It looks like the proposed link between Les Contamines & St Gervais/Megeve has run into difficulties. The local press has the following report http://www.ledauphine.com/haute-savoie/2012/08/28/serieux-contretemps-pour-la-liaison
In summary they will now have to go to a public enquiry and also get approval from somthing called the UTN (New Tourist Unit I think) Not sure what that is. Hopefully they’ll chuck out the proposal and that side of Mont Joly will be left in peace. For those not familiar with the proposed development a presentation is posted on the Les Contamines Mairie website http://www.mairie-lescontamines.com/userfiles/Liaison%20Contamines.pdf Also see previous forum discussion on Pistehors.

UTN, there is even a Pistehors article about them

http://pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Articles/Unites-Touristiques-Nouvelles

and an old article covering the linked ski area

http://pistehors.com/backcountry/wiki/Articles/Diamonds-Are-For-Never

The thing with these expansion links is that tourists always want them and locals never do… and you can understand both sides…

The article you posted ‘davidof’ spells it out, that these resorts need to expand to compete… More and more these days, folks want to travel and holiday in larger areas…

Les Contamines maybe a lovely village and a great little ski area but I imagine it could be skied out by any intermediate skier in a couple of days… The link across to St Gervais IMO would bring more folk into Les Contamines to stay as you get the traditional village feel and a big expansive region, as opposed to the town feel of St Gervais…

A difficult one really to see with… As a potential investor in the village, I guess I am siding with the link going ahead, but I know that will not go down too well with the locals… Which again, I understand…

AlpineAddict - 05 October 2012 12:35 PM

The thing with these expansion links is that tourists always want them and locals never do… and you can understand both sides…

That’s a broadly correct observation I think. My experience tells me that there’s generally a small local lobby in favour of fairly unrestrained development. That lobby is generally fairly adept at getting their view into newspapers and while no one on the ground is fooled for an instant it seems to convince some distant observers.

Interestingly though, I’d say St Gervais is an example of some great re-development in the town itself, I’ve been over for work a few times recently and the centre has been redeveloped very sympathetically. Traffic flow and access to the lifts has been hugely improved and the main street has regained some character. I’ve never seen the elongated main street of Les Contamines as having much charm and the village is disconnected a little given the location of the lifts and the apartment complexes near the lifts.

by coincidence, there’s a piece in Swissinfo about alpine development which present a rather more balanced view than some of the press has. It’s a view that’s shared by many people living in alpine communities and seems to have been drowned out slightly

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Holiday_home_ambush_rattles_alpine_communities.html?cid=33670616

The mayor of Cumbel sounds a bit shady.

small town politics

There’s more : http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Builders_race_the_clock_in_tourist_regions.html?cid=33670534

In there someone makes the point it’s not a well drafted law at all which I think is fair comment. I think a lot of people would take issue with the 20% figure as well, you might have a reasonable discussion about whether the figure should be 20% or 30% for example. My guess is if the proposal had been over 30% it would have been a landslide in favour and they might have tagged some conditions that multiple dwellings whether apartments or chalets couldn’t be more than 50% second owner. You can play with the percentages but it would be much stronger.

None of which helps much about dealing with the mess a handful of alpine villages have become.

Has there been any news on this...? Seems to have gone very quiet after it been in the media for a bit…