Archive

• Locations: News Published Dec. 30, 2014

  Celebrating a great 2014, thanks to all of you!

  As another year wanes and The Sopris Sun approaches its sixth birthday, the board would like to thank our donors, advertisers, contributors and readers for your continued support. As a non-profit, local newspaper, we constantly strive to better connect our community and provide information valuable to Carbondale’s diverse population. With those ideals in mind, we certainly have had a year worth celebrating. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 30, 2014

  Ice, snow update tops weekly report

  Ice and snow, and continuing unseasonably warm temperatures, were the leading issues in Town Manager Jay Harrington’s Dec. 26 memo to the town’s employees, board of trustees and other recipients. “The streets and parks crews have been dealing with snow and ice issues from the last storm,” Harrington reported, detailing the use of “scoria … a product obtained from volcanic ash [and] an inert substance that does not contain silica or other harmful substances” to provide traction for motorists at intersections. Concerning ice, Harrington wrote that the town’s two ice rinks remained closed last week, due to the warm temperatures and to the blanket of snow that fell around Christmas time. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 23, 2014

  Carbondale’s Creative District gets boost after Pryor visit

  The process of getting Carbondale certified as its own Creative District got a boost last week with a visit from Wendell Pryor, a consultant from Chaffee County who has been hired to assist the Carbondale Council on Arts and Humanities in the three-year certification process. Pryor, who also is the director of the Chaffee County Economic Development Corporation and is listed as a lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver Graduate School of Public Affairs as well as at Colorado Mountain College, is being paid by the state to help Carbondale through the Creative District process. Meanwhile, said CCAH Executive Director Amy Kimberly, the Carbondale Creative District has $15,000 in grant proceeds and other contributions to kick-start the process in its first year. She said the district has been told to expect another $10,000 in grant money in year two, and a final grant of $15,000 in year three, which is the year that certification is to occur. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 23, 2014

  Dentists developing near Alpine Bank

  In keeping with Carbondale’s growing reputation as a healthy place to live and work, the town is about to get yet another large medical office facility — a dental office on a now-vacant lot between Heritage Park Care Center and Alpine Bank, near the corner of Village Road and Highway 133. This will be the town’s second new, enlarged medical business, following recent completion of the Roaring Fork Family Physicians of Valley View Hospital facility further south along the highway. The new dental office is being built by Doctors Matt and Taylor Verheul (pronounced ver-heel), and their partner, long-time local dentist Eugene Covello. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 23, 2014

  Hetty Van Kesteren: Indonesia native loving life in Carbondale

  Considering her diminutive stature, Hetty Van Kesteren’s joyful and easy laugh can seem out of context until you grasp the emphasis in her statement “I have found my place in life.” Born in Jakarta on the Indonesian island of Java, Hetty is the epitome of a person who has lived a multi-cultural life. When she was a child, Indonesia was a Dutch colony, used for its oil, spices and sugar plantations. Both of her grandfathers came to Indonesia from The Netherlands and married Indonesian women. She grew up with 11 brothers and sisters, and her father managed a medical opium company. Indonesian labor was cheap, and Hetty grew up with servants who lived on the outskirts of town in “gedecks” — poorly constructed housing with dirt floors. “We spoke Dutch at home, Indonesian to the servants, and learned Oxford English in school. The natives were Hindu, but my family was Catholic so I went to Catholic school,” Hetty told The Sopris Sun. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 17, 2014

  Jaywalker “Big Bus” heads back to the reservation

  For the past five years, the Carbondale-based Jaywalker Solutions Program has been taking program clients—men in early recovery from the disease of addiction—to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota to do volunteer service work. The project is a partnership with Pine Ridge-based organization Re-Member, whose name is a play on words addressing both the need to remember the history of what occurred in the past to Indian people and, in the words of Re-Member Director, Ted Skantze, “to put back together what’s broken.” read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 17, 2014

  C’dale, RE-1 resurrect 2007 housing plan

  The Carbondale Board of Trustees and the Roaring Fork School District board agreed this week that work should continue on the eight-year-old plan to build a housing project on what is now a well-used soccer field in between the Third Street Center and the Bridges High School building (formerly Carbondale Middle School). Exactly how that is to be accomplished, however, remains something of an open question. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 17, 2014

  Marble Distilling shoots for February opening

  The Marble Distilling building at 150 Main St. may appear almost finished, at least when viewed from the street, but as co-owner Connie Baker ruefully told the Sopris Sun recently, “We’re delayed, for sure.” Problems with everything from the delivery of concrete to delays in the manufacturing of the tanks for the distillery’s eco-friendly and ground-breaking WETS, or “water-energy thermal storage” reclamation system, have resulted in sufficient tardiness that “we are shooting for the end of February right now.” She had initially hoped for a December completion date back in June, when construction had only just begun. The delays, she continued, were due to “typical construction stuff, nothing major,” such as engineering complexities with regard to the WETS system, which was designed and developed with the help of a $25,000 grant from the Community Office of Resource Efficiency (CORE). read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 10, 2014

  WRNF releases FEIS

  Conservationists, ranchers, recreationists, elected officials and others were elated at this week’s decision to limit future natural gas exploration and production in the White River National Forest, although the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and draft Record of Decision (ROD) will not have any impact on existing leases that would allow drilling south of Carbondale on the Thompson Divide. read more →
• Locations: News Published Dec. 10, 2014

  “Green rush” is over, industry keeps shaking out

  When the so-called “green rush” of marijuana businesses began several years ago, Carbondale at one time boasted 13 pot shops selling to customers throughout the middle portion of the Roaring Fork Valley and beyond, when one counted tourists and customers from other parts of the Western Slope. Today, that town’s roster of pot related businesses has dwindled to a total of nine. That list, according to Town Clerk Cathy Derby, includes: • Three “recreational” pot shops, which do not require doctor’s prescription for sales (with one application pending), and one medical marijuana dispensary where a doctor’s prescription is required; • Three cultivation operations or “grows” (with one application pending); • One outfit making “marijuana-infused products” or MIPs, also known as edibles; • And one testing facility, for testing for contamination and other aspects of the process of growing, cooking with and selling pot to the public. “It’s kind of like … the green rush is over,” said Derby, referring to the thinning-out process that has cut into what once was seen as a massively expansive growth industry. read more →