NEWRY – Newry planners started work this month on a permitting application for a proposed $5 million ski-lift expansion at Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry.

The resort, doing business as Sunday River Skiway Corp., wants to extend and upgrade South Ridge’s triple chairlift No. 7 by installing a “chondola.”

Manufactured by Austrian firm Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group, a chondola is a high-speed detachable chairlift that can either have enclosed gondola cabins substituted for chairs or both together on the same lift.

Currently, Lift No. 7 starts in the South Ridge Base area, travels uphill along ski trails and tops out at 1,530 feet elevation.

The chondola, which would have three chairs and a gondola, would travel the same path, but continue up to a knoll just east of the Peak Lodge at 2,180 feet elevation. Peak Lodge is the resort’s midmountain restaurant.

Paradigm Trail would be extended 150 feet to meet the top of the new lift, according to engineer Joseph Aloisio Jr., the resort’s director of construction. Aloisio is also Newry’s Planning Board chairman, but steps down and off the board when presenting ski resort projects.

“Some uses – other than the obvious daytime skiing – include transportation to evening dinners at Peak Lodge (and) transportation for summer weddings on North Peak,” Aloisio stated in the board’s minutes of its Feb. 6 meeting.

“The gondola eliminates the threat of rain spoiling the ride up the lift for these occasions,” he added.

According to documentation at the Newry Town Office, the project will be funded by a special capital allocation through Boyne, the Michigan-based company that bought Sunday River last year.

In addition to going through the permitting process with Newry, the resort is doing the same through the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, according to resort spokesman Alex Kaufman.

“We hope to offer it to our guests for next season,” Kaufman said.