DESTROYING A CROSS-COUNTRY SKI RESORT IN ORDER TO SAVE IT

The constant whine emanating from Royal Gorge LLC, as evidenced in the Sierra Sun Article, "Develop, or Die?", that if they aren't allowed to apply the bandage of more than 1000 new units to their "lagging" cross country ski resort it will drown in a sea of red ink, is getting tedious. 

Kirk Syme, and Mark and Todd Foster paid in the neighborhood of $34 million dollars for a whole grab-bag of land purchases on Donner Summit, and for the ongoing value of Royal Gorge Cross Country from various LLCs. The land value of the various parcels came in around $13 million, with the price of Royal Gorge/Rainbow Lodge, independent of real property, somewhere in the vicinity of $21 million. Their project manager, Mike Livak, has been quoted in both the Union, and the Reno Gazette Journal, as indicating Royal Gorge Cross Country was considered a money pit from the get-go. In other words, these investors knew what they were buying, and bought it on the gamble they'd get to turn it into a mega-development.

People gamble all the time, some in Reno, some on the stock market. Sometimes they win, sometimes they loose.  It seems, though, that only developers expect counties and municipalities to bend over backwards, change zoning, ignore environmental damage, and do whatever it takes to make sure they're guaranteed a tidy bargain on their gambles, no matter how risky.  Marilyn Jasper, of the Placer Group of the Sierra Club has coined a pithy phrase that covers this situation,"there's no such thing as the FLSIC- the Federal Land Speculation Insurance Corporation." Well, that's news to the Royal Gorge developers. They bought high, and they want to sell higher, no matter if they destroy the fragile Donner Summit, and ruin an iconic cross country ski resort in the process.

Take a short walk on any street in Serene Lakes, and you'll quickly see real property worth more than the $13 million dollars Royal Gorge LLC paid for their Summit land. Add in the existing infrastructure, the "sense of place" of the community, and the environmental damage this area will suffer from over development, and you'll see that the current community has a much larger investment in the area, both tangible and intangible, than do developers from the bay area who seek to make good on a speculative investment.

Then, stroll up Pahatsi Road to one of the most beautiful cross country ski areas in the country, and imagine the clearcutting for the two artificial lakes blasted from granite, and the sprawl of roads, condos and houses- where the developers have the chutzpah to call the privately owned space between buildings "open space"!  How, by any stretch of the imagination will constructing that tangle of buildings,parking lots, and roundabouts be "saving" Royal Gorge Cross Country?

Royal Gorge LLC, if you truly wish to preserve the treasured resort you purchased, please consider a non-profit/public partnership modeled on Tahoe Cross Country Ski Area on the North Shore. At the very least, if profit is your chief  goal, rather than saving the resort, at least do us the decency of retiring your tired charade of "having to develop in order to save" a cross country resort your proposed development will only destroy.