Looking for Hip, Funky, Liberal, smaller mountain town in CO (Colorado Springs: sales, credit rating)

[LovinCO]

Need some advise.....my partner and I (gals) moved to Colorado Springs (downtown) 2 years ago from DC and are really loving it....

Now that we finally made it to Colorado, in the next year or 2, we are planning on moving to a smaller town with more of a mountain, small town feel. Planning on buying or opening up a cool, funky coffee shop, and stayin for the long term.

We would love to hear from people that live in the type of town described above.....boulder-ish but smaller, cool, hip people....liberal -

We've been to Telluride....WOW - LOVED IT, but really expensive....and we've drivin thru Salida, need to go back and really get a feel for it there....

Planning on going to Durango in July - heard great things.

Thanks so much for your imput and time!!

[Shuffler]

Ward

[jmmcnally]

I may not be from Colorado, but I have noticed that a lot of the small mountain towns are giong to be expensive because they are resort towns. When you go to Durango, go ahead and drive the extra 45 minutes or so to Pagosa Springs. It is a resort town, but when I was there in October, there was no coffee shop. It's a great little town and I wouldn't mind living there myself. You should also try Silverton, but you have to understand with Silverton that it closes down from October until summer...

[Ticky909]

Burns, buford, Radium, Platoro, pitkin, meredith, rand, cowdrey, Slater, Savery(Wy). Thurman.

[SheridanL]

Sure sounds like South Park/Alma would love another funky coffee shop!!
They are the 2 towns at the bottom of Hoosier Pass on your way to Breckenridge!! That's my vote anyway!!! Everything your looking for!!
Check it out!!

[jazzlover]

Well, once again, the "Paradise Syndrome" is alive and well. "Let's just go to a funky mountain town and run a business to sell coffee or whatever, hang out, and enjoy the mountain lifestyle." Fairy tale. I've been watching this for 40 years now. 90 or 95 times out of 100, it goes down like this: There isn't enough business. The hours are long and the work backbreaking. Overhead expenses and costs are too high. There is no time to enjoy the lifestyle in the community or area. Relationships suffer (or fail). Finally, whatever financial resources (their's, family's, or lender's) there were to start with run out. Then, it's "back to the world" for that person or persons, and some other chump comes in and plays out the same scenario. Wash, rinse, repeat. The 5 or 10 out of 100 that DO make it do so because they--first and foremost--are driven to make the business (not the lifestyle) succeed, do the research beforehand (often for years) to determine what the market is going to be for their product, have sufficient financial resources to make the venture viable, have a first-rate business plan, and--quite often--have business experience as an entrepreneur--in less challenging markets than resort Colorado--already under their belt.

Do all of those things and you MIGHT succeed. Don't--and you will sooner or later join the ship of fools that floundered on the rocks of resort Colorado's carnivorous business environment.

Here's some hard facts: For ONE person to have much of a lifestyle in resort Colorado takes a minimum before-tax income of $50,000, and $100,000 would be better if you expect to fund your own retirement. By the time you pay overhead expenses, debt service, taxes, salaries and other typical business expenses, it usually takes $100 of gross sales to equate to $10 of income to the business owner. For that $50,000 before-tax income, that means $500,000 annual gross sales, a cool million for that $100,000 income. That's one ****load of cappuccinos. Not many small resort businesses can achieve that kind of gross sales--thus they generally can not achieve an adequate "return of" and "return on" invested capital--and still pay the owner an income. Eventually, that business will fail. Throw in what may now be a near-permanent decline in discretionary spending from customers and the picture looks even more bleak.

You may hate me for being "Johnny Raincloud," but I see failing businesses just about every day as part of my work. However harsh my words may sound, it pales to the misery that people feel when their savings, credit rating, and life's work disappear before their eyes because they were seduced by the "Paradise Syndrome."

[treedonkey]

Jazz certainly raises some good points to consider if you have not already done so, since the reality of any business is always far business than the dream. But even if what jazz predicts came 100% true for you, I'm not sure that's all that bad...

A few years back, a relative of mine went into the coffee and donut trade in her area. She had a good time doing it, she learned a lot, sold the business a few years later for a little profit and was able to use the experience to move down a better career path. So what if you move there and then end up passing it on to another joe when it's time to move on. In the end, it's really not much different than going away to college or something, except you would mostly be chugging coffee, as opposed to beer... In fact if you end up losing a bunch of money on it and having to pay off the loans for years afterward, then that would just make it even MORE like school.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by treedonkey

...t even if what jazz predicts came 100% true for you, I'm not sure that's all that bad...

