STOWE, Vt. – At one end of this ski town, in an old community hall-turned museum, hang black and white images of Stowe’s early rugged skiers, its first ski run and the first single chair up a Vermont slope.
At the other end, bulldozers rumble around the base of the mountains, charting Stowe Mountain Resort’s future: a slopeside village with a lodge and conference center, homes and condominiums, a golf course, pool, and spa and a ski lift across the road, emulating places like Beaver Creek and Aspen in Colorado.
It’s what a certain market of skiers and snowboarders are looking for, said David Norden, project manager for Spruce Peak Realty, a division of American International Group, which owns the resort.
“We believe that what we’re doing here is unique in the East,” he said. “It’s unique in the fact that we’re aiming for a higher level of quality than has been presented before us and the services and amenities that go with it.”
At least 10 of the 18 house lots, ranging in price from $600,000 to $2 million, have sold. Two of the 34 mountain cabins starting at $2 million – 3,000 square feet of space surrounded by wood and roughhewn stone – rise on the ridge. Site work has started on the Stowe Mountain Lodge, which will have 200 units of condos priced at $350,000 for a studio, and 34 fractional ownership units on the upper floors.
“In 2007 you’ll see a lot of activity. The lodge will be done, the base lodge is scheduled to be done, the transfer lift will be done,” Norden said.
AIG’s $300 million to $400 million project will add 440 housing units to Stowe.
While the shops and restaurants welcome the added traffic up the mountain road, some of the small inns and motels in town are wary about what the slopeside village will do for business.
“It’s probably not going to be good for us,” said Trudi Heiss, who with her husband has owned Andersen Lodge, an Austrian inn, for 35 years.
Down the street, Pamela Flory, owner of the Alpenrose Motel, doesn’t believe the ski-in ski-out lodging at the mountain will lure away customers from her small motel or others like it.
“You build your clientele,” she said.
She expects the mountain real estate to draw a new wave of wealthy visitors, who will pay more to stay at the slopes.
Other upscale resorts, such as Topnotch Resort and Spa, hope to attract some of that business.
“Anything that brings a higher demographic tourist to Stowe in our mind is a positive,” said Topnotch owner Dan Oberlander.
This type of skiing with amenities and lodging at the mountain is late to reach Vermont, said David Dillon, head of the Vermont Ski Areas Association.
Now Stowe will able to attract those destination skiers that it hasn’t been able to lure before, he said. As Stowe gets more exposure, most motels and businesses in town will benefit, he said.
“The rising tide floats all boats. This will be a tremendous benefit not only to the Stowe area but to the entire state,” he said.
Those who worry the project might tarnish the Stowe culture are not focussing on the fact that it’s a limited development, Oberlander said. “It’s not going to ruin Stowe,” he said.
The development is surrounding by several thousand acres of conservation land, “so it’s not a sprawling add-on type of thing,” Norden said.
Stowe’s charm lies in its old homes, white church and steeple and small shops and restaurants, surrounded by largely rural land. On a recent August afternoon, a farmer rolled through town on a tractor, sitting in tourist traffic at the intersection.
Many in Stowe agree that the resort, once known as the ski capital of the East, needed a facelift.
“The base lodge up at the mountain was falling apart,” said Anne-Marie Vespa, a fourth generation owner of Shaw’s General Store on the main street. “I think we’ve attracted a good clientele for years and there needed to be a change and they couldn’t double the lift tickets and I’m happy with the direction they chose to go.”
AIG claims the new real estate will help pay for improvements to snowmaking, trails, lodges and lifts. Norden said that’s what fueled the development. The state asked Stowe to reduce its water intake for snowmaking. AIG instead built snowmaking storage ponds, a costly investment, that it said it needed to recoup by developing the land. The village will bring moderate growth to the mountain, Norden said.
But not everyone is comfortable with the size of the 35-acre expansion.
“It will seem like a city with a mountain around it rather than a mountain with a ski area around it,” said Larry Lackey, a local resident who was a part of a coalition of environmental groups that opposed the project.
Others worry that the mountain village will offer discounts that other businesses won’t be able to offer.
“When you control the bed base and the lift tickets you can play them off each other and offer deals that the town can’t offer,” said Lyndell Heyer, a former ski racer, who grew up in Stowe, where her parents own an inn and her children now race.
But the slopeside village won’t change the skiing on the Mansfield side of the resort where most of the expert terrain lies, she said.
“The Mansfield side will stay Mount Mansfield. There’s not much you can do to the front four except keep them the front four,” she said referring to particular trails. “They’re steep and gnarly and that’s the way they’re going to be. The mountain is too challenging for a lot of people.”
Longtime Stowe skier Ben Wax, who manages a custom boot fitting company, says ultimately the development will be good for skiing. “They’re upgrading the snowmaking, and the lifts.”
The concept of an alpine village at Stowe has been years, if not decades, in the making, Norden said.
“You’ve seen a lot of things change in some of these other resorts, Stratton, Okemo, elsewhere. And I think it’s just time – time for Stowe to stay with the times and introduce a program that can position it once again where it used to be.”
AIG has had a long connection to Stowe. Its founder C.V. Starr invested in Stowe to build a t-bar, a chair lift and to build Spruce Peak in the 1940s.
Norden insists what AIG is doing is brushing up Stowe’s image as a classic mountain with a long heritage.
“We don’t think things are going to change dramatically from a cultural standpoint,” Norden said. “People will still come to Stowe for the mountain. The mountain will always be here, the beauty will always be here, the town will always be here. The things that we’re doing is just kind of freshening it up … and responding to the needs of what people are looking for.”
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