July 25, 2005
For sale: Mountain getaway | Maine's small ski resorts join Sugarloaf and Sunday River with a spate of slopeside residential development
By Sean Donahue
Pete Fox's sales pitch for a new condominium development at Saddleback Ski Area highlights what the mountain lacks almost as much as what it offers. He touts the incredible views, ski-in/ski-out convenience and big mountain skiing, but also the mountain's smaller crowds, lower prices and more laid-back atmosphere than Maine's best-known ski destinations.
"I think the Saddleback skier is probably different than the usual Sunday River or Sugarloaf skier," says Fox. "Anyone who's been here has been influenced by the mountain's friendly family atmosphere. It's a more tight-knit community, more of old-school New England skiing."
Now, Saddleback's owners are hoping the impulse that drives skiers to choose the mountain's 50 trails and three chair lifts over the 100-plus trails and multiple high-speed quad chairs of destination resorts will translate into an urge to own on-mountain real estate. This month, Saddleback plans to break ground on a 30-unit condominium development that will nearly double the mountain's existing lodging capacity at a condominium complex developed in the 1980s. The new condos are just the start of a broader expansion that includes a planned hotel, trail expansions and other mountain infrastructure, and further real estate development in the future, says Fox, who's in charge of condominium sales.
And Saddleback isn't alone. Across Maine, smaller ski areas ˆ which for years have relied on day-trippers and locals while leaving the condo and base village development to the larger resorts ˆ recently have begun building condos and creating on-mountain subdivisions in an effort to turn themselves into smaller versions of destination ski resorts like Sunday River. Shawnee Peak in Bridgton recently sold out the 23 trailside building lots it began offering a few years ago. Likewise, Mt. Abram in Greenwood has nearly sold all of the 21 on-mountain house lots it put on the market two years ago.
With that construction, Maine's smaller ski areas are hoping to capitalize on what Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association in Lakewood, Colo., says are recent shifts in the national ski landscape. While skiing families might still plan a week-long trip to a big mountain resort, he says, harried parents are increasingly looking for a weekend ski destination that's a little closer to home, and a little easier to manage, than a sprawling resort with multiple base areas and a maze of condominium developments.
"If you turn the clock back to 10 years ago, the smaller mountains didn't know where they were going to fit in ˆ owners were worried that no one would ski at the local hill because they were all going to Aspen or Jackson Hole," says Berry. "There's been a real revival recently. Parents are now saying they want to go to the place that's closest and easiest, and that happens to be the place 25 miles up the road."
That's not to say large ski resorts are hurting. In fact, since 2000 the ski industry has posted four of its best five years on record. Last year, total skier visits nationwide topped 56 million, compared to 52.7 million in the 1994-1995 season, according to the NSAA. But during those years, smaller ski areas have done just a little bit better, seeing their total market share grow from 16.4% of total skier visits in the 1999-2000 season to 17.4% in 2003-2004. That growth has coincided with the general real estate boom that's seen mountain properties in Maine appreciate 50% or more in recent years, according to ski area owners.
Not surprisingly, then, ski area owners see the opportunity for development. At the same time, they've seen the nasty hangover that can come after a ski-area development binge. Most notably, America Skiing Co., which owns Sunday River and Sugarloaf, overextended itself with a spate of ski area acquisitions and real estate development in the 80s and 90s that eventually led the company's real estate subsidiary to default on a $63 million loan in 2002.
So Maine's smaller area owners are hoping to develop their real estate holdings in ways that don't derail their overall operations. But they also have to be careful that development doesn't jeopardize what presumably attracts their customers in the first place ˆ the sense of a small, affordable, family-oriented ski destination.
Pillows = lift tickets
For ski area owners, the appeal of on-mountain condos, houses and hotels ˆ known collectively in the industry as pillows ˆ is their potential impact on ticket sales. Done right, lodging development can provide a ski area with a much-needed core group of skiers. "Instead of struggling for their first 100,000 skier visits, every year it's kind of a given" when a mountain has its own lodging, says Berry of the NSAA.
Berry cites Jiminy Peak in Hancock, Mass. as an example. Once a small community hill in the Berkshire Mountains, Jiminy's management in the 1980s created a long-term development plan that paired gradual lodging development with new chair lifts and other mountain expansions. Since then, the mountain has added nearly 700 condominiums, which has helped the mountain's annual skier visits jump from 140,000 in the 80s to 250,000 last season, says Sally Johnstone, Jiminy Peak's director of sales and marketing.
