Bolton Valley Resort Chronology
-04/03/07
1965:
Bolton Valley founder Ralph DesLauriers begins
work on nine trails and three lift lines on Ricker Mountain.
1966:
Main
lodge is built; Bolton Valley opens.
1967:
Lights
are added for night skiing.
1985:
A $7
million expansion begins, including a ski, area named Timberline and 67 rooms
for the village's 85-room condominium/hotel.
1987:
Lift
serving the new Timberline trails sustains $100,000 in damage in a fire in
March, closing Timberline trails for rest of season.
1988:
Resort is
$10 million in debt, partly because of Timberline project, poor snowfall and
dropping demand for condos.
1990:
Bolton Valley owes town of Bolton $163,884 in back property taxes.
1994:
Bolton Valley considers the Winooski River as a water source for snowmaking.
Stockholders meet in November to consider a merger with another organization.
1995:
Resort
files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March. Emerges from bankruptcy in
September.
1997:
Lyndonville
Savings Bank forecloses; Mason Dwinell announces intention to buy Bolton Valley.
1998:
February,
Dwinell closes resort, mid-ski season; Ned Hamilton's Bolton Valley Holiday
Resort Inc. completes $2.2 million transaction to buy the ski area.
DECEMBER 31, 1999:
Bolton Valley reopens.
DECEMBER 2001:
Bolton
Valley Holiday Resort lnc. files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
AUGUST 2002:
Bolton fends off bankruptcy trustees'
efforts to force the resort into liquidation.
OCTOBER 2002:
Bob
Fries, a former, Stratton Mountain Resort president, surfaces as a lead
investor to negotiate buying Bolton.
May 02, 2007:
Larry
Williams and Doug Nedde of Redstone have acquired Bob
Fries’ remaining interest – Bolton Valley is now 100% locally owned!
-----Bolton
Valley Resort www.boltonvalley.com 1-877-9BOLTON----
Press
Release For Immediate Release
April 19 2005
Contact:
Jim Tabor (802)496-4990, jim@gillentabor.com
Bolton Valley Receives Funding for
Major Improvements
Bolton Valley, VT—Bob Fries, President of
Bolton Valley Resort, announced today that the town of Bolton has received a $650,000
Community Development Grant to be used toward a new quad chairlift at the
popular family resort. The town will lend the grant money to the resort on
favorable terms.
“Our first goal here was to improve the guest experience and grow
skier visits,” said Fries. “We’ve accomplished both of those in our first three
seasons. Now we’re ready to implement Phase I of a comprehensive expansion and
improvement plan to further enhance the entire Bolton Valley experience.”
Construction on a new lift and related trail work is expected to begin in July
2005, and to be complete for the 2005-06 season. This initial two-year effort,
called the Vista Bowl Project, will include:
- The Vista Quad, a new,
top-to-bottom Doppelmayr quad chairlift
- New trails, including the
expansive Vista Bowl high on Vista Peak
- Dances With Trees, 20 acres of
natural, open glades for skiing and riding
- Additional snowmaking
- Additional lighting for night
skiing
- Improved beginner teaching area
with Magic Carpet lift (in 2006)
- New wood-fired pizzeria in Base
Lodge
- Improved terrain park
- Expanded parking
- Improved, expanded Sports Center
- Hotel improvements
“Bolton Valley’s guests will find that
these improvements will transform the skiing and riding experience here,” noted
Fries. “Skiers and riders on the new Vista Quad will get a faster, direct ride
to Vista Peak. They’ll also find that
Vista Bowl and the glades called Dances With Trees, both high up on Vista Peak, receive even more than
Bolton’s annual 300” of snow.
This will be skiing and riding a little closer to heaven, both literally and
figuratively.” The new Vista Bowl will be lit for night skiing and covered by
new snowmaking as well.
Phase I’s improvements are not only for upper-level skiers and
riders, Fries noted. “Our new teaching area, right in front of the base lodge,
will be much more friendly. It will be longer and wider, and a new Magic Carpet
will make it effortless for folks to get up from the base lodge level.”
The Vista Bowl Project will also include a number of off-mountain
improvements. A new wood-fired pizzeria will be added to the second floor of
the base lodge, expanding guests’ options for lunch, snacks, and dinner.
