Denver Post

Denver council OKs Winter Park pact
By Jason Blevins
Denver Post Business Writer

Tuesday, October 01, 2002 - The Denver City Council unanimously approved an agreement late Monday that gives a private developer 76 years to create a destination resort at Winter Park ski area.

"This has been a half-century odyssey to get us to the point where we can make Winter Park the best ski area in the world, as it deserves to be," council President Cathy Reynolds said.

"This is a better deal than we thought we would get," Reynolds said. "And now it's too late to take it back."

With the rap of Reynold's gavel, Intrawest was given the reins of perhaps Denver's most prized possession, a 62-year-old ski hill that hosts close to 1 million skiers a year but has fallen behind its deep-pocketed competitors.

In return, Intrawest promises to complete $99 million worth of on-mountain improvements in the next decade. The British Columbia-based resort developer, which operates 11 ski resorts including Copper Mountain, also has development rights to 140 city-owned acres at the base of the ski area.

Denver will get $3 million when the deal is completed in the next couple of weeks. The city also will collect $2 million a year for the next 10 years and then an annual payment of about $2.5 million based on ski-area revenues.

"We should celebrate this day as a turning point for Winter Park," said Gary Raymond, Intrawest's head of development who has spent the past year negotiating for a chance to develop the Grand County ski area.

Grand County residents outnumbered Denverites at Monday's meeting. Some addressed the council, urging a quick end to what has been a two-year search for a path to Winter Park back to prominence in the state's evolving ski resort business.

"Winter Park needs to grow and move forward and diversify its revenue stream so it can compete head to head with its competitors," said state Rep. Al White, R-Winter Park, who has owned ski-related businesses in Winter Park in the last 25 years.

Intrawest's chief competitor, Vail Resorts, Intrawest's development partner at Vail's Keystone ski area, filed suit last week in Delaware seeking to stop its rival from developing real estate at Winter Park.

Vail and Intrawest signed an agreement at Keystone in 1994 that prohibited either resort company from developing ski resort real estate in four counties, including Grand County, unless the company acquired a "controlling interest" of the ski resort.

"We think the litigation is completely without merit," Intrawest lawyer Michael McCarthy said.