Western Resorts Watch
Tamarack Asks for Emergency Re-opening of Resort
“This is a matter of the utmost gravity. We do not make this request lightly."By Jill Kuraitis, 3-05-09
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With a full courtroom behind him, the attorney for the owners of Tamarack Resort in Valley County, Idaho asked district court judge Patrick Owen Thursday to authorize an emergency re-opening of the lodge and ski operations. “The process has been anything but transparent,” said lawyer Steve Millemann of McCall, outrage in his voice.
The attorney for Doug Wilson, the court-appointed receiver for Tamarack, said they had no choice but to shut down operations Wednesday evening at 5:00, stopping the ski lifts and snow cats and closing the entire resort to the public. But Millemann claimed they were not asked for input of any kind about the decision.
Millemann said, “This is a matter of the utmost gravity. We do not make this request lightly. Nothing can damage the collateral more than for the resort to lie fallow.”
Wilson’s lawyer Douglas Pahl responded that with $1.5 million left in the fund to oversee the reorganization or shutdown of Tamarack, to use it to generate small income from lift tickets would produce short-term liabilities that would add to Tamarack’s problems. “We don’t have the money to operate the resort in a responsible way,” he said, claiming reopening would be financially remiss. “If no other funding becomes available, there would be a hard shutdown that would damage the property even more.”
Attorneys for the group of lenders which includes Credit Suisse pointed out that they had provided the most recent loan extension for the purpose of closing Tamarack, not to keep it operating. The most pressing bills, they said, were for ski lift and golf course lease payments, in arrears since January.
After the hearing, Millemann told NewWest.Net he is “hoping for a meaningful discussion about funding alternatives” after the judge announces his decision about today’s hearing on March 10.
“We are….well involved in some discussions about new funding,” he said. “This closure didn’t help much.”
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Comments
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The pursuit of the Fairmont/Agassi project was the height of his mismanagement exploits--who ever thought there was a market anywhere in the State of Idaho for 300 rooms a night at over $500--there may be only a couple of days a year that all the nightly rental units combined in the state have ever reached that occupancy--300 rooms at $500!!
We continue to hear of the serious negotiations with investors/buyers--the truth is little is likely to happen in this market where commercial resort financing is dried up, and especially until JP's right of redemption expires next spring and a serious buyer does not have to be distracted by JP's interference.
Remember, "Tamarack is not about thee money, it is about the Spirit of Tamarack"--unfortunately for JP and 200+ property owners, 200 employees and the citizens of Valley County, Tamarack was about the money and they blew it!
gordon
I feel sorry for all of the locals in and around Donnelly. I hope they were able to bank some cash while they could - the whole Tamarack idea wasn't really sustainable.
Tamarack will open again someday - I'm sure it will be purchased for pennies on the dollar and reopened.