Redesigned parking lots will increase the number of close-in, base-area parking
spaces. The Sports Center, too, will see
significant upgrades, as will the popular Bolton Valley Hotel.
Bolton
Valley Resort receives more snow annually than Sun Valley and Keystone. It is the
closest major Vermont resort to Burlington International Airport. Since 1965, Bolton
ValleyResort has offered families big mountain adventures and Vermont village value.
Bolton wins low-interest loan to replace chairlift
April 25, 2005
Associated Press
BOLTON — Bolton Valley Resort has won a low-interest
loan of $650,000
to help pay for the replacement of an aging chairlift.
Resort owner Bob Fries said the new equipment will be crucial to Bolton
Valley's continued operation.
The loan will help finance a $1.3 million lift that would replace
a 35-year-old lift at the top of the mountain. The new lift, a "quad"
that carries four people in each chair, would start near the mountain's base
lodge and go to the top of the resort, enabling passengers to get
to trails and night skiing at the top of the mountain.
The resort is not installing a high-speed lift, which moves more
than twice as fast as a standard lift, because the price would have tripled,
Fries said.
The old lift was built in 1970 and the company that made it no
longer exists, making finding parts an issue. In a routine inspection a year
ago the state noted "extreme" wear.
The money is part of a federal Community Development Block Grant
program administered by the state that's aimed at benefiting low- and
moderate-income people.
The resort employs 300 people during the winter season. The resort
had to show that 51 percent of the jobs that would be preserved if the money
were granted would serve those with low to moderate incomes.
Local innkeeper and select-board member Ken Richardson was happy
to hear the resort was awarded the loan.
"All this is going to do is enhance the amenities here in Bolton and bring them up to
speed. I think it's great the state is doing something for an industry that
employs 300 to 350 people," said Richardson, who owns the Black Bear Inn.
Terms of the loan have not yet been worked out, said Ann Kroll,
director of grants management in the state Department of Housing and Community
Affairs.
Bolton Valley has requested a 25-year
loan at 2 percent interest, Fries said. The resort is still working on the
remaining financing for the project, and must also have an Act 250 land-use
permit approved by the state before the project can move ahead.
----Sent by: Vermont Skiing Discussion and
Snow Reports ----
05/02/2005 09:55 AM
To: SKIVT-L@list.uvm.edu
cc:
Subject: Re: [SKIVT-L] Bolton Improvements
I've been lurking on this list this
winter while instructing @ BV, and there was quite a bit of talk about the new
lift, so here's what I know...
The expansion has 2 phases, the first is
the fixed-grip quad to the top of Vista. The Vista lift will be going away, which should
make show off a bit nicer. (Especially
after the cable stretched this year and 1/2 the trail was spend dodging
chairs). The mid-mountain lift will
stay.
The new quad will not have a mid
station, and will end closer to the summit of the mountain (will be behind the
current lift location).
New trails will be cut to connect to the
existing system over the top of the mountain.
For those of you who liked Devil's Playground, your last run was likely
your last run. There will be a wide
swath removed as part of this connection.
Another connection will go in near the top of Vista peak onto the existing Shermans pass (the new 'vista
bowl' terrain?)
The second part of the expansion will
include making Solitude into a real trail again, instead of the heavily skiied
notatrail it is now.
Bolton hit their projected numbers this year, and were doing fairly well (until
the rainy closing weekend!). The ski
school was fairly busy most weeks, and again, hit the numbers they were
expecting for the year. So far.. so
good. They've got the most night skiing
this side of Canada, and that's a real asset for those of us with 9-to-5s.
Due to work travel, my season is over,
but it's extremely likely I'll be teaching at BV again next year, so I'm hoping
that some good lines will be cut towards the top of the wilderness chair this
summer. Now that I can at least hack my
way down the mountain on tele gear, I'm looking forward to exploring some of
the backcountry too.
'Kamikazi'
51 days.. 500,000+ vertical feet
|
Vt. ski
industry leaders say season ended on strong note
 The Associated Press
MONTPELIER -- Despite a slow start to the season, leaders of the state's ski
industry said it finished strong enough that it might pass last year's.
David Dillon of the Vermont Ski Areas Association said the season got off to
an inauspicious start with poor weather over Thanksgiving, followed by a less
than a stellar Christmas week and then more poor weather in January.
