Wildcat Lifetime Season Pass Controversy

threecy · Nov 23, 2010

According to the Conway Daily Sun, Peak Resorts has decided it will not honor lifetime season passes sold at Wildcat in the 1960s-80s. About 1,400 lifetime passes were sold, according to the article.

The article does not state whether or not the passholders bought stock with benefits or an actual lifetime pass.

The USFS is supporting Peak Resorts, saying that lifetime passes cannot be sold for use of federally permitted land.

dmc · Nov 23, 2010

uhhh ohh...

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

I think I called this as well.....

drjeff · Nov 23, 2010

As the old addage goes, the only things certain in life are death and taxes.......

deadheadskier · Nov 23, 2010

guess it will shake out based upon how the contract was written

dmc · Nov 23, 2010

I wonder if the conversation will rival the KZone conversations..

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

dmc said:
I wonder if the conversation will rival the KZone conversations..

Probably not.

Makes it clear that Wildcat was an asset sale.

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

Here's the article: http://www.infinews2.com/1002/cgi/cdsstory.pl?storyid=201011220810571002953

Sounds like there is more than meets the eye.

threecy · Nov 23, 2010

thetrailboss said:
Here's the article: http://www.infinews2.com/1002/cgi/cdsstory.pl?storyid=201011220810571002953

When Peak Resorts purchased Attitash from the American Ski Company, Graham said, American Ski Company included the long-term passes in the negotiations.

Funny that ASC included that provision with the Attitash sale, but not the Killington sale.

I'm curious to see of Peak and (presumably) EPT get trashed as much as SP/Powdr did here.

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

threecy said:
Funny that ASC included that provision with the Attitash sale, but not the Killington sale.

I'm curious to see of Peak and (presumably) EPT get trashed as much as SP/Powdr did here.

Peak is not the problem; Franchi was the problem. When you see that he and the passholders were already :argue: then you can understand the full context and what really happened.

severine · Nov 23, 2010

Here we go again...

mondeo · Nov 23, 2010

thetrailboss said:
Probably not.

Makes it clear that Wildcat was an asset sale.

I thought Killington was clearly an asset sale?

I'm guessing the difference will be that was Killington. This is not.

threecy · Nov 23, 2010

thetrailboss said:
Peak is not the problem; Franchi was the problem.

Franchi allegedly didn't include a provision for the passholders to retain their passes in the P&S - neither did ASC with Killington. Yet, on here, it seemed that most people were blaming the new owners/operators at Killington.

I'm still curious to see if those passes had to do with buying stock in Wildcat, or if they were sold as an actual product. The cancelled ones at Killington were a stock benefit.

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

threecy said:
I'm still curious to see if those passes had to do with buying stock in Wildcat, or if they were sold as an actual product. The cancelled ones at Killington were a stock benefit.

My sense from the article was that these were actual products.

threecy · Nov 23, 2010

thetrailboss said:
My sense from the article was that these were actual products.

Some of the Killington articles portrayed theirs as such.

threecy · Nov 23, 2010

As a reminder, here's how the forums reacted when the Killington lifetime pass cancellation leaked out:

http://www.alpinezone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16360

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

Well, I think that one key distinction is that Killington/Sherburne Corporation was a publicly traded entity which issued stock subscriptions and bonds/debentures that included the lifetime pass a 'perk.' People invested money into the resort into one of these vehicles with the intent of making money back from the interest. As a perk, they got the passes. Now some of these passes were transferrable and that is where the problem was. These passes were sold on an uncontrolled market and folks who bought them were not the investors.

Wildcat was a private family owned business. While it too needed capital, it appears that they sold the lifetime pass product as the means to making the money. The customer bought a lifetime pass and nothing else.

threecy · Nov 23, 2010

thetrailboss said:
Wildcat was a private family owned business. While it too needed capital, it appears that they sold the lifetime pass product as the means to making the money. The customer bought a lifetime pass and nothing else.

I believe the passes in question at Wildcat were sold/given prior to it being sold to the Franchi family.

From NESM:

Malcolm McLane was an attorney as well as a competitive skier, and he drew up a prospectus outlining the structure of stock sales that carried lifetime pass privileges, and financing activities proceeded in 1956 and 1957. It’s unclear if Wildcat was the first ski area in the country to form this sort of financing structure, but McLane got inquires from other areas soon after his prospectus was approved by the government, and for years he could see his legalese from the Wildcat document repeated in stock offerings from new ski areas across the country.

thetrailboss · Nov 23, 2010

threecy said:
I believe the passes in question at Wildcat were sold/given prior to it being sold to the Franchi family.

From NESM:

And so the plot thickens.....interesting.... :stirpot:

snowmonster · Nov 23, 2010

thetrailboss said:
Well, I think that one key distinction is that Killington/Sherburne Corporation was a publicly traded entity which issued stock subscriptions and bonds/debentures that included the lifetime pass a 'perk.' People invested money into the resort into one of these vehicles with the intent of making money back from the interest. As a perk, they got the passes. Now some of these passes were transferrable and that is where the problem was. These passes were sold on an uncontrolled market and folks who bought them were not the investors.

Wildcat was a private family owned business. While it too needed capital, it appears that they sold the lifetime pass product as the means to making the money. The customer bought a lifetime pass and nothing else.

I'm not as familiar with any of these situations, TB, and I'll defer to you on this but whether it is a public or private corporation should not matter. In either case, it seems the obligations were incurred by the corporation. If these obligations were excluded in an asset sale, the liability for them should not transfer to the buyer but should remain with the seller corporation.

Wildcat Lifetime Season Pass Controversy

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