Ski school set to raise funds for new campus

CARRABASSETT VALLEY – Carrabassett Valley Academy, which has turned out eight U.S. Olympic team members and four world champions, is looking to build a new multimillion-dollar campus.

For its first 20 years, CVA has been housed in converted ski lodges near Sugarloaf Mountain, where the prep school’s teenage skiers and snowboarders train.

The new campus will be built on a 22-acre site at the base of Sugarloaf. The land purchase was funded by a grant from the Libra Foundation of Portland.

Work is under way on a $250,000 soccer field and running track, a gift from Paul and Carol Freemont Smith of Northeast Harbor.

Now, CVA is getting set to raise money for construction of two major buildings covering almost 90,000 square feet, as well as parking lots, roads and utilities.

“We’re building for the future,” Headmaster John Ritzo said. “We’re through our adolescence and as we enter the adulthood of the institution, we want to have facilities that will be lasting.”

CVA, which started with a handful of students in 1982, has an enrollment of 115. The students live and study in two converted ski lodges on Route 27.

School officials and students say a new campus is needed to accommodate the growing student population and to keep CVA competitive with ski academies cropping up across the country.

“Until now, we have focused on the program,” Ritzo said. “Now the facilities really lag behind where we are as a program. We need to upgrade the facilities to match the program.”

The small school is now enjoying the momentum created by CVA alumnus Bode Miller, who won two silver medals in alpine racing at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.

CVA’s competitors range from Vermont’s Stratton Mountain School to Crested Butte Academy in Colorado, and many of them have newer facilities.

“We lose kids every year. They want to come to CVA because of its reputation. But the parents, when they look at the money they will be paying, and then look at the facilities, say they can’t justify that type of money. We really need to do it just to survive,” said CVA trustee George Clark.

No one has yet put a firm dollar figure on what it will take to build the new facilities, though everyone agrees it will be in the millions.

“It is a multimillion-dollar project. We’re looking at over $1 million to get the architects in, and according to Pizzagalli [Construction Co. of Portland and Burlington, Vt.], it’s possibly over $1 million for the site work,” Clark said.