The 90s—Growing with the consumer in mind
“The pond took two summers to complete,” says Fries, “but now we have water storage that both protects the environment and provides all the snow making water Stratton will need. Intrawest was c
ommitted to doing everything it could to enhance Stratton’s reputation as a steward of the Vermont environment.”
Eighteen years after it purchased Stratton, Intrawest remains an industry leading resort owner, with 100 percent ownership of four resorts: Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia, Steamboat in Colorado, Mont Tremblant in Quebec and Stratton. (It also owns half of Blue Mountain in Ontario and manages Colorado’s Winter Park for the City of Denver.) Its resorts are recognized as some of the best in the world. “Anyone who has been through an ownership change, like Stratton did in the 1990s, knows that you always wonder what’s going to happen,” says Foster. “We already had a community here, with guests who knew what they wanted. We didn’t know too much about Intrawest at first. But before long, we realized: Stratton was lucky.” ◊
Kathleen James is a Manchester writer and editor of Skiing Heritage magazine. During the 1990s she was an editor at Snow Country Magazine.