Re: AHR(H) buys Grand Imperial Hotel

Well, that approach leads to a lop sided economy, and the train deluge at noon time created a ghost town after 4 pm. In the "old days" when the train brought in 1700 people a day, plus highway traffic, it was all we could do to handle that many people. Now that train traffic has dropped to half that amount daily at best, and there are several more food places, the need for afternoon and evening traffic is very critical for any business to survive. The Silverton business community woke up to the changing reality especially after the mine shut down in 1991--the mine always provided a significant amount of business traffic for rooms and meals on a year round basis. The town has a continuing struggle to reinvent itself just to survive as we have not been able to make it on just train traffic now for almost 20 years. The last major down turn was the 2002 Durango forest fire and much of that lost traffic has never returned to the area.