Now, Maine ski areas like Shawnee Peak and Mt. Abram see their own real estate developments as a way to capitalize on their proximity to greater Portland, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But being smaller than Maine's destination resorts means scaling back their real estate developments accordingly, says Chet Homer, owner of Shawnee Peak. "Our mountain isn't big enough, and Bridgton isn't Bethel," says Homer. "If I were to put up a big hotel, it wouldn't work."
Instead, Homer says he considered several options for lodging development before turning a 10-acre parcel on the mountain's Sunnyside triple chair lift into house lots several years ago. That way, Homer only paid for site work and infrastructure development, leaving lot owners to foot the bill for their own home construction costs. All 23 lots, originally priced around $50,000, are now sold, and Homer says he's looking at other parcels near the mountain for potential new developments.
Mt. Abram followed a similar approach. After buying the mountain in 2000, owner Josh Burns says he heard enough inquiries from skiers about on-mountain properties to convince him to turn 30 acres into a two-phase, 21-lot development. As at Shawnee Peak, buyers must bear the cost of building their own homes, which allowed Mt. Abram to put little of its own capital at risk. "We don't borrow money," says Burns.
At Saddleback, development options were dictated by geography. The mountain is too far from Massachusetts to be a realistic day-trip, but there is almost no lodging available on the mountain. What's more, the popularity of snowmobiling in the Rangeley region makes it tough for skiers to find hotel or B&B rooms in the area. That's why, rather than parceling out house lots and waiting for buyers to build, Saddleback settled on a new condominium development and a hotel scheduled for construction this fall.
A low-key sales effort
Maine's small ski area owners say their real estate decisions were based on demand from current skiers. Not surprisingly, many of those skiers ˆ and buyers ˆ are coming from out of state.
Although Shawnee Peak draws a big crowd from York County and the Portland area, says Homer, it also attracts a sizeable contingent from the Boston suburbs. Likewise, Burns says 75% of the property buyers at Mt. Abram are people from out of state who are looking for both a ski house and a year-round vacation home in the Bethel region. Pete Fox at Saddleback says he's already received condo inquiries from skiers throughout New England and as far south as Virginia.
Since potential buyers are likely the people who regularly ski at the mountain, owners can use decidedly low-cost, low-key sales techniques. Homer says he never had to buy advertising for his house lots, relying instead on signs at the mountain and conversations with and mailings to Shawnee's season ticket holders. Mt. Abram sold its entire first phase of home lots through word-of-mouth, says Burns. Fox helped gauge interest in Saddleback's potential condos by conducting an on-mountain survey last winter, and is now marketing the properties through the mountain's mailing list, website and an ad earlier this month in Rangeley Highlander.
Although most buyers are looking at homes on small mountains because that's where they like to ski, owners say price is another potential draw for some buyers. A buyer at Mt. Abram can build a slopeside log home for about $250,000, says Burns, compared with the $500,000-$600,000 to buy a multi-bedroom townhouse at Sunday River, 10 miles down the road. Saddleback's three-bedroom condominiums are listed at $329,000, compared with $438,000 for a three-bedroom unit in the new Timbers development under construction at Sugarloaf. (For more on the real estate market at Maine's big resorts, see "Big mountains, big demand," at left.)
Keeping a close eye on that demand will be crucial, though, if smaller areas are to avoid the overbuilding that nearly wiped out some large ski area developers. Homer says he would be happy to eventually see 50 to 100 units ˆ either individual homes or hotel rooms ˆ developed at Shawnee Peak, but he wants to leave most of his operating capital free for trail and snowmaking improvements that will keep skiers coming back to the mountain.
Burns says he's wary of embarking on new lodging projects or infrastructure improvements at Mt. Abram that attempt to anticipate future demand. "We started building because people were asking us, and going forward we're going to be very conservative in determining what future build-outs will be," he says.
