The debate over whether more B.C. mountains need ski runs is intensifying in the lead-up to a provincial government ruling on a proposed $450 million resort on Jumbo Mountain in the Kootenays.
Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Minister Steve Thomson is expected to decide this winter whether to give Jumbo final approval.
But Grouse Mountain owner Stuart McLaughlin believes B.C. has more than enough ski resorts and that new ones will only erode existing operators’ bottom lines.
“We need current resorts to flourish,” McLaughlin said. “There’s lots of capacity in the system right now. Once all resorts are successful, that will create the need for more resorts and improve the likelihood of success for anyone who comes later.”
McLaughlin’s resort generated record revenue, in the $50 million range, in 2011. Success has largely come from adding attractions. For example, McLaughlin launched zip-lines in 2008 and spent several million dollars to build Grouse Mountain’s Eye of the Wind turbine and lookout, which opened immediately prior to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
Grant Costello, senior vice-president with proposed Jumbo Mountain developer Glacier Resorts Ltd., told Business in Vancouver that his opponents are often ski resort operators who don’t want to competition from what would be B.C.’s only year-round ski resort.
Costello has thus far cleared all obstacles in the way of his development, including a nine-and-a-half-year environmental review. He said he’s ready to start pumping tens of millions of dollars into creating the resort.
Sun Peaks mayor and longtime ski industry entrepreneur Al Raine likes Costello’s enthusiasm.
“People who I’ve heard talking the loudest about how capacity at B.C.’s ski resorts should be held back are usually the existing operators,” said Raine.
“If someone is there with major investment money on a major resort and the project would help elevate B.C.’s international image in the ski business ... let them go do it. We should encourage them.”
That sentiment formed the core of B.C.’s commercial alpine ski policy (CASP), which Raine helped write and which the Social Credit government implemented in the 1980s.
That policy is also a key component of Jumbo’s business plan.
Ski resort operators say that CASP helped B.C. develop its ski sector into what is now more than a dozen resorts.
CASP has since expanded to become the all-season resort policy (ASRP), which includes non-ski operations.
It allows developers who are willing to invest in infrastructure such as ski lifts to buy Crown land at the base of the mountain for the market price the land had before the infrastructure upgrade was installed.
Before CASP was enacted, ski resort developers were at the mercy of land speculators who bought land near potential developments.
“I proposed at the time that this did not make sense,” Raine said. “We needed to have better planning done on the mountains.”
The policy resulted in proposed developments moving away from areas where there was privately held land to sites where the base of the resort would be on Crown land.
McLaughlin called the policy a “tremendous piece of legislation” that has helped spur success at Grouse Mountain.
Raine said other resorts, including Whistler Blackcomb, Big White Ski Resort, Silver Star Mountain Resort, Panorama Mountain Village, Fernie Alpine Resort and Kimberley Alpine Resort, also benefited.
“It really helped Kicking Horse Resort,” he added. “That wouldn’t be there without this policy.”
But the policy doesn’t mean that all proposed resorts are given the green light.
The B.C. government approved Garibaldi Alpen Resorts Ltd.’s plans to develop a ski resort at Brohm Ridge in Mount Garibaldi provincial park in 2003. But BC Supreme Court judge Marvyn Koenigsberg overturned that approval later in the year, ruling that the government did not fully consult with the Squamish First Nation.
Raine was also the driving force behind developing a major mountain resort at Melvin Creek in the Cayoose Range between Pemberton and Lillooet.
“I backed away from that. Land-use issues were unresolvable,” the 70-year-old said. “Besides, I was getting too old. It takes 20 years of hard work to build a ski resort from scratch. Unless I have a ton of energy at 90 years old, there’s no way I would be able to do it [again].” •
