Hunter and Windham blast state ski plan
The Greene County ski resorts Windham Mountain and Hunter Mountain stand to lose if the state Department of Conservation (DEC) acts on its plans to expand the state-owned Belleayre Ski Center.
That is the conclusion of a white paper the two private ski operators released recently in reaction to the proposed expansion, which is part of the agreement in principle Gov. Eliot Spitzer and other parties signed with Crossroads L.L.C. last fall in order to expedite Crossroads”™ plans to build a large ski resort adjacent to the center.
Proponents of the expansion maintain Greene County is trying to hog all the ski business.
The ski center expansion includes construction of new trails and a new lodge, installation of new chair lifts and an expansion of snowmaking equipment and other infrastructure, which would enable guests at Crossroads”™ Belleayre Resort to ski right from their lodgings. While neither Windham nor Hunter is opposed to the proposed private resort, the ski operators said that using taxpayer money for the ski center expansion and the on-going operations at the ski center give Belleayre an unfair advantage.
Belleayre “has grown their skier visitors substantially over the last 10 years, whereas ours have remained flat,” said Tim Woods, president and general manager at Windham Mountain. “We think Belleayre has done this effectively through predatory pricing. They operate consistently year after year at considerable loss, which is funded by the taxpayers.” According to the white paper, Belleayre lost $1.17 million in the 2006-07 ski season. It had 146,560 skiers, which in effect resulted in a taxpayer subsidy of $19.25 per skier visit.
According to the white paper, Hunter and Windham annually attract over 700,000 visitors, employ approximately 2,000 people during the peak season, pay wages of approximately $12.5 million, pay state and local taxes of $3 million and generate a combined economic impact in excess of $200 million.
Another advantage of Belleayre is that it doesn”™t have to pay property taxes, workers comp insurance, liability insurance, or sales tax on some energy costs, Woods said. Furthermore, because it has to conform to state requirements to pay union wages for new construction, its costs are higher than the privately owned resorts, at taxpayer expense.
Windham and Hunter accuse Belleayre of gaining more customers at their expense. Belleayre “has merely ”˜reallocated the pie,”™ which has resulted in a redistribution of revenues away from the Greene County ski areas,” according to the white paper.
Rob Megnin, director of marketing at Hunter Mountain, said Belleayre”™s “predatory practices” include charging cheap prices for lift tickets. “We can”™t afford to drop our lift tickets that low,” he said.
Belleayre”™s planned expansion will further put Hunter and Windham at a competitive disadvantage, according to the white paper. As described under the recent final scoping document that the DEC just released””the document outlines the scope of the state environmental review””the expansion will include construction of six new trails plus installation of two new ski lifts. (The DEC has dropped plans to build three miles of trails on the eastern side of the mountain, due to lack of funds, according to DEC spokesperson Yancey Roy.)
While the DEC has not responded to a request from this reporter for the total estimated cost of the expansion, Woods said his staff estimated it would range from $65 to $75 million, including the addition of parking lots and other infrastructure. Joe Kelly, chairman of the Coalition to Save Belleayre, which formed in 1984 in response to a state plan to mothball the resort, said the state would be putting in $40 to $60 million.
Kelly said the accusations of the two Greene County ski resorts were “ludicrous.” He said because the two resorts are privately owned, they don”™t have to reveal their own numbers, so it”™s difficult to make a comparison. (The private resort owners obtained the information about the publicly owned Belleayre through the federal Freedom of Information Law.) He said a third of an acre adjacent to Windham recently sold for $1.1 million, indicating the Greene County resort wasn”™t undergoing any hardship. “Tell me what the problem is,” Kelly said. “The bottom line for what Greene County wants is higher ski tickets for everybody.”
Woods responded that Windham only got $120,000 for the lot, when it was sold a few years ago. He said that when Windham installed a new $3.5 million chair lift last year, “we had to sell a lot of lift tickets to pay off our dept services.” In contrast, when Belleayre put in a new lift, it cost a lot more due to the higher labor costs, but there was no burden of debt on the resort”™s operators, he said, just on taxpayers.
Kelly said the proposed ski center and the $400 million proposed Crossroads L.L.C. resort were crucial to rebuilding the economy of the Catskills. “We have no jobs. Businesses and churches are closing and school enrollments are going down. There”™s no future for the people who work here.”
Joan Lawrence-Bauer, executive director of the MARK Group, a nonprofit rural preservation agency based in Margaretville, said that Windham”™s and Hunter”™s attempt to forestall the expansion was “a really obnoxious tactic to try to circumvent the constitution of the state of New York.” In 1987, voters passed a second constitutional amendment that called for the ski center to be expanded to its full potential, she said.
“We”™ve had these battles before,” Lawrence-Bauer said. The $200 million economic impact of Windham and Hunter only benefits the people in Greene County, she added. “What about the rest of us? We only have one ski center.”