"Going into February, I would say we were easily 15 (percent) to 16
percent behind last year," according to Dillon, the VSAA's president.
What saved the season, Dillon said, was a "very strong" February
and March that saw abundant snowfall.
"I think that it will enable us to pull even with and hopefully exceed
last year by a couple of points," he said. There were 4.2 million skier
visits in the 2003-2004 season.
Dillon said that when all the numbers are in from the state's 16 ski areas,
skier visits could be in the 4.3-million- to-4.4-million range, surpassing
the 2003-2004 season.
As of last week, only three ski areas remained open: Killington, Sugarbush
and Stowe.
At Sugarbush in Warren, spokesman JJ Toland
said the resort was anticipating a double-digit increase in skier visits over
last season.
Like many ski areas, Toland said the Christmas holiday was disappointing. As
an example, he said by early December 2003, the resort had received 120
inches of natural snow compared with just 50 inches this past December.
But that changed, he said, in February and March when 10 feet of snow blanketed
the resort.
A spokesman for Killington Resort said the 2004-2005 ski season has been a
good one for the largest ski area in the East.
Spokesman Tom Horrocks said the ski area is on target to meet its skier
visits for the season.
"From about the third week in February through mid-March, we were in
that really nice regular snow cycle," Horrocks said. "We were
getting storms rolling in pretty much nightly, dropping anywhere from 2 to 8
inches a night, combined with a couple of big storms (that) set us up nicely
for the rest of the season."
Late last week, Killington had 10 of its 200 trails open and one of 33 lifts.
Horrocks said the resort will remain open until May 15.
After being down 15 percent to 20 percent at Christmas, Okemo Mountain Resort
in Ludlow estimated that skier
visits are up an estimated 5 percent for the season, according to spokeswoman
Pam Cruickshank.
|
05/02/07 Press Release
NEWSFLASH
--- BOLTON VALLEY RESORT --- NEWSFLASH
BOLTON VALLEY RESORT: NOW, 100%
LOCALLY OWNED!
(Bolton Valley, VT) – The
mountain resort with the highest main base elevation in Vermont is
trumpeting the exciting news that Larry Williams and Doug Nedde
have acquired Bob Fries’ remaining interest – Bolton Valley is now
100% locally owned!
Bob Fries, the resort’s outgoing President, said, “Having
bought Bolton Valley in 2002,
I have taken pride in my role as owner and steward of this fine Vermont resort. I
knew when I met Doug and Larry, that their expertise in business and
development were critical assets that would benefit Bolton Valley down the
road. Today, we’re at that crossroads, and I am confident that I am leaving the
resort in the right hands to take it to the next level.”
“In the past couple of years, we’ve made a lot of capital
improvements to enhance the ski area experience. Doug and I have been wanting
to take on more active roles, while at the same time, Bob had been thinking
about moving on to something new in the past year or so” explained Larry, “The
timing was right and we were able to put the deal together to make it happen.
We see Bolton Valley as a real
Vermont gem with
untapped potential."
Larry Williams and Doug Nedde,
best known to the Burlington community
as partners at Redstone, a thriving commercial real estate development firm,
have been part of the Bolton Valley family
since 2004, when they purchased the 3800 acres surrounding the resort. Today,
these two ‘locals’ have announced that they’ve come to an agreement with Bob
Fries to acquire his share of the resort, bringing this Vermont gem back into the
hands of home-grown operating owners. Larry’s roots run deep at Bolton Valley, “My dad
was a ski patroller at Bolton for many
years and one of my sisters was an instructor here. So, I grew up skiing here
as a kid.” Doug’s family has been snowboarding here for years, “Having young
children myself has made me realize how important it is for families to have a
convenient, fun, safe environment for recreation.”
“All of our focus, both people and structures, is directed
toward ensuring and enhancing our guests’ experiences at each and every level,
from first touch to last” indicates Jeanne-Marie Gand,
the resort’s V.P. of Marketing-Sales-Communications, “Clearly, we’re doing
something right, as our early pre-season pass sales for 07-08 are up over 40%!”
“We have a team of committed people with great energy”
says Doug Nedde, “ We
increased our investment because we believe in Bolton Valley.”