‘Buying our backyard’: City Club of C.O. holds community forum focusing on potential Mt. Bachelor sale
(Update: Adding video, comments from participants)
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The City Club of Central Oregon took up another timely topic with plenty of issues and questions on Thursday morning, focusing on the future of Mt. Bachelor.
Attendees learned a lot about the companies potentially looking to buy the resort, as well as an update on how the community effort to purchase Bachelor is going. (You can watch KTVZ's full livestream of the forum above.)
It has been over three months since POWDR Corp. announced it was looking to sell Mt. Bachelor, and the hunt for that new owner is heating up.
"Mt. Bachelor is a tremendous property. It's the sixth-largest ski area in the United States, and it's the largest in the Pacific Northwest. It is in an unbelievably special place," said Stuart Winchester, Editor & Host of The Storm Skiing Journal & Podcast.
"We need to ensure that the next owner of Mt. Bachelor is going to be a good long-term steward," he added.
Several multi-mountain U.S. ski resort companies are apparently in the hunt. Vail, Alterra and Mountain Capital Partners are all interested in Mt. Bachelor.
"They know what the affinity is for it," said Winchester, who's been tracking the sale. "They know the sorts of skiers that it can bring in. They know what the quality of the mountain, from a business point of view is."
Local duo Chris Porter and Dan Cochrane threw their hat in the ring in September, hoping to return the resort founded by Bill Healy to community ownership. The team has raised thousands of dollars so far for their "Buy Back Mt. Bachelor" initiative.
CFO of Mount Bachelor Inc. Ryan Andrews spoke at Thursday's forum: "We'd be willing to pay more than everybody else because we're buying our backyard. So, you know, it's worth more to us than it is to any other buyer."
POWDR also sold its Killington ski resort to community stakeholders, an example of what the future of Mt. Bachelor could look like.
"We're the David, in the ring against the Goliaths," Andrews said. "And so, you know, there's been a lot of cool noise made around this. But it's an uphill battle."
