Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

An Unlikely Shangri-la:

Part I: Little room is left for new development at the West’s established resort towns, so entrepreneurs are turning second-tier ski hills into private enclaves for the jet set. But will the new resorts fly?
1542feature

By Christopher Solomon/High Country News

Steve Jenson twists the throttle of his hornet-colored snowmobile and rockets up the empty ski slope. At the top, where the motionless chairlifts wait, Jenson finally slows, and cuts the engine. The shattered quiet of southwestern Utah’s high country knits itself back together. At 10,300 feet in the palm of the Tushar Mountains, frosted Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir stand as silent as penitents in the December snow. The air smells of balsam and wintertime. A romantic would say it smells like Christmas; a cynic, cash. That’s because Jenson and his colleagues are transforming this troubled but scenic ski area into an über-exclusive resort to rival the finest anywhere. And in the process they hope to make themselves a great deal of money.

“This is going to be our temporary upper lodge,” Jenson says. He’s dismounted and is pointing at something a snowball’s toss away from the lifts. The building is vintage early ’80s, the windows now dark, a slab of plywood nailed ignominiously over the door: the shuttered ski area’s upper day lodge. We are here just six weeks after the Mt. Holly Club has begun selling memberships, and a certain amount of squinting is required to see Jenson’s vision. “We’re doing a full remodel on it,” says Jenson, the club’s president and CEO. “We’re doing a ‘European mountain feel’ — stone, timbers, some sort of a metal roof with patinas. Stone floors and hardwood floors. Venetian plasters on the walls. A nice, exposed, big-timber ceiling. There will be a restaurant, a lounge for people to have a glass of wine at night. A ski shop and a sales office.”

That’s just to kick off. “This whole flat area you see up here” — with a finger he lassoes several acres of snow and fir — “this will all be the Village Center” — a 40,000-square-foot main lodge. Spa. Boutiques. Tennis courts. He throws his arms wide to embrace, well … nothing but brooding spruce. “This is going to be the heart of the resort, right here.”

Oh — but he’s nearly forgotten the golf! “The golf course surrounds this part of the resort,” Jenson adds, spinning. Afterward, as we motor around, he’ll point out black and green PVC pipes that periscope from the snow, marking future tees and landing areas: the schematics of a dream.

And yet something else lingers in the air besides Jenson’s vision and the nip of frostbite. A closed ski area is a melancholy thing. Snow drifts in the doorways of vacant lift shacks. A sign for a ski run called “Rocky Raccoon” dangles forlornly. But it’s more than that: There’s a curious, low-humming tension. It’s fed by the flame-red placards — “Private Property — Mt. Holly Club — Members Only” — that are nailed to most vertical surfaces, and by the memory of the people back at the clutch of slopeside condos. None of them smiled or waved as Jenson and his colleagues arrived.

Almost no one is making new ski areas anymore. The slopeside dirt of the established Vails and Tellurides? Gobbled up long ago. If you’re an entrepreneur daring to dream an outsized dream — say, building a posh country club on snow for the world’s richest people — you need a blank canvas upon which to boldly sketch your gilded ambitions. But what happens when you find such a place, only to discover that not all the natives share your passion for superlatives, your awe of stardust? Well, then you have two choices. You can woo the people until they swoon. You can shower them with goodwill and understanding, and bond with them over the contested dirt until the sweet-smelling lily of compromise blooms.

This is a story about the other choice.

Beaver, Utah, seems an unlikely exit for Shangri-La.

Beaver, population 2,500, is the seat of Beaver County, a tongue-depressor-shaped county in basin-and-range country. Here, a vast landscape that John McPhee once called “a delirium of sage” spraddles beneath southwest Utah’s parched sky, interrupted only by sudden cardiac jags of mountains. Located almost exactly halfway between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, it is a place in-between: the kind of spot where an industrial hog farm relocates when it doesn’t want to bother anyone. Talk to residents and you get the sense that many of them love this place precisely because of this in-between-ness — because it is neither Here, nor There. It is a county one-third the size of New Jersey with just 6,500 residents and not a single traffic signal. But it does possess one troubled ski area.

Eighteen miles east of town, up a twisting canyon where heat-loving piñon pines yield to water-loving aspens, lies the modest ski hill long known as Elk Meadows. Skiing first began there 35 winters ago, and struggled nearly from the start. Some five different owners came and went; at least three of them declared bankruptcy. Observers often blame the absence of a large nearby population centre.

“It’s essentially become a running joke with residents because nobody’s lasted,” said Gene Gatza, who was general manager when the mountain closed for the final time in late 2002. “There have been all kinds of promises,” said Gatza, who still owns a cabin by the slopes.

“You’re always going to hear this: ‘There’s huge potential up there.’ ”

The latest to see potential were the Jenson brothers. Steve Jenson, the president and CEO of the Mt. Holly Club, is the former president and CEO of NStar Inc. and North American Lighting, a lighting and electrical company that engineers projects like Mobil refineries and service stations. Marc Jenson, 48, is Steve’s older brother and director of marketing. He has a reputation in Utah as a hard-money lender, offering short-term, high-interest loans, or bridge loans, to individuals and companies. In 2002, he extended one such loan to Elk Meadows’ cash-strapped owner, who defaulted and declared bankruptcy. Mt. Holly Club investors later acquired the property from a lender.

I met Marc Jenson a week before Christmas in the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay, in a post-war rambler that he’d bought several years ago. He’d had it completely remodeled and now preferred that visitors call it the Cottage. An artificial creek holding brook trout coursed through a yard with a high fence. Inside, the Cottage felt like some European nobleman’s alpine hunting cabin — thick wooden ceiling beams the color of bitter chocolate, refinished pine floors, 19th century Henri Schouten pastorals on the walls. In a bedroom a duvet cover of Egyptian cotton bore the logo of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Jenson explained that potential Mt. Holly Club buyers could come here before heading to Beaver to get a taste of the club’s rustic sumptuousness.

