Ruidoso wants you to know: It’s open for business

EDITOR’S NOTE: First in a two-part series. On Monday, read about recovery efforts from the South Fork and Salt fires and floods.

RUIDOSO — Looking down at Ruidoso, the Alpine Village is marred by thousands of charred trees. But the view also presents signs of life, grass a foot in length in some places sprouting from the ground.

It’s a welcomed sight for the people of Ruidoso, who this summer experienced the South Fork and Salt fires — burning more than 25,500 acres and more than 1,500 structures, leaving two dead. Floods also followed, about a dozen, in the days and weeks after.

In the aftermath of such devastation, the response from locals, and tourists, is often mixed. In places like Maui, Hawaii, where the Lahaina Fire torched a community, returning within the first few months was viewed as controversial. But Ruidoso wants everyone to know: they’re here, they’re good and, most importantly, they’re open for business.

Like the fledgling grass, Ruidoso businesses have seen a tentative return of foot traffic in this tourism town six months after the devastation: Some are getting back to where they once were; others are in slow recovery.

This time of year is as important for tourism as ever, said Mayor Lynn Crawford, now six years into the job. For some businesses, the money made over the three weeks from the Christmas and New Year’s holidays carries them through to spring break and Memorial Day weekend.

“Businesses, some of them are saying, ‘Hey, we’re killing it.’ And others are saying, ‘I’m still off 20%,’” said Crawford. “But it’s coming back.”

Slow recovery

Down the road on Sudderth Drive in the Midtown area, Ruidoso’s main attraction for visitors, pine trees remain untouched by the fires and floods on a mid-December morning.

Streetlights are decorated with holiday fixtures, like snowflakes, and Christmas music blares in the background as customers pour out onto the street to buy last-minute gifts.

On one side of the road, near the Noisy Water Winery, an anchor business in the area, a family from Texas packs a pair of three-foot ristras into the trunk of their SUV. On the other side, an older couple from Corona walks out of a store with bags in hand.

Smack in the middle of Midtown — comparable to Albuquerque’s Old Town or Santa Fe’s Plaza — is the gift shop Atypical, which sells everything from old records to Mexican textiles and jewelry.

The shop’s owner, Mark Jakuvcewicz, said Atypical has been open for about 15 years now. His mom previously owned the shop and, when he took over about six years ago, he changed the name from Cool Junk to Atypical, so as not to confuse the business with another in town branded with the same name.

“Things were unraveling nicely here with development and increases in tourism,” said Jakuvcewicz, pointing to the increase following the COVID pandemic.

This year’s Memorial Day weekend boded well, a good stretch for Jakuvcewicz’s novelty business.

“And then, of course, the fires (came),” he said. “That is when we generally anticipate the summer season to begin — Father’s Day through Labor Day. It’s kind of how it works here.”

The McBride Fire in 2022 slowed business for about two months, but the effects were nowhere near where they are now. Six months later, his business has had a slow recovery.

In July, which he said is Atypical’s “bread-and-butter month,” the store did about 50% of what it had a year prior. In August, about 60%. September around 70%. And 80% for October.

Across the street, Mike Walker and Beth Butkiewicz are helping Beth’s mother, Liz Butkiewicz, set up her business, Doso Mini Donuts, for its grand opening.

The business, which sells a dozen mini donuts in a variety of flavors, is located in a plaza directly across from Mike and Beth’s eatery, Island Noodles, which has been open for more than three years.

Island Noodles is only open at select times of the week, mostly on heavy tourist days like weekends. The eatery had been on an “upward trajectory since we started,” Walker said.

“There’s been percentages of growth every year, and we were on percentage growth this year as well,” Walker said. “(The fires) wiped us out for all of the rest of June, all of July and part of August. So we missed our biggest month and half of the second biggest month, and obviously the biggest weekend — the Fourth of July weekend.”

From the time the fire happened, Island Noodles’ business is down more than 70%.

“But even since we’ve opened back up, we’re down in excess of 30%,” Walker added.

With the floods added to that, Beth said, “People just haven’t been coming.”

“Everybody’s afraid to come,” she said. “When we travel and go to places — we also have a mobile unit and do events — people are shocked to hear that Ruidoso is still standing. They just envision it totally wiped out.”

‘Going to tell a story’

Eddie Gutierrez sits in his Midtown brewery Thursday night with a beer in hand. Local artist Tyler Jones is performing a mix of country and rock songs on open mic night.

Downshift Brewing Co., which consists of almost all local beers, starts with about two dozen people eating and drinking at around 7 p.m. A couple of hours later, the crowd grows — though Gutierrez notes most, if not all, are locals.

Like many businesses in the area, Downshift has had its fair share of troubles — in the months since, operating at roughly 60% of where business was before the fire.

It’s been a tough stretch for Gutierrez, who also owns another Downshift location just a few minutes away that serves breakfast and has anchored the losses at the brewery’s main location.

While business seemed fair that weekday evening, Gutierrez, like other business owners in the area, was awaiting the potential increase come the Friday night before Christmas.

