Vail's Front Door - Vail, CO
Like Founder's Park and Garage, Vail's Front Door was an attempt by Vail Resorts Development Company to integrate much-needed service and hospitality elements into their existing ski resort facilities and in place of random uses and mis-placed structures. In the case of this important project, VRDC worked for nearly five years with Robert Fitzgerald and his team to carefully insert a very large parking and service building below ground on the very soil where the first skiers on the hill once ended their day. Next to the re-located Vista Bahn lift, the Front Door was meant to physically and metaphorically "knit" the erratic seam between the mountain and the town; was programmed to provide skier services such as retail, lift ticket sales, lockers, ski valet and concessions; was envisioned to provide the village with a centralized loading and disbursement location (". . . to take trucks off of Bridge Street" was the rallying cry); was driven financially by the addition of suites to the original Lodge at Vail, and the 16 chalets (duplex and triplex homes) constructed on a re-configured and totally man-made mountain side (also with hidden parking garages and service bays within); and included an exclusive ski club and purchasable parking space for a few lucky members.
One of the most complicated cast-in-place concrete structures ever erected in the Rocky Mountains, the Front Door was started after the ArraBelle and thus helped to further demonstrate Fitz's "One Town - One Vail" theorem to the community, where in the linear town along I-70 is meant to be recognized as a singular place. As one holistic entity and an integrated seamless resort, the theory also holds that it should be incumbent upon new development to respect, in the least, the Founder's original vision for the place as a Bavarian Alpine Resort. The chalets, skier services and club buildings are, therefore, modeled after structures with their aesthetic rooted in European tradition; of pedestrian size and scale, and made of materials with rich texture and varying color.
These timber-framed public facades belie the complexity which exists, unseen, below. A dense landscape and sunny pool area, fine hardscape and paving materials, and pedestrian plazas and grass covered gathering spaces, in addition to Fitzgerald's vertical development; all hide the massive delivery and parking structures below. The invisible labyrinth also contains a new spa facility for the Lodge, meeting and locker space for lift operators, ski patrol and mountain concierge, and includes a very long extension of the Forest Service road that once made the bottom of Vail Mountain look like a long muddy parking lot.
Photos
Like Founder's Park and Garage, Vail's Front Door was an attempt by Vail Resorts Development Company to integrate much-needed service and hospitality elements into their existing ski resort facilities and in place of random uses and mis-placed structures. In the case of this important project, VRDC worked for nearly five years with Robert Fitzgerald and his team to carefully insert a very large parking and service building below ground on the very soil where the first skiers on the hill once ended their day. Next to the re-located Vista Bahn lift, the Front Door was meant to physically and metaphorically "knit" the erratic seam between the mountain and the town; was programmed to provide skier services such as retail, lift ticket sales, lockers, ski valet and concessions; was envisioned to provide the village with a centralized loading and disbursement location (". . . to take trucks off of Bridge Street" was the rallying cry); was driven financially by the addition of suites to the original Lodge at Vail, and the 16 chalets (duplex and triplex homes) constructed on a re-configured and totally man-made mountain side (also with hidden parking garages and service bays within); and included an exclusive ski club and purchasable parking space for a few lucky members.
One of the most complicated cast-in-place concrete structures ever erected in the Rocky Mountains, the Front Door was started after the ArraBelle and thus helped to further demonstrate Fitz's "One Town - One Vail" theorem to the community, where in the linear town along I-70 is meant to be recognized as a singular place. As one holistic entity and an integrated seamless resort, the theory also holds that it should be incumbent upon new development to respect, in the least, the Founder's original vision for the place as a Bavarian Alpine Resort. The chalets, skier services and club buildings are, therefore, modeled after structures with their aesthetic rooted in European tradition; of pedestrian size and scale, and made of materials with rich texture and varying color.
These timber-framed public facades belie the complexity which exists, unseen, below. A dense landscape and sunny pool area, fine hardscape and paving materials, and pedestrian plazas and grass covered gathering spaces, in addition to Fitzgerald's vertical development; all hide the massive delivery and parking structures below. The invisible labyrinth also contains a new spa facility for the Lodge, meeting and locker space for lift operators, ski patrol and mountain concierge, and includes a very long extension of the Forest Service road that once made the bottom of Vail Mountain look like a long muddy parking lot.