And at each of these ski areas, expansion and development must be weighed against the potential impact on the small-mountain atmosphere on which they've staked their identities. Saddleback, which is selling its new condos in part on the promise of future lift, trail and snowmaking improvements as well as base-area development, is particularly concerned about striking this balance. "The expansion will be done in way that all the new condos will be secluded from the other ones," says Fox. "We're planning on adding a lot more beds than we have now, but doing it in a way so you can't tell we're adding beds."
"I think the Saddleback skier is probably different than the usual Sunday River or Sugarloaf skier," says Fox. "Anyone who's been here has been influenced by the mountain's friendly family atmosphere. It's a more tight-knit community, more of old-school New England skiing."
Now, Saddleback's owners are hoping the impulse that drives skiers to choose the mountain's 50 trails and three chair lifts over the 100-plus trails and multiple high-speed quad chairs of destination resorts will translate into an urge to own on-mountain real estate. This month, Saddleback plans to break ground on a 30-unit condominium development that will nearly double the mountain's existing lodging capacity at a condominium complex developed in the 1980s. The new condos are just the start of a broader expansion that includes a planned hotel, trail expansions and other mountain infrastructure, and further real estate development in the future, says Fox, who's in charge of condominium sales.
And Saddleback isn't alone. Across Maine, smaller ski areas ˆ which for years have relied on day-trippers and locals while leaving the condo and base village development to the larger resorts ˆ recently have begun building condos and creating on-mountain subdivisions in an effort to turn themselves into smaller versions of destination ski resorts like Sunday River. Shawnee Peak in Bridgton recently sold out the 23 trailside building lots it began offering a few years ago. Likewise, Mt. Abram in Greenwood has nearly sold all of the 21 on-mountain house lots it put on the market two years ago.
With that construction, Maine's smaller ski areas are hoping to capitalize on what Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association in Lakewood, Colo., says are recent shifts in the national ski landscape. While skiing families might still plan a week-long trip to a big mountain resort, he says, harried parents are increasingly looking for a weekend ski destination that's a little closer to home, and a little easier to manage, than a sprawling resort with multiple base areas and a maze of condominium developments.
"If you turn the clock back to 10 years ago, the smaller mountains didn't know where they were going to fit in ˆ owners were worried that no one would ski at the local hill because they were all going to Aspen or Jackson Hole," says Berry. "There's been a real revival recently. Parents are now saying they want to go to the place that's closest and easiest, and that happens to be the place 25 miles up the road."
That's not to say large ski resorts are hurting. In fact, since 2000 the ski industry has posted four of its best five years on record. Last year, total skier visits nationwide topped 56 million, compared to 52.7 million in the 1994-1995 season, according to the NSAA. But during those years, smaller ski areas have done just a little bit better, seeing their total market share grow from 16.4% of total skier visits in the 1999-2000 season to 17.4% in 2003-2004. That growth has coincided with the general real estate boom that's seen mountain properties in Maine appreciate 50% or more in recent years, according to ski area owners.
Not surprisingly, then, ski area owners see the opportunity for development. At the same time, they've seen the nasty hangover that can come after a ski-area development binge. Most notably, America Skiing Co., which owns Sunday River and Sugarloaf, overextended itself with a spate of ski area acquisitions and real estate development in the 80s and 90s that eventually led the company's real estate subsidiary to default on a $63 million loan in 2002.
So Maine's smaller area owners are hoping to develop their real estate holdings in ways that don't derail their overall operations. But they also have to be careful that development doesn't jeopardize what presumably attracts their customers in the first place ˆ the sense of a small, affordable, family-oriented ski destination.
Pillows = lift tickets
For ski area owners, the appeal of on-mountain condos, houses and hotels ˆ known collectively in the industry as pillows ˆ is their potential impact on ticket sales. Done right, lodging development can provide a ski area with a much-needed core group of skiers. "Instead of struggling for their first 100,000 skier visits, every year it's kind of a given" when a mountain has its own lodging, says Berry of the NSAA.
Berry cites Jiminy Peak in Hancock, Mass. as an example. Once a small community hill in the Berkshire Mountains, Jiminy's management in the 1980s created a long-term development plan that paired gradual lodging development with new chair lifts and other mountain expansions. Since then, the mountain has added nearly 700 condominiums, which has helped the mountain's annual skier visits jump from 140,000 in the 80s to 250,000 last season, says Sally Johnstone, Jiminy Peak's director of sales and marketing.
