Resort unveils comprehensive master plan

A new version of Snodgrass, a long-term vision for the future

It’s been four years since Tim and Diane Mueller took the helm of Crested Butte Mountain Resort, bringing with them a determination to create a successful ski area and a vision of what the resort needs to do to get there.

And despite a change in ownership during the midst of an economic recession, numerous changes in the resort’s upper management, and a challenging battle to get an expansion proposal even considered for approval, the Muellers’ vision hasn’t veered too far off course.
At least that’s what CBMR chief operating officer Ken Stone told an audience of 300 people who gathered at the Mountaineer Square ballroom to hear the resort’s Master Development Plan presentation on Wednesday, March 4.
Stone began the presentation by explaining the resort’s desire to implement the plan in an effort to increase market share and skier visits.
Last year the resort saw 415,000 skier visits, Stone said. More than half of those were pass holders, and 85,000 more skied for free during the resort’s Test Ride Crested Butte promotion.
Before the economy started heading south in 2008, CBMR was anticipating a similar number of skier visits for the 2008/2009 winter season. The resort is now expecting a total of only 365,000 skier visits this season, Stone said.
Stone said the company wants to get up to 600,000 yearly skier visits by the year 2015, and two areas the resort is looking at to increase skier visits are improving the main mountain and expanding onto nearby Snodgrass.
Stone admitted that not everyone is going to agree with the company’s vision and goals. “Being a good leader sometimes means making decisions that aren’t popular with everyone. That’s the role we’re going to take on leadership in this company,” he said.
“When you look at the future, sometimes it’s scary to people. It’s easy to say our long-term vision is we never change, but that’s like saying my long-term plan is to never age,” Stone said.
“People say at one time we had 290,000 paid skier visits, and why can’t we do that again without expanding?” he said. “We could try to look for the person that appeals to—a smaller mountain with a lot of extreme terrain… but we’re not going to get that growth,” Stone said.
Stone said it took many years and a lot of hard work to create the Master Development Plan.
 CBMR vice president of real estate and development Michael Kraatz said the Master Development Plan was created as a planning guide to assist the Forest Service in reviewing future proposals from the resort. He said the Master Development Plan was a vision document covering a period of five to 10 years, at which time the plan would be updated again. Kraatz said the actions in the plan, “allow us to get in a position where we are able to compete with other ski resorts and then gain skier visits.”

Improving the main mountain
CBMR mountain planner Roark Kiklevich then discussed the details of the Master Development Plan’s two major aspects: the improvements to the main mountain and expanding onto Snodgrass.
Last year CBMR received Forest Service approval for a number of improvements as part of the Main Mountain Improvements Plan. CBMR’s timeline, according to the Master Development Plan, calls for building many of the main mountain improvements within the next five years.
“Probably the most exciting projects to me are the Red Lady Lodge and the upgrades to the Red Lady Lift that go along with that,” Kiklevich said, referring to the proposed on-mountain dining facility and gondola cars that will be added to the Red Lady Lift.
“The second most exciting project is probably the Teocalli Bowl Lift,” Kiklevich said. He said CBMR originally intended to have the lift terminate at the top of the existing hike-out from Teocalli Bowl, but the alignment was changed to have the lift end between the Spellbound traverse and the top of Fredos. The resort also considered a hanging lift at first, but now plans on building a surface lift instead.
Some of the existing lifts on the mountain are scheduled for upgrades, including the Painter Boy Lift and Peachtree Lift. The Teocalli Lift has approval for a new alignment, which will bring it closer to the current terminus of the Red Lady Lift.
There are also four new trail segments planned, and 13 trail-widening projects. Kiklevich said the most notable trail-widening project was the Luge trail used to access the Silver Queen Road from the Peel. CBMR also has plans for adding more summer hiking and biking trails on the main mountain. “Really we’d like to move all hiking and biking activity off the road system,” Kiklevich said.

