The new owner of Red Lodge Mountain plans to invest millions to attract more families to the ski resort, a top company official said.

Art Chapman, president of JMA Ventures, said the California investment firm would make a significant capital investment in the area it purchased a week ago.

“One of the things we will be doing is expanding the snowmaking equipment, spending millions of dollars” to enhance the skiing experience, he said.

“When you are talking about the family, you are talking about beginner and intermediate areas,” he said. “One of the things we’ll be doing initially is seeing if we can improve the snowmaking for beginners and intermediates.” Beyond that, Chapman said, the company just wants to get acquainted with Red Lodge.

“We don’t have any preconceived notions of what we are going to do,” he said. “We’re going to sit down and become members of the community.”

Chapman said the Red Lodge negotiations went on for longer than six months, but he said the company does not discuss the purchase price of any project.

Beth Hutchinson, executive director of the Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce, said she is looking forward to the JMA staff getting to know Red Lodge people. Negotiations were hush-hush for months, she said, even though some people thought they knew the whole picture.

“It was important for them to have their space while negotiations were going on. A lot of deals can be lost if everybody’s nose is in the middle of it,” Hutchinson said. “Now, it’s really important, I think, for the owners to come down and be seen and talk to all different kinds of people here, so that they establish themselves as a really partnering presence, not absentee landowners with a distant sense of what Red Lodge is.”

During the talks, company officials met with Red Lodge Mayor Brian Rota and members of the Carbon County Commission.

“The very fact they were willing to come and invest in our community is good,” Rota said. “Their optimism will be contagious. If we weren’t a good place to do business, they wouldn’t have come.”

Rota said he met with Chapman in late October and found him “to be really genuinely interested in our community,” including asking about community needs and how JMA could work with Red Lodge.

JMA does not specialize in recreation but is a land manager, Rota said. He likes that the company is interested in making good snow and keeping Red Lodge Mountain family-oriented.

“They are more interested in being stewards of the property and fixing it up so it works well,” Rota said.

Hutchinson said the sale seems well-received within the business community.

“People are very, very interested and they’re more optimistic than otherwise,” she said.

JMA apparently wants to spend a winter and see how the mountain works - from operations efficiency to nature and how the wind blows - before making plans for expansion or design changes, Hutchinson said.

The downside to interest in Red Lodge is that when the town grows, prices seem to increase, Rota said.

“I don’t know how much good we can stand,” he said.

Housing costs, especially, are high, Rota said, and added that $600 per month rent is common, but wages aren’t always high enough to pay that kind of expense.

“You get the good and the hard part,” Rota said. “The bottom line is the fact that they are here and they’re interested in what we do.”

If Red Lodge were to grow with the mountain, Hutchinson said she hopes the partnership between JMA and local business also grows. The community is adamant about remaining integrated, she said, with a mix of ages and income levels that all get along, and not losing its character.

Red Lodge employees will remain on the payroll, Chapman said, and General Manager Rob Ringer will continue to be the person in charge at the mountain.

“We want a total seamless transition,” he said. “We’re not asking anybody to leave.

“We’re going to start by meeting with all the employees and sitting down and chatting with them,” Chapman said.

JMA owns two ski areas at Lake Tahoe - Alpine Meadows and Homewood Mountain. It also owns Ghirardelli Square, a historic San Francisco tourist attraction.

Gazette Managing Editor Kristi Angel contributed to this story.

Published on Sunday, November 04, 2007.
Last modified on 11/4/2007 at 1:33 am