The following article has more details on the $265M price for Steamboat and some insights into Intrawest from Dave Hill a former Intrawest Exec that leads the team developing Wildhorse Meadows. ASC's CEO B.J. Fair does his best to take credit for the value of Steamboat but we all know it happened in spite of ASC's flawed strategies. Let me emphasize here that I think that our local resort staff has done an excellent job making Steamboat a great place to ski despite the mis-steps of ASC.
Steamboat's charm, improvements that proceeded depsite ASC's apathy, the changing demographics of resort markets like Steamboat and most importantly the quality of the people that come here & live/work here is what drove the increase in value. ASC just barely managed to hold onto Steamboat after many serious misteps and mounting debt from other failed ventures was compensated for by Steamboat's appeal despite ASC's efforts. If ASC was so good at creating value as B.J. Fair says in the article why is Steamboat a rare truly successful resort in their portfolio. There won't be many tears shed around town when ASC is finished here.
I'm sure that Intrawest won't be perfect but they have the potential to do a lot of good here if they remember the reasons that Steamboat is special. You can find the full text of Tom Ross's excellent artcle here in the Steamboat Pilot.
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