Snodgrass Light Version 2
In January of this year CBMR received the go-ahead from the U.S. Forest Service to submit an official proposal to expand lift-served terrain onto Snodgrass Mountain. Prior to accepting an expansion proposal from the resort, the Forest Service and CBMR agreed to explore potential “deal-breakers” in what was coined the “pre-NEPA” process. NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires a comprehensive evaluation of the potential impacts a development proposal can cause. The two main deal breakers for Snodgrass were proving there is adequate community support for the project, and studying the geological instability the ski expansion could cause.
The United States Geological Survey completed a final assessment of the numerous geological studies of Snodgrass Mountain in January. With the advice from the USGS, the Forest Service determined that two areas of CBMR’s previous Snodgrass Light plan were unsafe for some ski area infrastructure. The Forest Service told CBMR they would likely accept an expansion proposal for NEPA consideration so long as the plans avoided the two areas.
“We feel we’ve reached a final ending point with the geology issues on Snodgrass,” Kiklevich said.
He presented the latest version of the Snodgrass plans, including diagrams of trail layouts and lift elevations. The latest revised plans for Snodgrass have increased skiing acreage by 12 acres, for a total of 275 acres of skiing. Fifty-four of those acres would be beginner terrain, and 123 would be intermediate terrain. The remainder is considered advanced or expert.
Kiklevich said some of the trail layouts in the new plan were actually better than the previous Snodgrass Light plans. He also said the skiing on the west side of the mountain would be superb. “I’ve said this in every presentation I’ve done. The west-side skiing on Snodgrass will out-ski everything on the main mountain. This will be the best-groomed skiing we provide in the entire complex. They’re long runs, and there’s no road system to break them up,” Kiklevich said.
A gondola is planned to connect the main mountain with Snodgrass. In the old plan, “The gondola before went to the bottom of another lift. This gondola (alignment) goes to a restaurant, which is huge. It’s a place to go for someone who doesn’t ski,” Kiklevich said.
There is also a plan for a small restaurant at the top of the mountain, in addition to a larger restaurant at the top of the gondola. Kiklevich said there were currently no plans for expanding biking and hiking trails on the mountain, except for a short trail that will lead from the existing Snodgrass cross-country trail to the top of the gondola.
Kiklevich said the popular summertime biking and hiking Snodgrass trail would be impacted by one lift and one trail crossing.

Real estate developments
CBMR director of planning John Sale then talked about the resort’s proposed real estate developments, including the North Village, Prospect, Promontory, Cimarron and Mountaineer Square North.
Sale said some of the developments were already approved when the Muellers bought the resort. For instance, the Prospect subdivision had an existing approval for 350 units. That also includes an 80-unit hotel at the top of Prospect that Sale said the resort is still considering.
He said the Mountaineer Square North planned unit development previously had approval for a total of 1,025 units. Sale said the company had spent a lot of time amending the Mountaineer Square North plans to reduce density and match a recent branding study. The new plans for Mountaineer Square North call for a total of 592 units.
Sale clarified that the proposed North Village is not an annexation. The land adjacent to Snodgrass was incorporated into the town of Mt. Crested Butte in the 1980s. Sale said North Village was originally intended to consist of a string of large condominium buildings with a total of 1,800 units. The new plans for North Village call for a total of 1,100 units.
In total, CBMR’s new developments will carry a total of 2,072 units. “It certainly sounds like a lot, but this is a vision that will carry us 30 to 40 years. It’s not going to happen overnight,” Sale said.
 Sale noted that projects like Cimarron were put on hold given the current economy, and existing plans could always change. Sale said since CBMR purchased the old Gene Taylors building, the resort has considered moving the footprint of the proposed Cimarron building, away from the ski slope, to occupy that space.
Sale said a lot of people get concerned about the impact of real estate development on open spaces. He said between Prospect, and the proposed plans for North Village and Mountaineer Square North, the resort was keeping an average of 50 percent open space. Sale said there is also a 4 percent tax on lot sales in Prospect that goes toward preserving open space. Through this tax, Sale said the resort has donated $1.7 million to various conservation groups, including the Crested Butte Land Trust, and Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy.

