The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
New landmark in Mt. Crested Butte…an elevator to nowhere?
A deconstruction project began last week in Mt. Crested Butte and is almost completed. The old Club Med Theater in the Elevation Hotel is being torn down and hauled away—with the only thing left standing being an elevator shaft and stairway.
Work on the demolition began in earnest on Monday.
Mt. Crested Butte community development director Bill Racek said while a state permit has been issued for the demolition work, the town’s permit is in the pipeline. He doesn’t expect any problems getting the fees and paperwork completed shortly.
Club Med had applied for a permit to construct the space in January 2000, and it was open by the start of the ski season in 2001. Racek said the space was a total of 5,500 square feet with the auditorium aspect being about 4,000 square feet. The auditorium could accommodate up to about 250 seats. Club Med closed their operations.
The hotel, owned by SunVest, went into foreclosure in 2009. A receiver was appointed to look after the property during the foreclosure process and Crested Butte Mountain Resort has a management agreement with the receiver to manage the hotel. Wells Fargo is the bank with the loan note.
CBMR vice president of lodging operations Lynn Kiklevich said that when the hotel went into receivership in June 2009, a full engineering survey and report was completed. This brought the theater space to the attention of the receiver. The previous owners of the hotel had used that space to stage the construction for the latest renovation and didn’t focus on its maintenance, so the roof had holes in it, the stucco material on the outside of the space was badly damaged, and the interior of the old theater was trashed. “The building has to be heated in the winter months because of the fire suppression system and heating a big space where the roof has holes in it wasn’t a great situation,” Kiklevich said.
Operating costs for maintaining the big open space ran into the tens of thousands of dollars every year.
Kiklevich said Wells Fargo had a second engineering report done this past summer that estimated that repairs needed to bring the building up to code and be a useable space would be approximately three times what the demolition would cost. “So, with the bank’s blessing, the receiver filed a motion with the court and got approval to demolish that part of the building,” Kiklevich explained.
Kiklevich said while CBMR was not part of the decision to demolish the old theater, she is “excited to get the great mountain views back for a lot of the south facing hotel rooms, the lobby and the fitness center. We are also hopeful that some of the snow removal problems the building caused will now be mitigated.”
There is also the potential for more parking since the theater space was built on top of an outdoor parking deck.
“It is a bit of a challenge with the road work the town is doing going on right there but we are making make it work,” said Mt. Crested Butte town manager Joe Fitzpatrick.
While admitting it’s somewhat ironic that a theater and performance center is being torn down while the town is looking for ways to build a new performing center, Fitzpatrick said the old Club Med Theatre was a mess. “It had been used for a variety of uses since Club Med left but most recently as a warehouse. It was really beat up,” he said. “Everyone looked at perhaps using it for performances this past summer but too much work was needed.”
Crested Butte Music Festival director Alexander Scheirle said the festival had looked at using the space but found it wasn’t ideal since the stage itself was not deep enough and there was no backstage area. “Still, I’m very disappointed to hear it is being deconstructed, as I think Crested Butte needs as much and as many performing spaces as possible,” he said.
It is expected that the work will be completed by the end of the month. Nothing but a nicer view, some parking and the elevator shaft is planned to replace that space at the moment.
