Climbing the mountain | Mt. Abram's new owners, Matt Hancock and Rob Lally, hope to make the ski resort the destination for families this winter
PHOTO/SARA DONNELLY
Mountainside: Matt Hancock, who recently purchased Mt. Abram with business partner Rob Lally, says they don't have a plan in place yet, but that real estate development will be part of the discussion
It’s a muggy day about two weeks after former lumber heir Matt Hancock and Boston real estate developer Rob Lally closed on the Mt. Abram ski resort in Greenwood, just outside of Bethel, for what Hancock describes as “the price of a nice home in Kennebunk.” The mountain is desolate, its 44 trails taken over by a carpet of lush green grass, its parking lot empty save for the odd staff car. The slopes surrounding the main lodge bustle this afternoon, not with the hooting of skiers and snowboarders descending but with the trill of summer songbirds.
Hancock, who’s spent the last half hour talking about what he admits remain vague plans for the mountain’s future, suddenly stands up from his seat on a picnic table on the main deck, turns toward the mountain and extends his arms at the slope ending in the lodge’s front yard like a duke beholding his fiefdom. His freckled skin is sunburned and he squints into the daylight. Hancock’s business partner Lally is away on his honeymoon and the two men haven’t yet had a chance to detail many of their priorities for their purchase, which includes equipment like tractors and mowers, the resorts’ buildings and lifts, 575 acres of land, and company-related data and naming rights. But Hancock, who manages a real estate investment portfolio out of his Casco office, has identified at least one detail that bugs him — the main deck’s rails block the view of Boris Badenov, the ski slope named after a villain in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.
“A ski lodge’s deck is such an integral part of the whole experience,” he says, facing Boris. “You’ve got to be able to experience the mountain and kind of, when you sit here, you’ve got to get a better view.”
Hancock talks about extending the deck the length of the lodge, maybe knocking down railings — he’s not quite sure. As a homeowner on the mountain, Hancock is familiar with Mt. Abram as a visitor, but the idea of Mt. Abram as a business venture is still relatively new. He and Lally, who owns a Mt. Abram home across the street from Hancock’s, separately looked into buying the property soon after it was put on the market in the fall of 2007. In February, when the skiing acquaintances each learned the other was interested in buying the mountain, they decided to become partners and bid as a team. They bought the property, says Hancock, for $950,000, or roughly half of the asking price. It had been marginally profitable for five of the seven years under the previous owners with a relatively miniscule marketing budget, Hancock says. “We got a good deal,” he explains.
Mt. Abram, a popular medium-sized ski resort with a rocky financial past, heads into the next ski season after a record winter for ticket sales at resorts across the country, at a time when industry observers say ski resorts like Mt. Abram are better positioned to make money than big resorts. But before Hancock and Lally can capitalize on Mt. Abram’s potential, they have to figure out how to get the resort ready to open — the previous owners didn’t collect details about the type or number of skiers who visit the resort, marketing photos of the mountain are buried in former employees’ computers, and Hancock says former owners Josh and Susan Burns only recently gave him the names and email addresses of last year’s season pass holders. “They haven’t been very friendly, for some reason,” Hancock says of the former owners, as he sits back down on the deck. “It is what it is, but it’s been frustrating.”
Josh Burns, a senior vice president at Morgan Stanley in Portland, counters that Hancock “received all of the information and more that he was contracted to receive” and the further details Hancock wants on the season pass holders would include credit card numbers, which Burns says would compromise visitors’ privacy.
Weather patterns
Ski resort observers believe Hancock and Lally bought wisely. Medium-sized ski resorts, which in northern New England typically have around 1,000 vertical feet, lately tend to be the most profitable among ski resorts, says Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association in Lakewood, Colo. “You have lower overhead, you can run the place very efficiently, you’re very responsive to demand — it’s the hands-on aspect,” Berry explains. Medium mountains with a variety of terrain, like Mt. Abram, often attract hordes of guests while keeping snowmaking and trail grooming costs lower than larger resorts like Sunday River.
