Ski resort’s new owners to spend $10 million on upgrades

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – The new owners of the Steamboat ski resort plan to spend $10 million at the area in the next two years.

But Tim and Diane Mueller, leaders of a consortium of investors that bought the ski area last week, promise there will not be any sweeping changes.

“We are not dealing with a down-and-out distressed ski area here,” Tim Mueller said. “We are not planning to bully our way in and change everything. First we are going to communicate with employees and the community about our vision and values.”

The Muellers own Vermont’s Okemo Mountain Resort and operate Mount Sunapee Resort

in New Hampshire. Their Triple Peaks LLC purchased Steamboat, the state’s third-largest ski

area, for $91.4 million from Newry, Maine-based American Skiing.

The deal was delayed after Sept. 11 and is expected to close in March.

The Muellers have found tremendous success in the East. The couple bought the 520-acre Okemo Mountain Resort in central Vermont 20 years ago and through $100 million in aggressive upgrades to snowmaking capabilities and new base amenities has increased the resort’s number of visitors from 95,000 in 1982 to 593,000 last year.

Okemo is now the third most popular ski area in New England.

“They took a small, struggling ski area in a relatively small town … and they consistently grew the ski area into a small world-class area,” said Chris Barbieri, president of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce, which last year named Diane Mueller citizen of the year. “They are not the kind of people who sit around once they get what they want. They are highly energetic. They set goals and go after it.”

The Muellers plan to split their time between Vermont and Steamboat. Tim Mueller said he hates seeing corporate homogenization at ski resorts and pledges to retain Steamboat’s unique identity.

“We will not come in with a heavy corporate attitude,” he said. “We want to retain the individual characteristics of each town where we do business. We want each town – and each business – to have its own identity.”