Debt not slowing ski resort’s plans
BOISE – Even with creditors at its owners’ door, Tamarack Resort said Friday it’s still in talks over a possible 8,000-acre state and federal land swap that would open skiing terrain north and south of its existing area.
Whether the proposed swap goes through, however, could ultimately depend on the resort’s future ownership.
Investment bankers at Credit Suisse filed a lawsuit in 4th District Court this week, contending the resort defaulted on a loan and asking a judge to allow it to foreclose on the property near Donnelly, about 100 miles north of Boise. The bank wants to collect more than $260 million it says it’s owed.
Jean-Pierre Boespflug and Alfredo Miguel Afif, whose holding companies own a combined 75 percent of the resort, filed for bankruptcy protection last month in federal court in Boise, after failing to secure financing to help repay Credit Suisse’s construction loans.
This week, Boespflug said he’s considering selling the property, which includes seven ski lifts, a Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed golf course and about 2,000 real estate development sites nestled in the trees above central Idaho’s Lake Cascade.
George Bacon, director of the Idaho Department of Lands that oversees an existing 2,100-acre lease of state land for Tamarack’s skiing operation, said he’s watching to see how the owners’ financial troubles are resolved to find out who will be the negotiating partner in any land swap.
“The financial troubles that the holding companies are having really will determine who our lessee is,” Bacon told the Senate Resources and Environment Committee at a hearing in Boise. “If the worst should occur, we’ll have somebody new.”
In August 2005, the resort gained attention when President Bush vacationed there with then-Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, later tapped to be Bush’s interior secretary.
For the proposed land exchange, Bacon’s agency has identified about 13,000 acres now owned by the state, including parcels within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, that could be swapped for about 8,000 U.S. Forest Service-managed acres abutting the resort.
No decisions have been made about just which parcels would be swapped. Bacon said a successful deal would involve financial benefit of the state. Money generated from state endowment lands goes to Idaho public schools and prisons.
So far, Tamarack has paid the state of Idaho about $1.3 million over the last six years for its existing lease, including a $250,000 payment for the current year. Bacon said the resort has always paid in advance.
Based on the existing Tamarack lease, the resort pays about $4 to the state for every ski lift ticket it sells, about 10 times comparable ski area leases of federal land, said Scott Turlington, a lobbyist at Principle Strategic Advisors who is a consultant for the resort.
Turlington said the next step in the land exchange process is for the resort to submit a business plan to the state, likely by April. In that plan, the resort will outline how it intends to use the expanded state acreage – and how much it thinks is a fair lease.
The key, Turlington said, will be “getting a business plan that both Tamarack Resort and the Land Board think is reasonable. The state can’t get rich off a single lessee.”
Should a pact be struck, Tamarack, Idaho and the Forest Service would then sign a so-called agreement to initiate, which would kick off an environmental review of the Forest Service acreage to be swapped. That would include public hearings.
If the resort changes hands amid bankruptcy proceedings, however, a new owner would have to assess whether such an expansion made financial sense, given that the new acreage would require millions of dollars worth of new ski lift and other infrastructure investments.
“They would have to do a cost-benefit analysis,” Turlington said, adding that one reason for a land exchange is it would provide ski-in, ski-out terrain for a currently undeveloped section of the resort’s property.