Outsized aid amounts went to resort counties
Pitkin County, other ski communities raked in federal pandemic assistance
As Colorado confirmed its first coronavirus cases in March 2020, Pitkin County’s ski resorts were just entering the busiest — and most lucrative — part of the winter season. Then it all came to a crashing halt.
The tens of billions of dollars of pandemic aid that have flowed into the state have gone disproportionately to mountain resort communities, the first to experience the full brunt of the pandemic’s economic devastation two years ago. That’s when all ski resorts, amid concern about the virus’ spread, closed down in mid-march, ultimately under state order.
A Denver Post analysis of direct aid to individuals, businesses, nonprofits and local governments in all 64 counties found that none saw more money per capita than Pitkin County, home to the quintessential ski town of Aspen.
During the spring of 2020, thousands of workers and hundreds of tourism-dependent businesses were reeling.
Ski instructors, hotel clerks and waiters suddenly struggled to make their rent. Many lined up for mass food bank distributions.
“Almost overnight, our unemployment rate went from under 4% to over 25%,” recalled Pitkin County Manager Jon Peacock, who worked with county commissioners to create immediate assistance programs by drawing on their county reserves. They gave out $1.5 million in less than three months to help residents keep up with housing and food costs.
Mawa Mcqueen remembers how despondent everything seemed.
“It looked like ‘I’m going to die,’ that’s what it looked like,” said Mcqueen, whose Mawa’s Kitchen restaurant and catering business had built a loyal base of customers over 14 years. She also owns a crepe stand at the base of the nearby Snowmass ski resort.
Even when the shutdown ended and restaurants reopened to in-person dining with capacity restrictions, McQueen’s tiny 20-seat space
meant she’d have to rely longer on takeout business — an even tougher prospect given that her restaurant was just outside city limits in the Airport Business Center. That off-the-beaten-path location is across Colorado 82 from the airport, where, during much of the pandemic, private jets were lined up in higher numbers than usual.
More than $339 million in federal pandemic assistance tracked to Pitkin County recipients by The Post amounted to less than 1% of the state’s total. But it came out to $19,546 per resident — more than twice the average per-capita breakdown statewide. The greatest drivers were programs aimed at keeping businesses alive and workers paid, with 47% of Pitkin County’s money going to recipients of the Paycheck Protection Program, which covered payroll and other fixed costs. The government forgave most of those PPP loans.
Another 11% of the money went to businesses through the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which must be repaid over 30 years. Pitkin County also ranked high for its participation in programs assisting restaurants and shuttered entertainment venues.
Combined, Pitkin County had the highest share of federal assistance directed at small businesses in Colorado, at 62% of its total. As a group, mountain resort counties received half their federal dollars in business loans and grants, The Post’s analysis found, compared to just 38% for metro counties and only a third for rural, non-resort areas.
Because businesses in resort counties serve tourists and vacation homeowners, not just locals, there are more of them than in non-resort areas of a comparable population. And more businesses meant more assistance.
Another factor: Wealthy residents and tourism spending also make resort areas attractive to banks. That strong banking presence paid dividends in a big way during the pandemic because business assistance programs required applying through a lender. And Pitkin, like other resort counties, had a stronger presence of foundations and nonprofits to assist businesses.
Money, in short, attracted more money.
Mcqueen, a chef born on Africa’s Ivory Coast and raised in Paris, said she felt at a relative disadvantage to better-connected Aspen entrepreneurs. But she got by, ultimately receiving money from the PPP and EIDL programs that bridged some gaps. She said they helped her keep 22 workers employed and, later, expand her restaurant into a neighboring vacant space.
After she had early trouble qualifying for PPP and was shut out of a city aid program for businesses, she said she received help from a Boulder restaurateur, Dave Query, who reached out after hearing about her challenges. He donated restaurant equipment and offered a hand in other ways, she said.
