Resort stokes Revelstoke
Some residents fear mini-economic boom could create 'another Banff'
Derrick Penner, Canwest News Service
Published: Sunday, January 13, 2008
Paul Mair knew that Mount Mackenzie, looming some 2,450 metres 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 (RMR), has poured an amount approaching $100 million into picking up where Mair left off, cutting trails and installing the first gondola and ski lift, culminating in its Dec. 22, 2007, opening.

Riding with Mair up the new gondola are the hopes and dreams of a lot of people.

For the developers, there is the hope that the latest 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 the resort will become a stable pillar of the economy, which has ridden the booms and busts of megaprojects since the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

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

"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."

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 from downtown Revelstoke.

The developers' plans include mountain operations that will boast North America's longest vertical drop at 1,830 metres, and trade on Revelstoke's reputation for spectacular backcountry 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 backcountry skier, Simpson first visited Revelstoke in the mid-1980s and was taken with the town'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 ski offerings.

The past summer saw the installation of an eight-passenger gondola and quad chairlift, which RMR president Paul Skelton said will take skiers up to the resort's first 27 ski runs and down 1,432 vertical metres of descent.

Skelton added RMR has committed to building a second lift next summer to extend the vertical drop to 1,730 metres.

The lift will 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."

In the meantime, RMR's 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.

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.

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."

"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 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 priority for the city.
However, the resort is also seen as a much-needed anchor for Revelstoke's economy.

McKee described the community's economic condition as "a real roller-coaster ride" over the past 30 years, with the town dependent on whether the forestry industry was doing well, or 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.

"We've been a real megaproject, 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 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.

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."

McKee owns two retail stores downtown himself.

The resort has also delivered Revelstoke a building boom.

Mason said the town had issued more than $81 million in building permits for 2007, 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 have been huge," he added.

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

"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."

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 16-hectare farm at what was then 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.

"I like to see that something did happen to this mountain," Mair said.




© The Calgary Herald 2008

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