 Posted 11/06/2007 12:03:23
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The American Skiing Company, which once owned town resorts from the East to West coasts of the United States has sold the resort where it all began, Sunday River in Maine, as well as one of its first purchases Sugarloaf, also in Maine.
Having sold most of its other remaining resorts over the past six months, the company will now concentrate on its one remaining resort, The Canyons, one of the three areas at Park City in Utah. Unlike the other resorts it owned which were already famous names in US skiing, it has built The Canyons up to be one of the continent’s largest after purchasing and renaming tiny Park West.
The American Skiing Company was established by Les Otten who began work for Killington, before moving to manage Sunday river, then owned by the Vermont resort, and building it up over two decades in to one of the biggest resorts in the Eastern US.
Having built up Sunday River and purchased two or three other major New England resorts, Otten launched a new company in 1997 and bought up his former bosses to take over Killington and control of half a dozen other resorts. At its height around 2000 his empire extended west to take in Steamboat in Colorado and Heavenly in California. These have been sold to Intrawest and Vail respectively.
The buyers of Sunday River and Sugarloaf are Boyne Resorts of Michigan for $77m. Apart from its home resorts in the mid-west, the company operates Big Sky in Montana and Crystal mountain in Washington state to the West.
Stephen Kircher, Boyne president said, “As North America’s largest family run four-season resort company, we are excited to bring almost 60 years of resort experience to the New England market. New England is a very special place for the sport of skiing and we enter this market with great respect and appreciation for what has been accomplished and what it represents.”
Les Otten, who resigned from the American Skiing Company several years ago, had put together a bid to buy back Sunday River and Sugarloaf, but the company opted for the Boyne bid.
Courtesy of the Snow Leopard
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