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Balsams Grand Resort teams up with ski industry legend Les Otten

djd66

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IMHO I think he has every right to think highly of himself. The ski areas that he touched would be far worse off today without his involvement.
I completely agree,... the guy started with not much and built up a massive business that employed 1000's of people. Not too many people on this forum can say they accomplished 1/10 of what he did.
 

ss20

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Developers can't even get financing to build new apartments or houses, which will 99.9% chance be occupied the moment the paint dries. Les thinks he can get a new ski resort in the middle of nowhere financed.

Ha. Hahahaha.
 

Andrew B.

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Developers can't even get financing to build new apartments or houses, which will 99.9% chance be occupied the moment the paint dries. Les thinks he can get a new ski resort in the middle of nowhere financed.

Ha. Hahahaha.
Not sure what happening in other markets but In the Boston market multi family development is still booming and money is there.
 

thetrailboss

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Not sure what happening in other markets but In the Boston market multi family development is still booming and money is there.

Same here in NJ in my area.
I think the bigger point is that investors are more risk averse than they might have been in the late 1990's. Especially with ski areas and related development. Add to it that LBO is the lead developer and folks will be skittish due to ASC.

Again, I get that he did a lot in his years at Sunday River et al (and I frankly do admire that). But again, how many of you are buying real estate at the Balsams or investing in him?
 

ss20

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Same here in NJ in my area.
Not sure what happening in other markets but In the Boston market multi family development is still booming and money is there.

All about what's coming down the pipe...


P1-1024x887.png


Significantly less permits being issued now than the immediate post-covid "free money" era. Especially with the multi-family units that this country desperately needs. No it's not 2008 but high interest rates are certainly killing development.
 

kbroderick

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...He spoke pretty frankly about the impact of going public and losing control over a lot of decisions. He also talked about how bullish some of the larger institutional investors could be and how the timeline for a return was unreasonable. We all know that Wall Street investors can be very fickle. So I think he does legitimately get consideration for those points.
I've long thought that the one big issue with taking ASC public was that once the market analysts saw the books, they ran away either laughing or screaming. Operating as a private company allowed a lot more freedom as long as they had people who were willing to believe Les could keep working his magic even when the numbers looked more like a trip to Vegas than a normal business.

I also think he had a model that worked really well for Eastern resorts with real estate available for both general development and terrain expansion, but that had serious limitations when you didn't have the ability to leverage real-estate development as a driver for terrain development and skier-visit growth. But I haven't seen the financials, so I have no idea how well the various ASC properties performed.
 

Andrew B.

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All about what's coming down the pipe...


P1-1024x887.png


Significantly less permits being issued now than the immediate post-covid "free money" era. Especially with the multi-family units that this country desperately needs. No it's not 2008 but high interest rates are certainly killing development.
All possible and likely in some areas.

I am not see interest rate slow down the appetite for MF around here, yet. It usually does but for some reason we are still busy as heck.

The problem with developing MF in the Mass. market now is the newly adopted energy code requirements and what it’s going to do to the cost of construction. That can be a killer to ROI.
 

2Planker

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View attachment 59060
“The odds are as good as I look in my one-piece ski suit!”
OMG. Look at Burt Mills. That has to be circa 1989 maybe ‘90. I definitely recall Les’ Descente Purple & Grey one piece.

Les‘s big rule back then was that every employee always had to have their name tag on. 100% of the time. Notice that Les has no name tag…. Yours truly found Les’s tag at the top of Locke, and we held it for ransom
 

BodeMiller1

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This is not going to happen. It’s a dream. Any investor would have better luck putting it all on black at the casino
Casinos have saturated the market especially now that you can gamble on a cell phone. If Les can get the Red Sox a World Series win and overcome the curse of Babe Ruth - he can do this. There are a lot of places to ski butt, Les knows the industry better than most. The big ski areas within 100 miles or so are watching this closely. If he comes close to pulling off his master plan it will change the game.

Edit: He has a better than 50 / 50 chance, I'm guessing he would go with RED instead of BLACK. Just look at Sunday River.
 
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