Pivoting to outdoor recreation

Outdoor recreation is big business. That goes double for Colorado, where the industry generated an estimated $14 billion in 2022.

There’s an alluring stability to the broader outdoor recreation economy that encompasses everything from tourism to outfitters to manufacturers. Some industries are subject to volatility in commodity markets or the whims of a faraway financial hub. Not outdoor rec.

In Colorado, the industry is rooted in places just beyond the backyards of communities across the state, and they’re leaning into it in a big way.

Grand Junction/Fruita

Curtis Englehart, executive director of the Grand Junction Economic Partnership (GJEP), says an overreliance on oil and gas led to a drive to diversify the local economy after the energy bust of 2008.

“That’s when we really started to take a hard look at how to diversify and how to use what assets we already have in our community to leverage more business attraction, expansion, and that’s how outdoor recreation and outdoor manufacturing started to take off,” he says. “We want to focus on industries that bring primary jobs. That’s really our focus. And thankfully, a lot of outdoor industry positions are primary jobs.”

With a local outdoor manufacturing base that already includes manufacturers like MRP, Leitner-Poma, Bonsai Design, and Innovative Textiles, GJEP isn’t resting on its laurels. Goose Gear relocated from Huntington Beach, California, in 2023, and Englehart cites “a large prospect pipeline” of target companies in outdoor recreation.

Assets like the Colorado River and an ever-growing network of world-class mountain biking trails underpin the local industry. “When you look at our landscape, the fact that you can be downhill skiing in the morning and mountain biking in the afternoon, it’s a huge draw,” Englehart says. “Everybody’s backyard is basically a big playground. That helps a ton from a workforce retention standpoint.”

The numbers tell a compelling story. Researchers from Colorado Mesa University published a report in 2022 on the economic impact of outdoor recreation in Mesa County, which includes Grand Junction as well as Fruita and Palisade. The total economic impact was nearly $500 million or 7.2 percent of GDP (versus about 3 percent for the entire state), and 11 percent of all jobs.

Widespread public-private buy-in has been key to success, says Chandler Smith, executive director of the nonprofit Grand Valley Outdoor Recreation Coalition (GVORC), which advocates for the local outdoor industry. “Every region is unique, but I think bringing all the stakeholders to the table is critical to the success in these kinds of endeavors and having open lines of communication,” he says.

Smith highlights Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Regional Partnership Initiatives, which has helped fund 18 groups across the state including the local West Slope Outdoors Alliance. “They’re all working together to identify projects that they can do in collaboration to support and build resilient, sustainable infrastructure, which then has direct ties to the success of the industry.”

Montrose

A longtime agricultural hub on the Western Slope, Montrose has increasingly embraced outdoor recreation as an economic driver. “Outdoor recreation is obviously connected to tourism, and that’s probably our second- or third-largest industry,” says Sandy Head, executive director of the Montrose Economic Development Corporation. “From a manufacturing standpoint, we’ve been pretty engaged in outdoor recreation products since the ’80s.” The city’s manufacturing base now includes Ross Reels, Secret Creek (formerly Colorado Yurt Company), Geyser Systems, and others.

Montrose has increasingly leveraged the Uncompahgre River as an asset, and Head commends the owners of Ross Reels, Doug and David Dragoo, for their Colorado Outdoors project, a 165-acre, mixed-use development on the Uncompahgre.

“Their idea of turning that into a multi-use industrial park has really put Montrose on the map for outdoor recreation,” she says. “It’s just brought access and awareness to an area that most people wouldn’t even stomp across the dirt to go see the river because it was such a blighted area.”

Ross Reels and its parent company, Mayfly Outdoors, “started with 19 employees [in Montrose in 2014], and now we have about 150,” says David Dragoo. That total is “several hundred” if you include all of the outdoor recreation-related jobs at Colorado Outdoors, he adds. Secret Creek moved to Colorado Outdoors in 2022 and built a riverside yurt park for customers to try the company’s products for a night before they buy one.

“That manufacturing base has to be part of the Montrose success story,” Dragoo says. “In short, it has a good ecosystem: good schools, good airport, reasonable cost of living, very mild weather, great outdoor activities. It makes it an attractive place for the right person, and they typically will work their whole career in the region.”

The Uncompahgre “used to be very utilitarian, and it made sense,” he continues. “It was farmers and agricultural users and gravel mining, extracting, and now it’s used more and more for placemaking. It’s used more and more for recreation. People want to live along the river. It’s completely flipped.”

Dragoo says the next phase of the Colorado Outdoors buildout will include a residential component. “Workforce housing will remain a really critical issue for these communities to grow, because if they’re not growing, they have pretty dim prospects.”

Craig

 In northwestern Colorado, Craig is in the midst of an economic transition. The longtime linchpin employer, the coal-fired Craig Station power plant, is in the process of decommissioning, with operations set to entirely cease in 2028.

