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Intrawest, the parent company of Whistler Blackcomb, has announced a purchase agreement has been signed by Powdr Corp to buy the Copper Mountain ski resort, located in Colorado, from Intrawest.
Intrawest owns and operates numerous ski resorts (amongst other resorts) around North America. Some of which are: Whistler Blackcomb, Panorama, Mt Tremblant and Blue Mountain in Canada, along with Steamboat, Winterpark and Snowshoe in the USA. Powdr Corp owns and operates a number of ski resorts in USA, most notably Park City and Mt Bachelor.
The press release can be found here.
It will not affect operations for the current 09/10 winter season, according to the press release.
This winter season it is business as usual at Copper Mountain. Once the transaction is finalized Intrawest and Powdr Corp have committed to work together to ensure that all of the multi-mountain season pass products, vacation reservations and joint marketing initiatives will be honored for the 2009-2010 winter season. This includes the Rocky Mountain Super Pass suite of products that provide skiers and riders with access to Copper Mountain, Steamboat Resort and Winter Park Resort
It is no secret that Intrawest has been struggling with debt since restructuring a 1.7 billion dollar loan back in October 2008. In April 2009, Intrawest’s CEO Bill Jensen apparently said that while the economic climate was bad, Copper Mountain ski resort would not be sold. Now Intrawest is saying that Copper Mountain was sold because it was not part of its core operations. Source
Hopefully this is good news for us here at Whistler Blackcomb. Whistler has long been the ‘profit-maker’ of Intrawest, and has been carrying the company while other resorts ran at losses. I believe Copper was one of the few others either making money or at least breaking even, so hopefully they got a good price for it. Otherwise, WB is now carrying an even bigger burden. Time will tell ……
