INtrawest acquires Steamboat?

[jim-ratliff]

Announced last week, I believe.  Do they also own Copper?  Are they trying to gain enough mass to compete with the Vail conglomerate?  Ron, I would say you made a good investment in property, because development is Intrawest's real business?

[DougR]

Is there still a lot of room for development at Steamboat?  It seemed pretty built-up in my one visit (2 years ago..)

Fun, fun mountain, and really nice people too.

[Ron]

Intrawest owns copper, Whistler, mont tremblant and a few others. They know how to run an resort and have become famous for that European pedestrian village feeling. The aquisition has been very favorably received there. Streamboat is a bit of a different case. Intrawest doesn't really own much real estate as far as hotels and such. ASC sold off the hotels so they are all privately owned. Intrawest did get the Sheraton and that will be razed sonn and rebuilt; at a much higher cost. DougR, your are correct that there is little undeveloped real estate and there lies the reason why I bought there. Steamboat is in need of an overhaul, most properties were built in the 70 and 80's and need to be razed or completely renovated. Our place was built in 2001.  Steamboat just had a huge redevolopment plan approved for the base village, surrounding area and the historic downtown, along with some on-mountain improvements like lifts and such. Plans include better pedestrain paths and access to the base village. The overall property values are low in comparison to places like vail, Breck, ASpen and beaver Creek. I am "walk to the Gondola" and the per sqft value is $450 as compared to say beaver Creek where a similar value would be closer to $700. There is a huge upside potential. Anything new near the Gondola will be at or above 1000 sqft now since the existing properties will need to be razed or extensively upgraded. A new base village property is biing built now (this year) that will be an ultra-exclusive townhome and retail property (starting at $2.5m) and will become the anchor of the new village. Couple that with Hayden airport (1/2 hour from Steamboat) doubled in size this year and now has direct flights from many major cities. http://www.mybrokers.com/blog/  this is my realtors blog with a ton of great info on Steamboat and all the new plans. Its an awesome mountain and its going to bet even better.

[DougR]

You make a compelling case Ron.  Thinking back, yeah, the base area has nice space, but really isn't that special or coherent -- there's a lot of room for Intrawest to put their stamp on it.  I have to say that I'm a little sorry to see the Sheraton go though; my wife and I 'poached' the hot-tub one afternoon, and had a very nice couple hours relaxing in the sunshine.

It sounds like you made a really smart buy.  I love the airport access, really like the town, and the mountain is wonderful.  Well, it was wonderful once I figured out how to get from one part to another, and how to get my hands on a Steamboat card :-)


Doug

[Ron]

THanks Doug, the gettng around part will become much easier as they are adding a series of walkways linking the reosrt areas.

[DougR]

Oh, that's not the getting around part I was talking about -- getting around the base area was ok on the shuttle, or hoofing it.  It took us a while up on the mountain to figure out how to get from one area to another -- we'd be looking down on the Gondola top-station and couldn't figure out how to get back to it 

Doug

[Ron]

Yes, that can be a bit tricky for sure. The mountain is much bigger than it appears and you have to work your way across from lift to lift sometimes.