But Mcqueen said she depended most of all on her own grit. That meant getting creative and trying out new ideas, such as starting a granola business, called Mawa’s Grainfreenola, that’s still operating today.
“Honestly, I’m here but for the grace of God — that’s all I have to say. Looking back, I had no clue,” she said. “At the time, everything was bad. I felt horrible for all the other people who had to close their restaurants.
“You need to understand: There’s no glory in operating a restaurant. You do it because it’s what you love to do. Trust me, this is the only thing I know how to do, and I do it well.”
Drawing on tight connections and philanthropy
Now things are looking brighter, and tourist visits are mostly back to normal levels. Leaders from local government, nonprofit groups and the business community said Pitkin County persevered through the pandemic’s difficult first year thanks in part to the federal aid.
But the county also drew heavily on its own resources, including a base of wealthy donors — who contributed more than $5 million to a community rescue fund — and tight connections in the business community. The latter provided businesses with help applying for PPP money and fostered support through a gift-card program, while business leaders worked closely with public health officials.
“We all managed to find a way to trust each other and look at the bigger picture — which was that it wasn’t us against each other,” said Debbie Braun, president and CEO of the Aspen Chamber Resort Association. “It was us against COVID.”
Not all was harmonious, of course, particularly when it came to working out public health restrictions that deeply affected restaurants and the lodging sector. Pitkin County at times had the state’s most stringent restaurant capacity limits. In late 2020 and early 2021, as the county’s case rate led the state, it required visitors to sign an affidavit attesting that they’d received a negative COVID-19 test result prior to their trip. The program allowed for higher hotel occupancy rates, but some believe it turned off potential visitors.
Aspen wasn’t the only mountain community to receive an outsized share of aid.
The Post’s analysis found other tourism-dependent mountain counties ranked high in aid per capita: San Miguel (home to Telluride) came in second, San Juan (Silverton) was fourth, Summit (Breckenridge, Frisco and Silverthorne) was fifth and Eagle (Vail and Avon) was sixth. Those counties drew between $13,100 and $17,300 per resident.
The city and county of Denver ranked third, drawing $16,776 per resident. It was the only nonmountain county in the top five.
A mountain-community dynamic that inflates the mountain counties’ per-capita totals is that the calculations are based on their full-time populations, or 17,363 in Pitkin County. They also have thousands of part-time residents and second-homeowners, along with heavy visitor traffic.
But those factors are part of what make those counties’ business communities so robust — and vulnerable, as they found out in 2020.
“An incredibly difficult place to live”
In Aspen’s case, roughly 60% of workers live outside the county. Each day, a stream of ski resort employees and other workers jam Colorado 82 up the Roaring Fork Valley as they commute from Glenwood Springs and beyond.
But Aspen isn’t just for the rich. Plenty of longtime workers try to hack it there, too.
“It’s an incredible place to live — and an incredibly difficult place to live,” says Katherine Sand, executive director of Aspen Family Connections, a nonprofit group that serves families through the school system. It pivoted during the pandemic to help marshal food distributions that served thousands of people throughout the valley, among other programs.
The impact “was startling, because it was immediate,” Sand said. “What we noticed is that everybody counts on (spring break crowds), and when that month disappears overnight, they had nothing — they had nothing to fall back on. We’re not necessarily low-paid people. We’re talking about successful ski instructors and people who work in well-paying jobs. It was across-the-board. People really had no Plan B.”
The pandemic worsened Pitkin County’s housing crunch, several local leaders said, as second-homeowners retreated to Aspen and other people relocated there from around the country. Some traveled in those private planes.
Aspen Skiing Co., a private company that operates the area’s four ski resorts and is one of the largest local employers, did not seek PPP or other federal pandemic aid as it absorbed the economic shock, spokesman Jeff Hanle said.
After the 2020 ski season abruptly ended, he said, the company continued paying its seasonal workers for about a month, until resorts normally would have closed, and didn’t charge rent to residents in worker housing.