A few years back, a relative of mine went into the coffee and donut trade in her area. She had a good time doing it, she learned a lot, sold the business a few years later for a little profit and was able to use the experience to move down a better career path. So what if you move there and then end up passing it on to another joe when it's time to move on. In the end, it's really not much different than going away to college or something, except you would mostly be chugging coffee, as opposed to beer... In fact if you end up losing a bunch of money on it and having to pay off the loans for years afterward, then that would just make it even MORE like school.

True. It's like guys who buy a classic car of some sort, drive it a while, get tired of it, and sell it to the next car lover. Better to have chased your dream than sit around in your old age wondering .... endlessly .... what if ... what if...

[motoracer51]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Well, once again, the "Paradise Syndrome" is alive and well. "Let's just go to a funky mountain town and run a business to sell coffee or whatever, hang out, and enjoy the mountain lifestyle." Fairy tale. I've been watching this for 40 years now. 90 or 95 times out of 100, it goes down like this: There isn't enough business. The hours are long and the work backbreaking. Overhead expenses and costs are too high. There is no time to enjoy the lifestyle in the community or area. Relationships suffer (or fail). Finally, whatever financial resources (their's, family's, or lender's) there were to start with run out. Then, it's "back to the world" for that person or persons, and some other chump comes in and plays out the same scenario. Wash, rinse, repeat. The 5 or 10 out of 100 that DO make it do so because they--first and foremost--are driven to make the business (not the lifestyle) succeed, do the research beforehand (often for years) to determine what the market is going to be for their product, have sufficient financial resources to make the venture viable, have a first-rate business plan, and--quite often--have business experience as an entrepreneur--in less challenging markets than resort Colorado--already under their belt.

Do all of those things and you MIGHT succeed. Don't--and you will sooner or later join the ship of fools that floundered on the rocks of resort Colorado's carnivorous business environment.

Here's some hard facts: For ONE person to have much of a lifestyle in resort Colorado takes a minimum before-tax income of $50,000, and $100,000 would be better if you expect to fund your own retirement. By the time you pay overhead expenses, debt service, taxes, salaries and other typical business expenses, it usually takes $100 of gross sales to equate to $10 of income to the business owner. For that $50,000 before-tax income, that means $500,000 annual gross sales, a cool million for that $100,000 income. That's one ****load of cappuccinos. Not many small resort businesses can achieve that kind of gross sales--thus they generally can not achieve an adequate "return of" and "return on" invested capital--and still pay the owner an income. Eventually, that business will fail. Throw in what may now be a near-permanent decline in discretionary spending from customers and the picture looks even more bleak.

You may hate me for being "Johnny Raincloud," but I see failing businesses just about every day as part of my work. However harsh my words may sound, it pales to the misery that people feel when their savings, credit rating, and life's work disappear before their eyes because they were seduced by the "Paradise Syndrome."

+1

Good post Jazz.

To put it into perspective, business wise, for the OP, the AVERAGE Starbucks grosses $500K a year.

[jazzlover]

Here's a dirty little secret about rural and resort Colorado. It does not say much for the long-term vitality of the economy in those areas, but it is what it is. Want to know what people manage to live in rural and resort Colorado for the long-term, and who manage to make at least a livable income? People who work for government. Sorry, but that is the hard truth.

Want to enjoy living in the nice part of Colorado? If you enjoy summer recreation, get hired as a teacher. You won't be able to make a living wage to live in many of the resort towns, but you can live nearby and have summers off to go to the mountains. Want winter free time to ski? Get a seasonal summer position on a highway crew. Want a flexible schedule? Become a nurse and work at the local county hospital. If you want to work for the feds, try for one of the rare and hard to get full-time Forest Service jobs (don't expect to stay in Colorado with that one, though, they transfer their people a lot).

Fiscally conservative rural Coloradans (and I am one) are loathe to admit this, but government is the one steady, large employer in rural Colorado. Tourist businesses pay crap and come and go; agriculture employs few--other than family members or migrant labor; mining and energy pays great, but is boom and bust (and more bust than boom in the last 40 years). Year after year, what stays fairly stable is government employment. Now, the bad news--those jobs are coveted by locals, often require special skill sets, may frequently be awarded under the "good old boy" system, and have very low turnover. If you can get into the "club," it can be a long-term way to live in the rural parts of the state, but getting in can be difficult.

Look at any family living long-term in rural Colorado, and--in most cases--at least one spouse and often both work for government. And, with the economic downturn growing into full flower in much of rural Colorado, there will probably be less private employment--both in terms of numbers and pay rates. The fact that government--often considered inferior and second-tier employment in many parts of the US--is the best employment gig available for most rural Coloradans tells a lot about the true nature of the rural Colorado economy. That dynamic has also held true for most of a century in rural Colorado--and, in truth, for most of the rural Rocky Mountain West. "Rugged individualism" may be held out as a Western ideal, but an awful lot of those "rugged individuals" pay checks have a government agency's name as the payor.