Mark Igel: Town Trustee

Feature by Barb Boyer Buck

This is a first in a series of profiles the Estes Valley Voice will publish on the individuals who serve as Estes Park Town Trustees.

Outspoken and inquisitive, Trustee Mark Igel didn’t run for Town Board to rubber stamp every new idea the Town of Estes Park brings forward.

Nor did he join to try to please the other board members. As a 35-year resident, volunteer fire fighter, and downtown business owner, Igel was against the Loop and the paid parking program, thinks Estes Park has too many events, and laments the “good old days” of the community, especially the loss of its small-town feel.

“Estes Park is becoming an event center,” he said in an interview with the Estes Valley Voice, referring to myriads of weekend events, which he laments all seem to feature alcohol these days.

Visitors used to be “enticed by the sights and smells of a small town” and stayed a while after their trip into Rocky Mountain National Park to explore the shops and get a bite to eat, said Igel who thinks developments in Estes Park are happening too fast and without proper consideration these days.

That’s why after decades of living, working, and raising a family of seven children in Estes Park, four of whom he adopted from China, he decided to run for Town board. He is currently serving his first, four-year term after being elected in April of 2024.

The planning for the Loop which created new one-way streets and roundabouts in and near the downtown Estes Park corridor, began decades ago. Paid parking was developed and implemented before Igel took office, but he questions if these types of developments, and upcoming discussions about stormwater engineering, aren’t just “trendy subjects in the engineering world.”

“We have a track record in Estes Park of creating problems, identifying solutions, and then hiring the people to be involved in that process,” said Igel. “It feels to me like we maybe need to have somebody from the outside take a look at how our process is run, right?”

Igel first moved to Estes Park in 1988 to run what was originally named the Stanley Village Cinemas for Stan Pratt who owned theaters all over Colorado.

While he was still in high school, Igel worked at Pratt’s Conifer location. When the opportunity to manage the Estes Park location came up a year after he graduated, Igel decided to take it while also going to school in Denver three days a week in a criminal justice program. “Then, I discovered that maybe being an EMT was more up my alley, so I got into an EMT class, and then went to paramedic school.”

Igel worked as a paramedic from 1989 to 2009. During that time, the opportunity arose to buy the movie theater he had worked at when he first came to town. He owned it from 2003 until 2010 before selling to a local family.

The following year, he and his former wife took a year off with their children to travel the country in a tour bus.

He also owned and operated Signs of Life, a local sign shop, from 1992 to 2019.

Additionally, since 2014, Igel has owned The Taffy Shop downtown and has run it the same way it has been run for almost 90 years.

The quaint storefront and service counter belies the much larger operation in the back, where orders for its famous and award-winning taffy are packaged and shipped all over the country. He decided to maintain the tradition of the store, using the same recipe and process. This has paid off. In May of last year, The Taffy Shop was named the “best candy store in the country” through a national reader’s poll in USA Today.

Taffy and the Town Board are what take up most of his time these days. He also fills in on the ambulance crew when needed.

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