Everything’s big in Dallas
MMSA COO talks big plans at Chamber lunch.
It should come as no surprise that, according to Mammoth Mountain Ski Area (MMSA) COO Greg Dallas, skier visits were down again this season, from roughly 850,000 in 2013-2014, to 800,000 in 2014-2015. Both are down from Mammoth and June’s 2005-2006 peak visitation of 1.6 million.
Dallas reported on MMSA business and future plans at Tuesday’s Chamber of Commerce Power Lunch at the Charthouse. As any good COO must, Dallas found a silver lining in the decline in visits: “After four years of drought, we’re really practiced at drought,” he said.
He also said that in spite of declining visits, employee and guests were offering more positive feedback this year than ever before.
MMSA’s struggles this winter were part of a larger trend in California, Dallas said. He noted that skier visits across the U.S. were down from a peak of 60 million to 53.6 million, and that “We were down another 5 percent in California.”
“Financially, this has been a very, very difficult year,” he said. “A lot of ski areas are going into the red … [but] that’s not the case with Mammoth.” Dallas admitted the Mountain was still dealing with “a lot of debt we have to service,” but MMSA continues to turn a profit.
As for what MMSA plans to do to draw future visitors, Dallas outlined several ambitious additions to the Mountain. The highest priority is a lodge at Eagle. Dallas said the vision for this lodge has changed from a Main Lodge/Canyon Lodge “big box,” to a hub for family activity modeled off new family-friendly facilities going in at Stowe, Vermont (at Stowe, according to the resort’s website , amenities will include a new state-of-the-art children’s Adventure Center with ski/ride school, year-round daycare facilities, a children’s activities center, and ice skate rink).
Dallas said MMSA will be drilling for water at June Mountain later this summer in the hopes of developing a snowmaking system. The cost to drill test wells: about $180,000. Before MMSA does anything else at June, such as installing a new lift to replace J1, “We need to weatherproof that business,” he said. “We have got to be able to guarantee a season.”
Dallas also said that to keep up with competitors like Vail and Heavenly, MMSA is looking into a zip line from the top of the Mountain. “It could be a scenic ride or a thrill ride,” depending on the technology, he said. But the Mountain already has some of that necessary technology—used for gondola evacuations—so “[the project] seems bigger and grander than it is [in reality],” he said.
Dallas said MMSA has submitted a project proposal for a zip line observation deck at Chair 3 to the U.S. Forest Service, a $1.5 million project.
Another future plan: redeveloping Main Lodge with an aerial ropes course. “We’ve designed it and submitted it to the Forest Service,” Dallas said; the project comes in at about $1 million.
The Mountain is also hoping to build summer visitation to the bike park by creating a scenic ride from the Village to Canyon Lodge, allowing MMSA to open Canyon in the summer.
Dallas said MMSA is working to increase foot traffic as well as bike traffic on the Mountain by creating four specific “destinations” around the Mountain, all with interpretive signage, “which we hope will get people to hike.”
But when Dallas took questions from the audience at Charthouse, one audience member pointed out the obvious: “Look at the Mountain today, and you have a large debt service; you just bought two new ski areas in Southern California,” said John Eastman, alluding to MMSA’s purchase of Bear Mountain and Snow Summit in Big Bear. “It’s nice to have plans, but when will you break ground on some of these projects?” Eastman wondered.
Dallas said MMSA would have to wait for a good year—or even “a decent year”—before it had the discretionary funds to spend. Meanwhile, he said “Rusty [Gregory, MMSA CEO] is working really hard with our capital partners and with our debt to tweak it so we have more opportunity.”
