Resort stokes Revelstoke

As the first gondola heads up the slopes today, the Revelstoke Mountain development brings the town a promise of economic stability, along with soaring property values and new-found growing pains

Paul Mair knew that Mount Mackenzie, looming some 8,000 feet over Revelstoke, would make a superior ski destination from the moment he saw it during a 1962 visit from Vancouver.

Mair set his eyes on a "big, monstrous mountain," with a spectacular vertical drop and a massive face with room to cut ski run after ski run, lying beneath the Revelstoke area's legendary powder.

"You never run out of space," he says. "With just a little hill, that's all you can do, but here, the opportunities are endless, absolutely endless," Mair recalls for a reporter visiting his modest bungalow.

He spent 18 years trying to make a go of "Mount Mack" before having to give it up in 1980.

Now, endless opportunities are what new developers and local business people are hoping Mount Mackenzie still holds for Revelstoke.

A new group, Revelstoke Mountain Resort LP, has poured an amount approaching $100 million into picking up where Mair left off, cutting trails and installing the first gondola and ski lift for its first opening this morning.

Mair has been invited to ride the first gondola up the mountain, but riding along with him will be the hopes and dreams of a lot of people.

For the developers, there is the hope that the incipient phase will evolve into their envisioned 15-year, $1-billion project and one of British Columbia's premier resorts.

For Revelstoke, there is the dream that the resort will become a stable pillar of the local economy, which has ridden the booms and busts of mega-projects since the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

However, there are also some fears about what the resort might do -- and in some cases, is already doing -- to Revelstoke.

Property values have already skyrocketed, closing a lot of locals out of the real estate market, and the arrival of part-time "lifestyle" residents has delivered the phenomenon of "dark windows" in homes that aren't occupied full time.

And there are worries about what a large seasonal surge of population, itinerant workers and ski hounds alike, will bring to Revelstoke in terms of crime and other social problems that aren't prevalent now.

"A resort can be an economic godsend," said David Rooney, editor of the local Revelstoke Times Review newspaper, "but the city has to control the pace of development associated with it.

"And not just the economic development. The social development and social change as well."

A 15-YEAR PLAN

At its build-out, RMR LP has proposed a resort with some 5,000 housing units and 16,000 resort beds with 200,000 square-feet of commercial space in a village about five kilometres away from downtown Revelstoke.

The developers' plans include mountain operations that will boast North America's longest vertical drop at 6,000 feet, and trade on Revelstoke's reputation for spectacular back-country skiing.

"It's phenomenal," Don Simpson, RMR's managing partner and Denver-based property developer said of Revelstoke's skiing.

"Revelstoke really is the adventure-skiing capital of the world. There is more heli, snow-cat and back-country skiing based out of Revelstoke than anywhere I know of."

An avid back-country skier himself, Simpson first visited Revelstoke in the mid 1980s and was taken with Revelstoke's well-preserved historic downtown.

"It reminded me of Aspen 50 years ago. A lot of charm downtown, a lot of Victorian architecture, a lot of friendly people," Simpson added.

So in 2004, when one of RMR's original partners, Toronto-based developer Hunter Milborn, first approached him about taking a possible stake in the project, Simpson said "it appeared to be a winner."

And in May, RMR bought Selkirk Tangiers Heliskiing for $6 million to extend the company's overall ski offerings.

The original partners, Milborn and Robert Powadiuk, with former Whistler Mountain manager Paul Skelton as a consultant, have been at work on the project since 2003.

The partnership reached a master agreement with the provincial government in 2005, and since then, with Skelton as president, RMR has been busy clearing runs, building roads, installing an underground power system and a $13-million extension of a municipal sewer main to service the resort village.

This summer saw the installation of an eight-passenger gondola and quad chairlift, which Skelton said will take skiers up to the resort's first 27 ski runs and down 4,700 vertical feet of descent.

Skelton added that RMR has committed to building a second lift next summer to extend the vertical to 5,700 feet and serve the resort village, which will see the first 56 of the resort's initial 216 condominium units finished and occupied by opening day in 2008.

So far, RMR's sales agent, Sotheby's International Realty Canada, has sold 105 condominiums and 20 of 25 single-family building lots (with prices between $695,000 and $1.35 million).

Units in the initial development's third building will go on sale in the spring, and Skelton said RMR is in the process of designing a complex of 25 townhouses for release next year, along with another 25 single-family lots.

"We're testing the market to see what people are looking for," Skelton said, "and we're going to continue to do that. Every six months we'll have a new release [of residential real estate]."

Simpson added that RMR has a 15-year plan, "that could get moved up, or moved back depending on how things go."

Skelton added that "[Development] will be demand driven, of course."

In the meantime, RMR Skelton said the resort sold more than 1,400 season passes at an early-bird price of $529, about 85 per cent of which went to Revelstoke residents.

Skelton said, with a day lodge and restaurant for 220, RMR is counting on attracting 50,000 skier visits for its first season, although that will be far from the break-even point.

"It will probably be about 10 years time, given skier visits and the capital program, before we start to run into the black in terms of operations of the mountain," Skelton said.

"I can't tell you today how many skiers we need to pay back the operations. We're not going to get them [this year]."

