Stories in this list received the most page views on SummitDaily.com from July 27 – August 2. 

1. Some Silverthorne officials suggest a change in attitudes toward tourism as town tells departments to cut budgets

Months after the last budget amendment, Silverthorne has once again told town departments to reduce their budgets following three business closures anticipated to impact the town’s tax revenue.

The news of town departments being asked to cut 5% of their already revised 2025 budgets prompted Silverthorne Town Council to discuss where the town’s business landscape is headed and if tourism should be treated differently by those adverse to it.

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The request follows an April budget appropriation where millions of dollars in expenditures were cut to account for a downward trend in sales tax including an 8% dip year over year in January and an approximate 4.8% dip in February. 

Finance director Laura Kennedy said planned closures for an outlet store, Williams Sonoma, and the Summit Ford dealership will likely result in a drop in revenue that could take the form of a 3% hit in the general fund.

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A staff memo written for a July 23 meeting details the Summit Ford closure having the largest impact to the general fund. While automotive sales in Silverthorne are exempt from the town’s 2% sales tax, they aren’t exempt from the county’s 2% sales tax. The memo states because the dealership was located in Silverthorne, the county sales tax revenues were passed to the town and credited to 100% of the general fund. 

Kennedy said revenues are currently above what was budgeted for 2025 and expenses are below what was budgeted, and the change is just to ensure the town is in a good financial position for 2026. She also noted silver linings including a Holiday Inn Express under construction and another hotel planning to come to Silverthorne.

“This could get worse … If what’s going on across the river doesn’t seem to get better, as far as the outlets and these stores closing, if we lose three more, that’s another huge hit,” council member Tim Applegate said. 

Interim Town Manager Mark Leidal said there haven’t been any serious conversations about more of the stores in Outlets at Silverthorne closing, but he had heard conversations about “consolidation.”

— Kit Geary

2. ‘A pure, innocent little soul’: Mother shares memories of her child who died after going missing in Silverthorne

Summit County Rescue Group members and law enforcement officers Tuesday, July 22, found a child, who had been missing from Silverthorne’s Willow Grove Open Space, in the Blue River nearby.

Responders pulled Zeldris Milo Maes, 1, of Arvada, out of the river and performed CPR on him, but he did not regain spontaneous circulation, according to Summit County Coroner Amber Flenniken. She said Zeldris Maes was pronounced deceased at the scene.

Serenity Maes, Zeldris Maes’ mother, described her son as a “very happy baby” in a message to Summit Daily News. The stay-at-home mother said she, Zeldris Maes and his father “did everything together.”

“He would give me hugs and lots of kisses everyday,” Serenity Maes wrote. “Going to stores and places, he would always smile and wave and babble. He always got so much attention.”

The 1.5-year-old was “very spoiled” by his entire family, “so he always definitely got his way,” Serenity Maes wrote. Zeldris Maes was “overprotective” of his mother, two brothers and sister, she added.

— Kyle McCabe

3. Report of ‘explosion’ at Breckenridge City Market prompted evacuation and closure, according to police

Editor’s note: Updated reporting on this story is available here.

The evacuation of the Breckenridge City Market on Monday, July 28, came after a refrigerant leak in the grocery store, according to Jay Nelson, the CEO and fire marshal of Red, White & Blue Fire Protection District.

Nelson said the fire department responded to a call about an “explosion” at City Market just after 1 p.m., and when crews arrived, they found that the refrigerant alarm and fire alarm were both going off.

“The refrigerant alarm detects the refrigerants that are used for the freezers in refrigeration units throughout the store,” Nelson said. “They were detecting the refrigerant had leaked out and was potentially going throughout the store.”

When refrigerant leaks, it can displace the oxygen in the space it enters, Nelson said, prompting the evacuation. The Breckenridge Police Department wrote in a Facebook post that the chemical was a known asphyxiant. The fire department worked with City Market employees that can monitor the store’s systems remotely to determine next steps.

“We ventilated the store, or removed that refrigerant from the store to make sure that it was safe,” Nelson said.

— Summit Daily staff

4. Breckenridge discusses town code’s ability to ‘erase a lot of sins’ made by new residential construction as it looks to revise regulations

In a valley with diminishing buildable land, Breckenridge officials seek to halt what many consider an unfavorable trend by tightening the reins on regulations for new property construction and demolitions. 

Concerns raised by the 2007 Breckenridge Town Council resulted in the implementation of a Neighborhood Preservation Policy that mandates residential builds stay under a certain square footage depending on their location, including an overall maximum of 9,000-square-feet in size.

The policy applies to homes without a platted building or disturbance envelope in more than a dozen subdivisions in Breckenridge — like Highlands, Weisshorn, Warriors Mark, Warriors Mark West, Gold Flake and more.

Fifteen years later, the increasing popularity of a trend that officials have dubbed “scraping” — or demolishing smaller homes in order to build larger and more imposing ones — prompted concerns from members of Breckenridge Town Council in 2024. 

Over the past several months, town staff members began revisiting the current policy and looping in the building community and residents before introducing proposed changes to officials at a July 22 meeting. The refreshed policy will likely apply to the same subdivisions, but in a recent public comment, some residents wondered why it didn’t apply to all neighborhoods in town.

— Kit Geary

5. Thousands of Colorado vacation units were taken off the rental market in June, but visitors are still booking trips

Lodging data for Western mountain resorts shows June’s booking pace is up for the first time in six months, bringing an end to the longest streak for declining bookings since 2020. However, behind the data is a sharp decrease in available lodgings for visitors to spend the night.

Participating destinations across seven Western states — Colorado, Utah, California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho — are finally seeing slight improvement in booking pace since November 2024, according to data from Inntopia’s DestiMetrics monthly market briefing.

Although bookings for arrival in all six months from June through October were up year-over-year, there are currently 47,000 fewer rooms available per night compared to last summer, which makes it challenging to provide a clear comparison to the previous year’s data set.

“This month’s report had a lot of contradictions, driven primarily by changes in available inventory this year compared to last, which can alter year-over-year comparisons like occupancy,” said Tom Foley, senior vice president of Business Intelligence for Inntopia and author of the market briefing report.

Foley said the steep decline in available units is heavily related to a decreasing inventory of paid stay options, which mountain resort communities are seeing for two reasons: more people are choosing to vacation in units they already own — thus making the units unavailable for other renters — and more rental units are being put on the market or undergoing renovations.

— Andrea Teres-Martinez