with all employees.
“I think that sums up our philosophy. The significant idea that is emphasized over and over again in our training is that we provide ‘warm and caring service.’”
The Capella Telluride is offering an introductory rate of $295 this winter and for much of next summer. In an interview a year ago, admittedly before the scale of the current economic downturn was clear, Schulze expressed confidence that the Capella would be successful within three years, building that success on his philosophy emphasizing guest, employee and owner satisfaction, and commitment to community.
The hope expressed by Schulze then and by Volponi this week is that the Capella will someday be as strongly identified with Telluride as the Little Nell is with Aspen, the Sonnenalp is with Vail, and the Hyatt Regency is with Beaver Creek.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Ouray Real Estate Values
Written by: David Mullings
Posted by: Erin Eddy
www.ourayland.com
www.ridgwayland.com
We're in a super bad recession, and if the local real estate market isn't in the tank, it's at least within spitting distance. According to recent sales trends, that house on the corner, and yours, isn't worth what it was a couple of years ago. And yet we're told to expect our property tax bills to be much the same for 2009, with some possibly even higher. Yep. Nobody ever said life was fair. There's an explanation for this, of course.
County Assessor Susie Mayfield reported on the property taxing situation in January to the Board of County Commissioners. Her office conducts biennial (in odd-numbered years) re-valuations of real property, which together with mil levies, determine the amount of property tax due. The 2009 valuations, Mayfield said, are based on valuations from all of 2007 and the first half of 2008. Remember those good ol' days, when the fundamentals of the economy were strong? And the "get-anybody-in-a-home, regardless" theme permeated the banking and real estate industries.
Here in Ouray County, property values haven't fallen as much as in many parts of the country. Some sellers, in fact, are holding firm on their asking prices, willing and able to wait out the downturn, which inevitably will reverse. But in the meantime, we're stuck with a taxation situation where the level of taxes lags the reality of market conditions. The silver lining on the horizon comes in two years, when whatever decline we're witnessing locally will be reflected after the Assessor's Office finishes its next re-valuation process in the middle of 2010, taking into account market activity for this year.
Prudently, county commissioners advised Mayfield to explain as best her office can to property owners how the valuation process works. This is especially vital coming on the heels of the confusion and "do-over" that occurred the last time, in 2007. Then, drastically higher commercial valuations raised the ire of many merchants and resulted in a second valuation. Meanwhile, property owners and others roll with the punches of the shattered economy as best they can, hoping to scratch by until we come out of it. Despite the tough times, a "glass half-full" approach to the conditions reveals some bright points.
First, the correction in housing prices could enable some families to afford to get in the market. Second, with corporate layoffs in the big cities and the general state of crisis, lifestyle changes and a retreat to a beautiful little mountain area might be attractive to a whole lot of people across the country. The desirability of Ouray County as a place to visit and live will withstand even these times.
Posted by: Erin Eddy
www.ourayland.com
www.ridgwayland.com
We're in a super bad recession, and if the local real estate market isn't in the tank, it's at least within spitting distance. According to recent sales trends, that house on the corner, and yours, isn't worth what it was a couple of years ago. And yet we're told to expect our property tax bills to be much the same for 2009, with some possibly even higher. Yep. Nobody ever said life was fair. There's an explanation for this, of course.
County Assessor Susie Mayfield reported on the property taxing situation in January to the Board of County Commissioners. Her office conducts biennial (in odd-numbered years) re-valuations of real property, which together with mil levies, determine the amount of property tax due. The 2009 valuations, Mayfield said, are based on valuations from all of 2007 and the first half of 2008. Remember those good ol' days, when the fundamentals of the economy were strong? And the "get-anybody-in-a-home, regardless" theme permeated the banking and real estate industries.
Here in Ouray County, property values haven't fallen as much as in many parts of the country. Some sellers, in fact, are holding firm on their asking prices, willing and able to wait out the downturn, which inevitably will reverse. But in the meantime, we're stuck with a taxation situation where the level of taxes lags the reality of market conditions. The silver lining on the horizon comes in two years, when whatever decline we're witnessing locally will be reflected after the Assessor's Office finishes its next re-valuation process in the middle of 2010, taking into account market activity for this year.
Prudently, county commissioners advised Mayfield to explain as best her office can to property owners how the valuation process works. This is especially vital coming on the heels of the confusion and "do-over" that occurred the last time, in 2007. Then, drastically higher commercial valuations raised the ire of many merchants and resulted in a second valuation. Meanwhile, property owners and others roll with the punches of the shattered economy as best they can, hoping to scratch by until we come out of it. Despite the tough times, a "glass half-full" approach to the conditions reveals some bright points.
First, the correction in housing prices could enable some families to afford to get in the market. Second, with corporate layoffs in the big cities and the general state of crisis, lifestyle changes and a retreat to a beautiful little mountain area might be attractive to a whole lot of people across the country. The desirability of Ouray County as a place to visit and live will withstand even these times.
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