Brief by Allen Best
Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine
No doubt about it, times are tough. But they’ve been tough before, and not that long ago. In most destination ski resorts, the real estate market skidded downhill in the early 1980s and never fully recovered for the better part of the decade.
Harder hit than most during that decade was Grand County, where foreclosures at and near Winter Park, Fraser, and Granby were common. One ski area, SilverCreek, closed altogether. Twenty-one percent of those ages 21 through 34 left.
Those who were there, and some who escaped early, remember the late 1980s as a dark, dark time. It took much of the 1990s to sort through the bankruptcies.
If local conditions this time are no worse, and perhaps better than those of the 1980s, there’s still a sense of broader economic collapse, some of those survivors tell the Sky-Hi Daily News.
`”Problems now seem to be more systemic, wider,” carpenter Jay Clough tells the newspapers. In particular, he sees it as a difficult time for young families.
