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Alterra Mountain Co. has $555 million in ski-area improvements on the books

Alterra ski area's long-delayed upgrades start with a gondola at Winter Park and a bigger base restaurant at Steamboat

Jason Blevins
The Denver Post
photo - cowboy races at steamboat
A cowboy races into the first set of slaloms during the 37th annual Cowboy Downhill on Tuesday, January 18, 2011 at Steamboat.
AAron Ontiveroz | The Denver Post |

Alterra Mountain Co. plans to spend more than half a billion dollars on its 12 ski resorts in its first five years as a resort operator, including $130 million in a spending spree this year that includes a new gondola for Winter Park and a restaurant expansion at Steamboat.

The five-year strategy for $555 million in improvements comes as Alterra Mountain Co. peddles its new Ikon Pass in hopes of replicating the success of Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass. Vail Resorts sold 750,000 passes last year, enabling the company to make $150 million in capital improvements at its 11 destination resorts this year.

Alterra just started selling its first Ikon Pass last week. So where’s this money coming from?

That would be the deep pockets of Denver equity fund KSL Capital Partners and the Crown family, which owns Aspen Skiing Co. The two partners joined last year to pay $1.7 billion for Intrawest’s stable of resorts and then bought California’s Mammoth Mountain and Utah’s Deer Valley.

Read the full article, “Alterra Mountain Co. has $555 million in ski-area improvements on the books, starting with a gondola at Winter Park and a bigger base restaurant at Steamboat” from the Denver Post. 


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