Travel
Vail's
Billion Dollar Base Lift
For the last few years, most of the news coming out of Vail has focused not on the skiing,
but on the developments at the base of the lifts.
By: Tom Passavant
This is quite amazing when you consider that Vail, about 100 miles west of Denver, is the biggest ski mountain in the United States, with nearly 5,300 acres and 193 trails. From the top of the lifts, the skiing terrain extends out for seven miles across a ridgeline. The ski school has more than 1,000 instructors.
On the other hand, the base area upgrades did not exactly involve small sums of money. The project was dubbed “Vail’s Billion-Dollar Renewal” and in fact, the meter is still running and now headed toward $2 billion. One entire section of town, the westernmost enclave called Lionshead, has been substantially rebuilt: 130,000 square feet of heated walkways have been installed, and over 450 new condos, hotel rooms and homes have already appeared. In the next few years another 350 units or so will debut, many brought online by such high-wattage names as Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont. Just how closely they’ll hew to Vail’s traditional, Bavarian-accented architecture remains to be seen.
All of this construction has done more than just replace creaky condos with shiny new ones. One notable improvement is the vastly upgraded gathering places around the main skier staging areas. The primary gateway to the mountain, which had been the cramped, staircase-riddled old Vista Bahn gondola complex, is now the gracious, spacious, cobblestoned Mountain Plaza. And Lionshead, renamed Vail Square, has morphed into a bright, wide-open amphitheater for watching skiers make their last runs.
More good news is that there are lodging and dining options that deliver excellent value. In Vail Square, the luxurious new Arrabelle hotel and condo development has a showcase restaurant, Centre V, that offers excellent brasserie fare at reasonable prices. Over in the main village, the totally rebuilt Tivoli Lodge is family-friendly, including the rates. And the new Marketplace complex has everything from a creperie and takeout sandwiches -- all of which were tough to find in the old Vail.
But lodging and dining were far from my mind on a crisp, sunny morning last April. A friend and I were at the top of Blue Sky Basin, a swatch of glades, meadows and open bowls that is the most recent addition to Vail’s vast terrain. Fourteen inches of light, dry powder had fallen overnight, but before we dived in, we paused to savor the scenery. Up here, at 11,480 feet, the 360-degree view encompassed seemingly all of the central Rockies of Colorado: the Tenmile Range, the Sawatch and Gore ranges, possibly even the Collegiates, 50 miles to the south. But there wasn’t a village, road or house in sight.
A couple of hours later, we rode a chair to the top of Vail’s legendary Back Bowls. Pete Seibert, Vail’s late founder, wrote about the day in 1957 when he first climbed on skis up to this very place and beheld “a landscape so vast that it was best described by the name we would later pick for one of the most famous slopes of them all: Forever.” Standing in virtually the same spot, we gazed out over some 3,000 acres of open terrain including south-facing bowls and ridges that act like giant sun reflectors, glistening like vanilla frosting.
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Back in Vail, we stopped at Rimini, a casual new cafe that’s part of the Arrabelle complex, for a late lunch of panini and some first-rate gelato. Easily the most high-profile of all the new projects, The Arrabelle is meant to evoke the feeling of a deluxe Mitteleuropa enclave. With rooms starting at over $700 a night during high season, however, it is much more New Vail than Old World. (Park your car here and the valets return it washed -- a nice touch in slushy Colorado.)
Far less expensive is the aforementioned Tivoli Lodge, a Vail original perfectly located near the Golden Peak lifts that has been rebuilt from the ground up. Another affordable option is the Christiania Lodge, an intimate Alpine-style inn with condos. My favorite splurge at Vail has long been the Bavarian-to-the-max Sonnenalp Resort, which recently added a new wing and expanded its already superb spa.
After lunch we wandered around the village, where in the space of about an hour we heard Italian, Spanish and German being spoken. Vail has always attracted substantial numbers of foreign skiers, and the weak dollar has turned that particular revenue stream into a raging river. Later we learned that the Russians are coming, too, though rumor has it that they’re especially demanding and imperious guests
If you haven’t dined in Vail for a few years, you’ll notice that the food scene has perked up quite a bit, and not just because of the appearance of Centre V, Rimini and the Marketplace. Kelly Liken, a small, chic place run by the eponymous chef-owner, mixes urban sophistication with plenty of local ingredients, from elk and lamb to peaches and goat cheese. Larkspur is a big, California-friendly restaurant offering carefully prepared New American dishes and a superb wine list. And longtime local standard-bearer Sweet Basil has recently had a face-lift, with a sleek new interior and a menu that ranges from eggplant ravioli to Colorado lamb chops.
But not everything is so rarefied. At the Mountain Plaza, there’s now a tiny takeout window called G’day Mate, featuring Aussie-style warm meat pies that are perfect for tucking into your parka pocket on the way up the mountain. On a cold day, I like to think of it as Vail’s $5 Renewal.
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