Keeping up with the pace
Moonlight Basin Seeks Equity Partner to Speed Development
By Lucia Stewart, 11-28-07
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Moonlight Basin, the newest resort in Montana, is increasing its development momentum and seeks the partner funding to do so.
Beginning as a vision by Lee Poole and Joe Vudovich on a 25,000-acre tract of land purchased from Plum Creek in 1992, Moonlight Basin has slowly and deliberately molded, planned and solidified itself into a 4-season resort community. “And in the past two to three years, the speed has been intense,” said Russ McElyea, in-house counsel for Moonlight Basin.
The Jack Nicklaus golf course is scheduled to open 2009, architectural and design bids are out for the new lodge at the base of Six Shooter Lift, and multiple residential developments, five-star hotels and villages with retail, dining and shopping are planned.
“We want to move as quickly as possible and as the market will absorb,” said McElyea. “But also at the speed that builds community, constitutes value to existing owners and validates purchase decisions.”
With the overall development plan close to completion, with assistance from Gage Davis Associates, Moonlight Basin recently sent out 20 prospectus seeking partnership funding. Moonlight Basin denied further comment on its status.
Capital investment is on Moonlight Basin’s timeline, but only now are they poised to use that investment to continue development at a consistent and timely pace.
“It’s about tempo, how quickly can you move forward with the plan now,” said McElyea. “It’s going to happen no matter what. The question is how quickly.”
An interactive map that gives the first overview of the development can be found here.
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Comments
If Moonlight builds another lodge, and sells condos on the upper floors, those will be the best buys in real estate in the West for that year.
If this is an example of Plum Creek making a mistake, it must be that Plum Creek has no equity position in the place. I have been there enough to not have any feelings about the land being trashed.
If you want to see trashed, come to Oregon and I will take you over Santiam Pass down to Sisters and back over MacKenzie Pass. That way you can see some real trashed real estate, all burned to a crisp or bug killed timber, none of it caused by fire or insects from well managed private land. The place keeps getting hammered by "Wilderness" fires trying to go to town. That is the real trashing of land in the New West. Millions of acres every year, and millions of old growth trees incinerated due to the insane belief that fire is good. If it is so good, go burn your house down and have a good experience. You will then have the distinct privilege of waiting for several hundred years for your property's recovery. You had better look up Ponce de Leon for advice on how to get there from here.
Oregon has few ski areas but endless terrain that would be great if developable. The ones we do have are up to their ears in USFS conditional crap 24/7/365, and the public is NOT well served by the ongoing fracas. Much of it surrounds that old right to sue over any action the USFS might take or the ski area operators want to make happen.
Our Cascade range, and the Blue Mountains, did not have high elevation mining in concentrations enough to bring land to patent in meaningful amounts. Add to that few railroads and there is little private land in vast areas of public land, and little private land at elevation, unlike Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Utah and the Sierras. Therefore, the Oregon and Washington State ski areas are mostly on pubic lease land.
The checkerboard railroad ownerships in Washington State would have produced some private land for ski area development, but the crafty Northern Pacific RR got Congress to trade timber land for NP rocks, ice and glaciers, and from that Rainier Natl Park was formed. The NP got script for every quarter section they surrendered, to be used to claim public lands as they were opened for entry (proposed National Forest lands and unclaimed public domain had to be surveyed before they could be opened for entry---read some form of homesteading). Promptly, the NP built a bridge across the Columbia River into Oregon to broaden the scope of land they could claim. Alas, the timber land was all sold to Weyerhaeuser, their partners, and others. Today, Plum Creek is buying much of it back from willing sellers like Georgia Pacific and others.
All who ski in the West should be forever grateful for the Mining Acts which allowed land to be taken private by patent, and the vast timber and railroad land claims that were consolidated into blocks so that USFS wilderness areas could be designated without extensive inholdings, and USFS land management could happen on large consolidated parcels. It is that private land that makes the New West special. If it were all public lands, there would be Congressional ski areas, and special secret places for government hacks to hang out, not unlike some once private ranches the government holds on the Snake and Salmon Rivers. They do have their own publicly owned, but used by USFS or other govt employees, only, special places. Think of it as Camp Davids for the lower classes of bureaucrat. That is just trashing the citizens not in the governing class.