New plan for Cuchara Ski Area -- give up on profit.
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- Created on Thursday, 19 August 2010 21:23
- Written by Aaron Linn
Cuchara Valley Ski Area is poised to become the first non-profit ski area in Colorado.
The tiny ski area, which has been shuttered since 1999, was recently purchased by long-time Cuchara Valley resident Bruce Cantrell, who plans to turn over operations to a local non-profit organization that, he said, will eventually offer skiing, tubing, zip lines, a gravity-powered mountain roller coaster, and hiking and mountain biking trails. “We’ll do everything we can to make this work,” Cantrell said. “And the money won’t go somewhere else. Any profit we eventually make, it all goes back into the community.”
Cucharra has struggled to survive for decades. Since opening in 1981, it has had eight owners, never staying open more than a few years at a time. Most owners were real estate investors from Texas who had no experience running a ski area and were primarily concerned with quick profits. The most recent owners closed the hill abruptly in 2000, saying it would reopen with a new owner the next year. The lifts, snowcats, ticket booths -- even the aging rental equipment, are all sitting under a layer of dust. Several rumors of new life in the last decade have never materialized.
“The difference now is that it is all local,” Cantrell said.
But the real difference is in how it will be financed. Cantrell and a dozen other locals who put together the new plan for Cuchara have created a recreation district that, if approved by locals in November, will act like any small town sewer district, allowing the group to levee bonds, which have a lower interest rate than traditional bank loans, for improvements to the base area and lifts.
The plan calls for $14 million in development. Colorado Springs real estate developer The Chase Group will build condos, a convention center and possibly a hotel at the base area. When the bonds are paid off, years down the road, Cantrell said, any profit will be dolled out to other non-profit organizations in the community. He does not stand to make a dime.
“I just felt like it was something important to the vibrancy of the community,” he said.
Locals have their collective fingers crossed that the plan will come to fruition, said Karen Sanbeck, who owns Cucharra’s one and only restaurant, The Dog Bar.
“I can’t say they are excited, they have been beat down so many times, but there is hope,” she said.
If the recreation district is approved, work on the mountain coaster will begin this winter and it will likely open in the summer of 2011. Tubing could start the next winter. Because the chairlifts need extensive work, skiing is unlikely before 2012 and would only be on the lower part of the mountain.
The upper slopes can not open until the Forest Service issues a new permit, which could take years. Paul Crespin the district ranger who oversees the area said the agency has seen too many fly-by-night developers try to turn a fast buck on Cucharra to act quickly.
“If we are going to commit the land and resources to a use like that, I’m going to first do some serious thinking about whether it really makes sense,” Crespin said in a 2008 interview with the Gazette. “We have never said no, but we need to be convinced there is long-term management with a good plan.”
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