And if this winter rivals the last, Mt. Abram may thrive. The ski industry, ever vulnerable to weather, last year attracted a record number of visitors in Maine and nationwide thanks to a particularly snowy winter. According to preliminary data from the National Ski Areas Association, all regions of the country reported visitor increases last winter, at all resort sizes except for large resorts in the Southeast. In Maine, resorts recorded a record 1.4 million visits, up from 1.2 million the year before. Indeed, last year’s gains appear to be bolstering hopes in Maine and beyond that skiing still has staying power.
Greg Sweetser, executive director of the Ski Maine Association, says Mt. Abram in particular can be profitable, assuming its new owners hone its brand and market it properly.
“What has really been good in the Maine ski industry in the last few years is about all of the mountains have assessed their strengths and are going after it,” Sweetser says. Mt. Abram excels as a convenient destination for day skiers who live 60 miles away in Portland, as a second winter home spot, and as a family resort with diverse trails and a superior ski lesson area. The resort also can leverage its location on Route 26, just 12 miles from skiing hotspot Sunday River, by convincing families traveling to that resort to check out quieter, quainter Mt. Abram. (However, in hopes of keeping people at Sunday River and its sister mountain Sugarloaf in Carrabassett Valley, resort operator Boyne Resorts is pumping $28 million into the ski mountains. For more on these expansion projects, see “On the slopes,” below.) “It looks like they have all the right components,” Sweetser says of Mt. Abram’s new owners. “Rob and Matt came in with their eyes wide open.”
Changing hands
The Cross family opened Mt. Abram in 1960 with one ski trail — Boris Badenov — a small T-bar and the base lodge. Located on former logging land, Mt. Abram was a no-frills operation for nearly 30 years under the Crosses, who resisted investing in snowmaking machines and who preferred to groom the trails by packing the snow with their snowshoes.
When the Cross family finally decided to spend money on snowmaking and other infrastructure improvements like a new chairlift, they were forced to finance the investment with loans. In 1993, the resort faltered under more than $1 million in debt, and Mt. Abram was sold at what would be the first of three fire-sale auctions over the next several years as a combination of bad weather and mismanagement damaged the bottom line. The resort wouldn’t turn around until Josh and Susan Burns of Portland bought the mountain and its assets in 2000 for $325,000. The Burnses, who had never before owned a business, invested a reported $900,000 on expanding snow making, upgrading groomers and reviving the resort’s family atmosphere — adding a daycare center, tubing runs and a new lounge, and renovating the West Side Lodge. But despite the upgrades, Hancock says the mountain still retained operational hiccups that hampered its success. For example, the Burnses could only provide Hancock and Lally with total skier visits for the previous four seasons, and these were only estimates since the resort continues to conduct pass transactions with a cash register, not a computer. Mt. Abram attracted about 42,000 skier visits last winter, a significant increase from the previous year’s 29,000 and an increase over 38,000 visits in the winter of 2005/2006 and 36,000 in 2004/2005. The resort was profitable last year, says Hancock, with a total revenue including retail, restaurant and skiing of about $1.2 million.
Since Hancock and Lally are essentially starting from scratch in gathering demographic data on the mountain’s visitors, they’re relying heavily on their own experiences on the mountain. That’s why this winter their major focus will be to improve what they’ve observed needs improvement — customer service — by cutting unnecessary positions and streamlining operations. They’re currently remodeling the management office to make it more attractive to guests buying season passes, though they haven’t yet priced their passes. And next spring, they plan on upgrading or rebuilding the West Side Lodge, which is adjacent to the ski lessons terrain and novice trails and is frequented by families with small children. Further plans, including revenue and skier visit goals, won’t exist until Hancock and Lally complete the mountain’s master plan, which Hancock estimates won’t be done until next spring. Real estate development on some of the roughly 300 forested acres of the mountain will be a focus of the plan, Hancock says.
“It would be untruthful for me to say to the readers of Mainebiz that I have it all figured out yet,” says Hancock. “We want to get the lights back on.”
Sara Donnelly, Mainebiz managing editor, can be reached at sdonnelly@mainebiz.biz.
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