Community response

Moderator and Mt. Crested Butte mayor William Buck then opened the meeting up for comments from town officials and the public.
Crested Butte resident Richard Bond spoke first and asked how CBMR’s plans would affect those of the Adaptive Sports Center.
Stone said based on his conversations with Adaptive, they were re-examining their long-term plans and considering becoming more integrated with base area facilities. Adaptive was originally considering a separate complex away from the base area.
Buck then gave his counterpart in Crested Butte the second honors. “I know that was a very complete presentation, but Alan, I’m sure you have a question.”
Crested Butte mayor Alan Bernholtz thanked CBMR for the presentation and said he felt there were some really good aspects to it. “I liked Kik’s (Kiklevich’s) presentation a lot. I think it skipped over a lot of good things they’ve been doing. Things we really don’t see like the improvements to snowmaking… They’ve improved the Twister warming hut with the Ice Bar. When Kik moved here it was probably a grass shack.”
Bernholtz continued, “We talk about improving customer service, but that’s where I see we fall down a lot. CBMR tore down our cafeteria and replaced it with nothing. It’s hard for me to support the expansion projected when I see the current area struggle with the basic needs of our guests… They have no place to take their boots off—no place to go unless they walk down a flight of stairs.”
Bernholtz said he was also concerned about recent cutbacks in the ski patrol and slope safety departments.
Bernholtz said he did not support the Snodgrass expansion, but not because he wanted to protect the entire mountain from lift-served skiing. “I don’t really go up on Snodgrass. I’m not somebody who wants to go catch butterflies,” he said. “I really have a problem with that big pod to the west. It really encroaches into what I think is a unique thing, Washington Gulch.”
Stone responded and said Bernholtz had some valid points. In a nod to customer service he said, “You’re going to see improvements to the base area facilities next year and beyond.” Stone said the resort wasn’t cutting back on safety. “We’re not reducing safety on the mountain, we’re just staffing safety personnel in a different way,” he said.
Mt. Crested Butte Town Council member Dave Clayton asked, “What does 600,000 skier visits get us in terms of economic stability?”
Stone said, “I don’t think that’s been fully studied… We know that it’s going to be positive.”
Stone said some people have heard the figure that CBMR breaks even at 360,000 skier visits a season. “That’s only when our expenses are handled through the winter,” Stone said. “Then we have to find some money to carry us through summer.”
Crested Butte Town Council member Billy Rankin said he was a professional ski patroller at CBMR and had a “mutually understanding meeting” with Stone about his stance on the Snodgrass expansion. “It puts me in an interesting position, because I really do not support lifts on Snodgrass,” Rankin said. “I’d like to clarify a view or a myth, and that view is if you don’t support Snodgrass, you don’t support CBMR… I totally support CBMR and want them to succeed—I just don’t think Snodgrass is the way to do it.”
Crested Butte resident Kevin McGruther asked what CBMR was currently doing to manage environmental impacts, and how confident they were in being able to implement the plan. “Where does your ideological business plan meet with reality?” he asked.
Sale said there was room for environmental improvement such as better recycling programs, and achieving higher standards for building efficiency. Sale said the resort was building an affordable housing development in Prospect and, “these units will use 50 percent less energy than your standard building or code.”
Sale said the resort was also looking into ways to increase the energy efficiency of lifts. “We’re looking at energy savings, devices that can save 15 to 20 percent on our lifts… If we can start addressing our energy usage first, that’s one of the best things we can possibly do.”
HCCA conservation analyst Lawton Grinter asked, “What plans do you have to monitor and mitigate landslide activity on Snodgrass under the new proposal and what do you estimate the cost of that mitigation will be?”
Kiklevich said in addition to continuing to work with a local geo-engineering firm, “We have 16 piezometers and monitoring wells on (Snodgrass) right now and we anticipate to continue monitoring those.”
Crested Butte resident Gary Dotzler asked the CBMR officials to repeat why Snodgrass is not meant to increase real estate values in nearby North Village. Dotzler noted that CBMR was recently sold to CNL Lifestyle Properties, a real estate investment trust. Dotzler also claimed that Triple Peaks owner Tim Mueller (who still oversees CBMR) was involved in a lawsuit with the state of New Hampshire over a rejected proposal to expand Mt. Sunapee. Dotzler said the proposal was rejected on the basis that it was intended to increase real estate values.
Sale said the units in North Village would not be considered true ski-in/ski-out properties. There will be a skiing trail leading down to the North Village area. “True ski in ski out is something like Prospect, where you can slap on your boots and do both,” Sale said. He wondered, “If it was really all about money,” would CBMR decide to pursue an amendment to the approved North Village plans in order to reduce the number of units by 700.
Regarding the events in New Hampshire, Kraatz said, “We’re not in any lawsuit yet… I don’t think there is any correlation between the two projects. They’re totally different.”
Crested Butte resident Beth Bell asked if lift-accessed hiking would be available on Snodgrass. Bell said mountains weren’t meant for the enjoyment of only the “elitist few.”
Kiklevich said the only currently planned trail would lead from the existing Snodgrass trail to the top of the gondola, where there would be a restaurant.
Crested Butte resident Anne Ronai asked if there were any hiking-only trails being planned.
Sale said, “On the main mountain that is definitely a concern… I think there’s definitely an opportunity. That being said, it’s really about figuring out what the demand for something like that would be.”
One unidentified man asked if CBMR would hire local contractors and laborers for the resort’s future big developments, and interjected several times during Kraatz’s response. Kraatz said CBMR will mostly be selling lots in North Village, and then it’s up to the landowner to determine how to proceed. With smaller lots being planned, he said there was a definite possibility that there will be more local labor involved.
The man then began yelling at another audience member, asking, “Do you work here for a living?” before leaving the meeting.
Another audience member asked if there would be any horseback riding allowed on either mountain in the future. Kiklevich said they hadn’t thought of it, but it could be looked into.
Crested Butte resident Reid Templeton asked what the timeframe for improvements would be considering the economy. “Are we going to work on developing and making the main mountain more exceptional right now and then move on?” Templeton asked.
Stone said the main mountain was definitely a focus. “We’ll be announcing soon the capital improvements plan for next year… We have to look at the short-term gains and improving the guest experience here immediately on the main mountain.”
 

Want more info?
—For the Master Development Plan presentation and other CBMR information, go to Snodgrassfacts.com
—For a “prebuttal” of the presentation from Friends of Snodgrass, go to crestedbuttenews.com
—The Forest Service also has a number of documents regarding Snodgrass and geology at http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/gmug/policy/