Tom Olden would rather turn Eagle's Town Hall on Broadway into a boutique hotel than widen Grand Avenue to four lanes. Jason Cole wants to see the East Eagle parcel become the valley's next Miller Ranch. Bryan Woods wants to see continuity of leadership and expertise within the town government instead of blowing everything up.
Eagle's three mayoral candidates presented different visions of the town's future during Thursday's candidate forum at town hall, revealing distinct approaches to pressing issues like growth, affordability, and economic vitality.
Woods, who is already serving a four-year term on council that runs through 2027, said he's running to succeed outgoing Mayor Scott Turnipseed because he knows how town government works and how to get things done.
"The mayor is going to have a very important job with potentially five new faces on that council that haven't done this before," he said. "Most of them haven't served on planning and zoning. Or any other government entities. They're going to have to be taught. How does government work? What is an enterprise fund? Who is that guy in public works who I call?"
Woods said he loved some of the ideas he heard from the 11 Town Council candidates running for four seats on Thursday night. He said the mayor's job is to take all those ideas and turn them into tangible policy that town staff can execute.
"The first thing we're going to have to do with this new council is sit down and it's been five years since our strategic plan. We're going to rewrite it," he said. "We're going to start from the ground up and figure out what are the top priorities."
Olden, who has lived in Eagle for 24 years and runs a timber harvesting contracting business, said he wants to help businesses succeed, but that's he's not a fan of growth just for growth's sake.
"I understand what it takes to run a business, and I also understand what type of community I want to live in," he said. "Eagle is a very unique community. It's not duplicatable in very many places in this country, let alone the world. So, what we have here, we need to protect. And it isn't just to grow for the sake of growth. That's the thought process of a cancer cell. But if we're going to do smart growth, we need to maintain our businesses first and foremost."
Cole, whose campaign motto is "Make Eagle Happen," argued that smart growth would be activating the East Eagle parcel, which would still maintain the town's core and its small-town charm while growing tax revenues.
"I think what Eagle needs is more collaboration, more conversations, and more transparency," he said. "I don't think we can keep Eagle Eagle. I just don't think we can. I think we need to make Eagle happen."
Cole, who said he is phasing out of his role as CEO of Slifer, Smith and Frampton, said his work in the valley has taught him the importance of collaboration and relationships.
"I heard candidates for Town Council talking about the collaboration with the county," he said. "But it's not just the county. It's Gypsum, it's Avon, it's Vail. It's the Vail Valley Partnership. It's the Vail Valley Foundation. It's Vail Health. It's Vail Resorts. It's the airport. The only way we're going to accomplish big things like East Eagle or West Eagle or any of the things that we need to get done is going to be through collaboration."
Olden, who owns two properties along the Grand Avenue corridor, drew chuckles from the crowd when he spoke about the current plans, which have been in the works for the past six years.
He said he's not a fan of the town using eminent domain to buy properties or take a significant portion of them to widen U.S. Highway 6 to four lanes and build five new roundabouts.
"My son will lose the house he lives in because they want to put a road right through the living room," he said. "At Pickup's Pizza, the door's going to be about 10 feet from where the new road's going to be, so that they can have additional parking lots for businesses that are going to be gone."
He said his tenants in the building he owns that houses Pickup's Pizza and a bike shop have told him that if the new road gets built, they'll be gone.
"I don't take that lightly, but their leases are going to soon be up. And they're looking at moving to Gypsum or the EagleVail or somewhere else," he said. "And so the redevelopment of the Grand Avenue project, there's five roundabouts, it's going to be 80 feet wide. These roads are significant. The people that have designed them don't even live in Eagle County, and they expect you to ride an electric scooter in January on a bike path that won't even be plowed."
Woods called the current plans "aspirational." The plans were developed over the past six years, always with the intent of getting federal funding. He said the next mayor's job will be to right-size the project, which is currently projected to cost $70 million.
"The plan was always we were going to put down this much, and then we would get federal infrastructure funding for that much, right?" he said. "And because it was a U.S. highway, because it's multimodal, it has a bus route because of services in the airport. And CDOT gave us $10 million to start when we took it over, which was most of what we would have needed originally. Now we're not even keeping pace with inflation, right? So let's just start there. We're going to have a right-sized version and chip it off as we can go."
Cole said the East Eagle parcel isn't just unique to Eagle, it's unique to the entire valley. He said it's the only parcel left in Eagle County that could address all of Eagle's pressing needs in one fell swoop.
"The plan that they have proposed now, sports tourism, daycare, another Miller Ranch," he said. "Think about what they have in Edwards with Freedom Park, Miller Ranch, CMC. That is the only place in the valley left that you could do that on."
He also said, given its location north of town, it won't kill Eagle's small-town charm.
It will get people off the interstate to spend money in Eagle. And if they want to venture into the heart of town, or Eagle Ranch, even better.
"It's a perfectly positioned piece of land that could go so far in bringing in the sales tax that we need because our sales tax is high, and that's been, I feel like, the approach for far too long," Cole said. "It's like we don't have enough sales tax, so let's raise sales tax. No, it's all about generating more opportunity for sales tax."
Cole, for his part, stressed smart growth and said he would love to see businesses return to the downtown. He added that turning town hall into a boutique hotel, instead of having it take up valuable real estate on Broadway while not generating tax revenue, would be a smart move.
"Since it's been built, businesses have left," he said. "To have businesses like bars thrive, restaurants, you have to have visitors that come to town that have money that they want to spend."
He added: "We have nothing to offer people that actually perform business. And business travelers obviously fly in and out of our airport. Over 2 million come up our street every day. How do we get them to stop and spend money in Eagle? Well, it'd be great. The airport's closed. Obviously, the hotel will be full. As my wife pointed out in 2012, this is critical tax-generating real estate. Why wouldn't you put a non-tax-producing building right in the commercial district?"