 Poster: A snowHead
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Last week a luxury accommodation holding company - Starwood Capital Group - paid $365 million to gain control of Mammoth Mountain, the famous Californian ski resort.
Now, Hal Clifford, author of 'Downhill Slide: Why the Corporate Ski Industry Is Bad for Skiing, Ski Towns and the Environment', is predicting a sorry future for the place.
"Mammoth Lakes is the latest in a string of authentic, unique mountain communities that are being commodified, standardized and gentrified by corporations that see a chance to make a killing. And kill it they do," says Clifford.
Here's his full rant in the Los Angeles Times.
Any comments? Any Mammoth traditionalists out there?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Interesting. I spent a season at Mammoth (02/03) just after Intrawest began building the new village.
The old mammoth is an ugly, sprawling town and quite inconvenient to the slopes for tourists (although the free bus system is quite effecient). I don't imagine development of the old town is high on Starwoods list - it will be further development of the new village and the on-slope satellites - Little Eagle, Canyon and Main Lodge/Mammoth Mountain Inn. Who wants to ride a 15 minute bus when an on-snow village is available....
Would be more in the 'it's a shame camp' if the old town had more charm and character, but the reality is a modernisation and improvement is probably needed!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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The problem with this 'laissez-faire' approach is that ruination of the environment is just left as a blot, while greenfield (whitefield?) sites are exploited as a bright new future.
The US is notorious for the ability of private developers to go trash an environment ... and then walk away when the project goes belly-up. Or you get trashy environments that struggle on - Killington in Vermont is a good example.
Interestingly, we have an example of failed ski resort development on our own shores. The Aviemore Centre, built as the great white hope of Highlands tourism in the mid-1960s, was becoming a white elephant as early as the mid-1970s. By the 1990s it was heading for demolition, and is now no more. The project was master-planned by the corrupt architect John Poulson, subsequently jailed for fraud. Aviemore was one project where he paid bribes to secure work.
Ski resorts are most successful, in the long term, when they are the product of diverse multiple land ownership, preferably with those land owners having a tradition of caring for the natural landscape/mountainscape - perhaps as farmers or foresters.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| David Goldsmith wrote: |
| Ski resorts are most successful, in the long term, when they are the product of diverse multiple land ownership, preferably with those land owners having a tradition of caring for the natural landscape/mountainscape - perhaps as farmers or foresters. |
Is there actually any evidence for this assertion? And what are your success criteria? The Trois Vallees, for example, would probably feature quite highly on most people's lists of "successful resorts", yet it is a multi-billion Euro industry where one of the valleys was developed by a foreigner, and the roots of Courchevel and Val Thorens as small scale developments by the local community are long ago forgotten.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Hey, Mammoth will be buried under lava one day soon and they can start from scratch.
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