“We’re estimating anywhere from 400 to 600 direct and indirect jobs that will be lost once the final closures occur,” says Shannon Scott, the City of Craig’s economic development manager. “The jobs that we need to replace at the plant and the mine, they have to be equitable to what those folks are making because they make anywhere from $80,000 to $150,000 a year.”

The natural assets, the Yampa River and the Elkhead Mountains, are enviable, but access can be an issue. “We’re actually targeting outdoor manufacturing companies and outdoor recreation companies to relocate to the area, and we have a few that are already here, and we just want to assist them in expanding,” Scott says.

Josh Veenstra quit his job at the plant and started Good Vibes River Gear in Craig in 2017. Veenstra and his wife, Maegan, now sew bags and other gear they sell out of a downtown storefront. “We realized that the Yampa River is probably one of the most sought-after rivers. Craig just was missing that little niche,” he says. “There wasn’t anything like that in the whole valley at the time.”

It’s paying off for Good Vibes. “Every year, we’ve doubled. This year is beyond that. I can’t believe how much it’s taken off,” Veenstra says. He sees potential for other outdoor manufacturers in Craig, noting that his rent is less than one-fifth what it would be in Steamboat Springs, about 40 miles upriver.

Securing funding for river access and trail projects “has been really slow,” Veenstra adds. More funding would mean easier access to public lands, which is one of Steamboat’s big selling points. “Their trails are right there, their access is right there, and everything is right there,” Veenstra says. “Our asset is solitude, but how do we market solitude?”

Pueblo

Manufacturing is second nature to the local workforce, but the longstanding steel industry has been shedding jobs for decades.

“We like to consider ourselves a manufacturing community, and I think we always will,” says Jeff Shaw, president and CEO of the Pueblo Economic Development Corporation (PEDCO). “We’ve been chasing this outdoor recreation industry for a number of years now. We think it’s a big potential piece for Pueblo. It hasn’t been as strong as we had hoped yet, but we’ve only been chasing it for five years or so.” One success story is Boreas Campers, which relocated from Arvada in 2022.

Affordable housing is another selling point for manufacturers, as is water, Shaw says. “We’ve got water assets for recreation, but we have a large supply of water that’s not being utilized so we can actually grow our population and industrial base and not run into water issues.”

Adam Davidson founded Pueblo-based Grassroots Gravel in 2023 to produce cycling events. He expects at least 700 participants at his second flagship October event in Pueblo, Grassroots Gravel 2024, up from 450 in 2023.

Davidson hopes Grassroots Gravel can showcase the region through events. “We’re on the stage of Pueblo, Colorado, and the incredible outdoor amenities that we have here, that’s going to drive those companies,” he says. “In the outdoor industry, the people that own these businesses and that work in these businesses are going to want to live somewhere where they’re excited to be.”

When it comes to marketing Pueblo, he adds, “The outdoor amenities here are like one of multiple offerings that should be on the plate. It’s not just the green chile.”

With a whitewater park on the Arkansas River (and another $11 million one on the way) and more than 40 miles of mountain biking trails (and a notably long season) at Lake Pueblo State Park, the city has assets in place for an outdoors-loving workforce.

“With any community, the biggest challenge is making the most out of what’s there,” Davidson says. “The opportunities are huge, and to get the outdoor industry to see that, it’s going to take creating experiences intentionally and putting those things out into the world packaged in a way that looks the part. If we’re talking about bringing bigger industry players to this region, it needs to be presented in a way that feels like it’s worth checking out, to be frank.”

The industry’s benefits contribute to a bottom line that extends beyond job creation, he adds. “Outdoor rec is tourism dollars, but also it can be a huge public health driver, especially when it’s as accessible as it is here.”

Cañon City

With prisons accounting for more than 10 percent of jobs in Fremont County, diversification has been a longtime aim for local economic developers. It follows that Cañon City is now leveraging natural assets like the Arkansas River and Royal Gorge to lure remote workers.

“What amenities do we need to attract them here?” says Rick Harrmann, Cañon City’s economic development manager. “Outdoor rec is one of those, for sure.”

Harrmann highlights TechSTART, an initiative of the Fremont Economic Development Corporation. “It took a while to figure it out, but we now have 300-plus new jobs that were created through that initiative,” he says. One TechSTART transplant, 3 Rocks Engineering, “started off as one engineer, and now he’s got almost 30 employees in three locations.”

The Arkansas River is just south of downtown, and redevelopment and restoration efforts are ongoing. “The plans are to keep working on river improvements and keep working on trail connectivity to downtown,” Harrmann says.

The nonprofit Fremont Adventure Recreation (FAR) has spearheaded trail-building efforts and now maintains a network with more than 60 miles of singletrack trails in the area. Easy access is a huge part of Cañon City’s pitch, says FAR Coordinator Ashlee Sack. “It’s the availability and how close everything is that I think makes that little bit of time that we all have more valuable,” Sack says.

“We’re seeing folks are moving here or moving back here, because it is developing into a place that offers the quality of life that if you can afford to live in Boulder, you can have it there, but if you can’t afford to live in Boulder, you can come here. I think we offer many of the same amenities.”