AVON — By several very differ­ent measures, the opening of a new $500 million hotel in Avon last week at the base of Beaver Creek was a big deal.
  The Westin Riverfront Resort and Spa is physically big and tall, with 210 rooms that range in size from studios to three-bedroom condominiums.
  It is also being branded as green. The developer, East West Partners, has applied to be certi­fied under the lowest of four lev­els in the LEED (for Leaders in Energy and Environmental Design) program. If so certified, it will be the first hotel in Colorado to get a LEED designation.
  Not least, the hotel directly links Avon — via a new gondola — to the ski slopes of Beaver Creek. With that link, Avon now claims itself as “beachfront” property, which boosters and planners think will add punch to redevelopment efforts in the town.
  The “green” measures at the Westin are sometimes obvious, as in the VIP parking spaces for hybrid vehicles.
  There will be recycling stations for guests on every floor. Less obvious is that more than half of construction waste was recycled or salvaged.
  Helping add points to the LEED designation are transportation connections that reduce the need for cars. Adjacent to the hotel is a new bus hub for Avon.
  “One of Vail’s greatest strengths is its bus system, and now Avon’s getting there,” Harry Frampton, the managing director of East West Partners, told the Vail Daily News.
  As well, the hotel is along cur­rently unused railroad tracks that transportation planners hope will be used for passenger traffic by 2030.
  Avon was incorporated in 1979, or 13 years after Vail. It struggled at the outset.
  A massive condominium proj­ect was stalled by the real-estate bust from the mid-1980s well into the 1990s. Development was heavily car-centric.
  Instead, the sheen of resort development leapfrogged to Edwards, which became the center of activity for the emerging com­munity of well-heeled locals but also second-home owners.
  Avon, though, intends to stay in the game with a major redevelop­ment that will create a pedestrian­friendly collection of businesses called Main Street in an area adja­cent to the new Westin and other tall lodging properties.