Progress and problems

The developers are aware of the issues that their resort is raising within the town of Revelstoke, and are vowing to be good neighbours.

"There's no question that a resort coming in is going to increase the value of real estate," Simpson said.
"That's a positive for people who live here and have real estate," although problematic for new workers coming into the community.

RMR is required to set aside 10 per cent of its residential units as staff housing, which mountain employees can afford to occupy.

"And we want to work with the city to try to determine how we provide as much affordable housing as possible."

Newspaper editor Rooney said that while people generally support the resort as economic diversification, there are people who fear the changes a resort will bring will turn Revelstoke into "another Banff, or another Whistler."

Rooney added that the sudden and rapid escalation of property prices over the past few years is one of the resort's consequences that hasn't been entirely pleasant for local residents.

Many of the new people buying into the community are scooping up second homes at high prices, which stay unoccupied for much of the year, Rooney said.

And seeing the windows stay dark "is kind of a weird feeling" in a town where that hasn't happened a lot before.

"There are a lot of people who are disturbed by that..."

"You don't suffer this in the Lower Mainland, but people who buy second properties here are, realistically, dispossessing locals, even if the locals are making out like little bandits, or think they are."

The new high prices, Rooney added, are making it difficult for even the municipality to attract employees.

Revelstoke realtor and 26-year resident Todd Arthurs estimated that house prices have probably tripled in the five years that he has been in real estate, with a livable downtown bungalow selling for $400,000 or more and few priced under $300,000.

"Anything for sale at $300,000, it's usually not very pleasant, not what you would want to live in," Arthurs said. "And the last two [sales] I did in that range were bidding-war situations."

He added that one of his recent sales was to a young couple he initially thought he wouldn't be able to accommodate.

The husband works for CP Rail, the wife in the service industry, and "they were really lucky to get into the market." "That's the downside of [the resort], to see a young couple, or anybody local, not be able to get into the market. It was actually very gratifying letting them in their house."

Revelstoke Mayor Mark McKee said part of the housing problem is that new supply isn't keeping up with the sudden demand, but providing non-market housing that local workers can afford to buy is a top priority for the city.

The city is in the process of establishing a housing society that will be similar to Whistler's housing society, which focuses on providing dedicated local housing at cost and can only be re-sold to locals with a prescribed amount of appreciation, not market rates.

"[Housing] affordability is probably the No. 1 issue in the community," he said.

However, Revelstoke Mountain Resort is also seen as a much-needed anchor for Revelstoke's economy.

McKee described Revelstoke's economic condition as "a real roller coaster ride" over the past 30 years, with the town dependent on whether or not the forestry industry was doing well, whether the railway or highway was being upgraded.

BC Hydro dam construction boosted Revelstoke's prospects during the 1970s and 1980s, but declined again after 1985, spurring locals into a downtown revitalization.

"We've been a real mega-project, boom-bust economy for 100 years," McKee said.

Alan Mason, Revelstoke's director of economic development, said as late as the 2001 census, Revelstoke's prospects didn't necessarily look promising.

"The headline at the time was 'sunset communities,' " Mason said, "And Revelstoke was one of them."

However, since 1980, the city also had control of the Mount Mackenzie ski area, and McKee added that there has always been significant support for selling it so it could be turned into a resort that would turn Revelstoke into more of a destination than waypoint for highway travellers.

Since turning the ski area over for development, McKee said, "there is more of a buzz around town, more activity and real long-term confidence. A lot more people are walking around town, going into retail stores, restaurants and bars." McKee owns two retail stores downtown himself.

Mason said there has been a definite increase in business activity, much of it attributable to the resort. Business licences, he said, increased by 90 over the last year with new retail space hard to come by.

The resort has also delivered Revelstoke a building boom. Mason said that the town has issued $81 million in building permits this year, compared with $15 million in 2005 and $14 million in 2006.

Most of the new building has been done by Revelstoke Mountain Resort, but some, Mason said, has been non-resort development spurred by the resort's arrival.

And "the spinoffs for local business has been huge," he added.

Over the long term, McKee hopes the resort will become a centre for job and career options for the community's youth, which is something all small towns strive for.

"Traditionally, kids get out of school and go someplace else to pursue higher education and careers or jobs," McKee said.

"Now, we're offering those kids good opportunities to stay in town."

McKee's own daughters, Shannon and Siobhan, are good examples. Siobhan, 20, is working at the resort, and Shannon, 22 is just finishing a bachelor's degree in tourism at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops.

"It's hard for students to come back to Revelstoke," Shannon said, "especially in tourism." The resort, she added, "gives me the potential to come back and live in my home town, which growing up, you almost expect to move away."

For Mair, there is some personal satisfaction in seeing someone build a resort on the mountain where he first toiled with his first wife Kris. He and partner Don Sinclair bought the 40-acre farm at what used to be at the mountain's base during the early 1960s and started cutting runs, putting up first a rope tow and then a T-bar and finally a second-hand ski lift to entertain the locals.

"The rents went high, property [prices] are high," Mair observed. "That's very good for people who have something, but not very good for people who want to come here and try to buy or rent."

"But again, I like to see that something did happen to this mountain."

(prepared by Derrick Penner/Vancouver Sun)