“It’s going to tell a story,” Gutierrez, who moved back to Ruidoso, his hometown, from Houston with his wife in 2021. “I think a lot of businesses are trying to hang on. So if it’s not good, then you’re gonna see more businesses close down because after the first week of January, you don’t really have a lot of business.”

Gutierrez knows all too well the perception of Ruidoso in the wake of the fires and floods, one that, in places like the news media, had painted the town in rubble.

So he was surprised to get contacted by the Buzz Adams Show, based out of El Paso, to make appearances once a week for two months following the disasters. The show has an extensive reach, hitting markets key to Ruidoso tourism, like West Texas and Phoenix.

“We’re just kind of chatting about stuff. But every time we’re on the radio, we’re obviously saying, ‘Hey, we’re here. Hey, it’s OK,’” said Gutierrez.

A critical time

Ben Brown gets up early Friday morning to prepare the breakfast buffet at the hotel he owns off Sudderth Drive.

Brown moved from Austin with his wife and took over the Comfort Inn & Suites Midtown in late May, just a few weeks before the South Fork and Salt fires set ablaze.

It was a big bet for Brown, a former tech worker, to come to Ruidoso. He had been weighing purchasing a hotel for more than a decade, and this year, he decided to make the change.

“We sold everything we had in Austin — just kind of pushed all the chips in the middle and said, ‘Let’s go to Ruidoso and buy a hotel,’” he said. “And that’s what we did.”

He knew of the risk of living in a small tourist town tucked in a mountain range susceptible to fire threats at any moment, but what he didn’t expect was to encounter some of the largest fires in over a decade just a short time after taking over the hotel.

Like some short-term rental businesses in Ruidoso, filling the hotel since the fires has proven challenging. He experienced a “booming, gangbusters” weekend that spanned even further through the day the fire started. And while his hotel housed some emergency workers, “it was crickets until Labor Day.”

Brown said the hotel was underbooked the week before Christmas. Like others, the stretch through early January will be a telltale sign if things are going to be alright.

“It’s such a critical time, like, I don’t even know how the business is going to do — if we’re going to make it till Memorial Day,” Brown said. “I can’t tell you until three weeks from now.”

Jakuvcewicz, the owner of the Atypical shop, also believes the loss of short-term rentals is contributing to the slow recovery. Some of those businesses lost everything, like Alyx Duncan. She told the Journal recently that her vacation rental business, Mountain Air Cabins, lost at least five cabins in the fires and floods.

“It’s huge,” Jakuvcewicz said of the losses of some rentals. “You basically have a finite number of people you can house here. Fourth of July, I’ve heard of numbers as high as 30,000 people being here for the weekend. If all those places are now gone, they’re not just going to be back by next summer season. So where are people going to stay?”

Kerry Gladden, a village of Ruidoso spokesperson, said from July through November of this year, returns from the lodger’s tax to the village were about $716,899 short of the same timeframe a year ago.

But the village has also seen promising signs of recovery, with November in particular showing just a $24,461 difference in the lodger’s tax — which collects 5% from area hotels, motels and short-term rentals, like cabins — from the same time last year.

“That’s what’s reassuring,” she said. “Compared to last year, we’re not that far off.”

The village will be able to see December’s returns from the tax next month, which officials hope will shorten the losses.

Heating up?

A 10-minute drive from Midtown, Inn of the Mountain Gods looks as picturesque as ever. The hotel and casino resort gleam with the sun’s reflection on Mescalero Lake.

The Mescalero Apache Tribe owns the hotel, and the casino’s chief operating officer, Frizzell Frizzell Jr., said tourists have been returning.

In November, occupancy was 70%, Frizzell said, beating out last year “by a little bit, which is great.” The week before Christmas through Jan. 6, the resort’s 273 rooms are at 100% occupancy.

That may be partly due to the strong event lineup at the resort. Inn of the Mountain Gods held a Dec. 21 concert headlined by country singer Jon Pardi. The resort is also hosting an upcoming New Year’s party and, just a few days later, will throw its first kickoff event for the year, celebrating the resort’s 50 years.

“We have strong leadership within our team here — tenured leadership that’s been here and has gone through disasters before. We understand what it’s like,” Frizzell said.

A 45-minute drive northwest of the resort to Ski Apache, also owned by the tribe, trails are open and visitors are hitting the slopes, Frizzell said.

“The tribe is the biggest economic engine in this region,” Frizzell said, “so it’s important for us to get back on track and try and get people to come here.”

A group of young women from El Paso walk the Midtown area Friday afternoon, making their way to Cafe Rio Pizza to grab a slice. The three friends said they saw a viral TikTok video of the pizza joint, which convinced them to make the day trip to this small mountain town.

It’s 3 p.m. and foot traffic is starting to pick up, as many area business owners had hoped. The town isn’t on fire. Signs of life are arriving. Just maybe business is heating up.

“It’s really nice,” said Megan Nowlin, who was visiting Ruidoso for the first time out of Abilene, Texas. “It’s warm for December.”