Jenson himself seemed of a piece with the Cottage — attuned to the finest things, and out of place with the neighbourhood. Charismatic and intense, with a close-shorn head, he wore fashionable green boots, a heather purple cashmere sweater neatly tucked into True Religion jeans, an oversized gold Dolce & Gabbana belt buckle. On one wrist a chunky gold watch demanded attention. “It’s Richard Mille,” he told me when I asked about it. “It’s very expensive.”

Jenson grew effusive as he spoke about his vision for the Mt. Holly Club. A master plan calls for 1,204 homes and luxury condominiums spilling across 2,000 acres of revamped ski slopes (Ted Ligety, who clinched the 2008 overall World Cup giant slalom skiing title in mid-March with a Mt. Holly Club sticker on his forehead, is the club’s director of skiing) and along the new fairways of a Jack Nicklaus Golf Club, one of just 25 in the world. Would-be members will pay $250,000 just for the privilege of buying dirt at Mt. Holly, plus $25,000 annually, and are required to purchase property immediately. The first piece of the first phase — 21 “estate lots” averaging about an acre and bordering Fishlake National Forest — was approved by the county in November. Prices start at $1.5 million. Jenson said he expected those prices to go up over time. The club expects many of its memberships to be bought by the very affluent from the coasts.

Though Marc Jenson said he and his brother had been thinking about a private club for a decade, he was quick to acknowledge a debt to the Yellowstone Club in Montana, the paragon of the genre. Yellowstone members must pay $300,000 and buy property in order to enjoy 2,200 acres of the club’s trademarked “Private Powder.” Bill Gates, Tiger Woods and Dan Quayle all own property there. Existing homes for sale start at $4 million. Jenson added that a lot at the Yellowstone Club recently sold for $16 million. “We thought, ‘We can do that.”

Is this what the ultra-rich want? I asked.

“We have a philosophy that people of means are largely urban, but they have this wilderness fantasy,” he said. Once they have their daily hike or swim in the Great Outdoors, “they want to go back to a lodge and have a glass of wine and tell their friends about the bear they saw.”

The Mt. Holly Club will be more like a resort than a home in the woods, he explained, offering abundant nature (national forest wraps the property) without depriving affluent clients of the comforts and amenities they expect, even at an altitude of 10,000 feet — including a movie theater, no tee times, and “the kind of service that you get at the world’s finest hotels.” The club said that it had sold more than five memberships in the first few weeks after opening. A spokesman declined to provide updated membership numbers except to say that “there has been significant interest.”

Entrepreneurs who’ve aped the Yellowstone Club have met with mixed success. In mid-2005, a group of investors led by Bob Foisie bought Vermont’s Haystack Ski Area and soon announced the creation of the Haystack Club, a private resort with a plan to build 450 townhomes and condos, and a heli-pad for people coming from Manhattan. Today, all that remains are a gatehouse and a few townhomes. The club’s treasurer, Tom Cross, blamed last year’s lack of snowfall.

Outside Plymouth, Vt., investors bought long-dormant Round Top Mountain and opened the Bear Creek Mountain Club to the first private skiers in 2001. Today, 47 families pay up to a $25,000 membership for a chance to use the postage stamp-sized ski area and its clubhouse.

Even the Yellowstone Club hasn’t been without troubles — most dramatically, a lawsuit by Tour de France winner/investor Greg LeMond, and an increasingly bitter divorce between club founder Tim Blixseth and his wife. In the process a picture has emerged of a club that’s a financial mess, albeit a gilded one. At press time, Tim Blixseth had reportedly agreed to sell his stake in the club to his soon-to-be ex-wife as part of the divorce settlement, and give Edra Blixseth full control of his erstwhile dream.

Still, the idea of the private ski area remains very viable, argued David Dillon, former president of the Vermont Ski Areas Association and former marketing director of the Haystack Club.

“There’s always a market for exclusivity,” said Dillon. In fact, this past winter the Florida-based Ginn Company gained approval to build an exclusive community of 1,700 high-end homes and condominiums and a private, 1,000-acre ski mountain on 5,300 acres of land adjacent to the mining burg of Minturn, between the world-famous resorts of Vail and Beaver Creek. Wolf Creek, a small ski area and resort in Utah’s Ogden Valley, about 45 minutes from Salt Lake City, announced in April that it has transitioned into a private club and resort, with real estate.

The concept of private ski areas is hardly new to North America, though there have never been many, and the motivation behind them has changed, said John Fry, author of The Story of Modern Skiing (2006; University Press of New England). Originally, scarcity drove their creation; ski clubs started them simply in order to have a place to make tracks, said Fry. Ski areas designed purely to be exclusive evolved later.

That trend dismays Fry, former editor of Ski magazine. “It just seems like a different type of spirit is coming into skiing, with this $25,000 to have a parking space next to the lifts, or a private dining room in the lodge,” he said, mentioning amenities now available even at “regular” upscale resorts. “It’s a reflection of our broader society, a greater divisiveness between the poor and the wealthy” — or in skiing’s case, he corrected himself, between the merely affluent and the own-their-own-jet set.

Next week: Unlikely Shangri-La Part II — Winning over the residents of Beaver

Seattle writer Christopher Solomon writes frequently about the intersection of recreation, culture and the environment. He is a former Seattle Times reporter.

This story first appeared on August 18, 2008, in High Country News (www.hcn.org), which covers the West's communities and natural-resource issues.



Comments