Now, Maine ski areas like Shawnee Peak and Mt. Abram see their own real estate developments as a way to capitalize on their proximity to greater Portland, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But being smaller than Maine's destination resorts means scaling back their real estate developments accordingly, says Chet Homer, owner of Shawnee Peak. "Our mountain isn't big enough, and Bridgton isn't Bethel," says Homer. "If I were to put up a big hotel, it wouldn't work."
Instead, Homer says he considered several options for lodging development before turning a 10-acre parcel on the mountain's Sunnyside triple chair lift into house lots several years ago. That way, Homer only paid for site work and infrastructure development, leaving lot owners to foot the bill for their own home construction costs. All 23 lots, originally priced around $50,000, are now sold, and Homer says he's looking at other parcels near the mountain for potential new developments.
Mt. Abram followed a similar approach. After buying the mountain in 2000, owner Josh Burns says he heard enough inquiries from skiers about on-mountain properties to convince him to turn 30 acres into a two-phase, 21-lot development. As at Shawnee Peak, buyers must bear the cost of building their own homes, which allowed Mt. Abram to put little of its own capital at risk. "We don't borrow money," says Burns.
At Saddleback, development options were dictated by geography. The mountain is too far from Massachusetts to be a realistic day-trip, but there is almost no lodging available on the mountain. What's more, the popularity of snowmobiling in the Rangeley region makes it tough for skiers to find hotel or B&B rooms in the area. That's why, rather than parceling out house lots and waiting for buyers to build, Saddleback settled on a new condominium development and a hotel scheduled for construction this fall.
A low-key sales effort
Maine's small ski area owners say their real estate decisions were based on demand from current skiers. Not surprisingly, many of those skiers ˆ and buyers ˆ are coming from out of state.
Although Shawnee Peak draws a big crowd from York County and the Portland area, says Homer, it also attracts a sizeable contingent from the Boston suburbs. Likewise, Burns says 75% of the property buyers at Mt. Abram are people from out of state who are looking for both a ski house and a year-round vacation home in the Bethel region. Pete Fox at Saddleback says he's already received condo inquiries from skiers throughout New England and as far south as Virginia.
Since potential buyers are likely the people who regularly ski at the mountain, owners can use decidedly low-cost, low-key sales techniques. Homer says he never had to buy advertising for his house lots, relying instead on signs at the mountain and conversations with and mailings to Shawnee's season ticket holders. Mt. Abram sold its entire first phase of home lots through word-of-mouth, says Burns. Fox helped gauge interest in Saddleback's potential condos by conducting an on-mountain survey last winter, and is now marketing the properties through the mountain's mailing list, website and an ad earlier this month in Rangeley Highlander.
Although most buyers are looking at homes on small mountains because that's where they like to ski, owners say price is another potential draw for some buyers. A buyer at Mt. Abram can build a slopeside log home for about $250,000, says Burns, compared with the $500,000-$600,000 to buy a multi-bedroom townhouse at Sunday River, 10 miles down the road. Saddleback's three-bedroom condominiums are listed at $329,000, compared with $438,000 for a three-bedroom unit in the new Timbers development under construction at Sugarloaf. (For more on the real estate market at Maine's big resorts, see "Big mountains, big demand," at left.)
Keeping a close eye on that demand will be crucial, though, if smaller areas are to avoid the overbuilding that nearly wiped out some large ski area developers. Homer says he would be happy to eventually see 50 to 100 units ˆ either individual homes or hotel rooms ˆ developed at Shawnee Peak, but he wants to leave most of his operating capital free for trail and snowmaking improvements that will keep skiers coming back to the mountain.
Burns says he's wary of embarking on new lodging projects or infrastructure improvements at Mt. Abram that attempt to anticipate future demand. "We started building because people were asking us, and going forward we're going to be very conservative in determining what future build-outs will be," he says.
And at each of these ski areas, expansion and development must be weighed against the potential impact on the small-mountain atmosphere on which they've staked their identities. Saddleback, which is selling its new condos in part on the promise of future lift, trail and snowmaking improvements as well as base-area development, is particularly concerned about striking this balance. "The expansion will be done in way that all the new condos will be secluded from the other ones," says Fox. "We're planning on adding a lot more beds than we have now, but doing it in a way so you can't tell we're adding beds."
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