Leelanau County seeking stimulus funds for Sugar Loaf purchase
The Traverse City Record-Eagle reports that Leelanau County officials are seeking federal stimulus funds to buy & upgrade Sugar Loaf Mountain:
“For the residents of Leelanau County, this is one of their prime issues, especially in the business community,” said David Shiflett, a county commissioner and chairman of the county’s brownfield redevelopment authority board.
The brownfield board and other county agencies are asking for $10.5 million under the state’s allotment of the stimulus package to purchase the resort and a supporting wastewater treatment facility, parcels now owned by separate parties. They’d make upgrades, then offer the combined property for sale with public financing and other incentives.
“We don’t want to be in the ownership position for very long at all … the goal is to incentivize it so it allows private development to get involved, take control and be profitable,” Shiflett said.
Be sure to read the rest and check out more Sugar Loaf news from Leelanau.com.
That’s so nice that Wickstrom is willing to sell to the county! Yes that is sarcasm. I assume they are going to get a bit better price than $5.4mil for the Loaf and 1.5mil for the wastewater treatment facility (not sure what those go for, haven’t seen them for sale in the paper), since that and an additional $2.5mil for upgrades to the treatment facility would leave roughly 1 million for getting everything up an running. That’s not going to do it, unless the $2.5million is for upgrades to the Loaf as well. Anyway, it’s great to hear, I hope it goes through and as usual I will be holding my breath.
After getting a good look at the general condition of the property and equipment, it would seem that $10.5Mil might be a good place to start. First and foremost, the property needs to get out of the ownership limbo it has languished in for the last several years. Once new ownership is secured, then the task of reassessing the property can begin. Frankly, it looks like most (if not all) of the lifts would need to be either reworked or replaced outright. The lift capacity just isn’t there unless they were to put strict daily limits on ticket sales. Anyone who ever skied the Loaf on a busy Saturday and found themselves in the sea of humanity at the bottom of chair 5 might have something to say about that. We did the best we could in 01/02 to get it up and running again, but the hill equipment likely hasn’t seen much work since.