Jay Peak Resort - History

History

The ski trails were carved into the mountain during the 1950s primarily by its first ski school director/general manager, Walter Foeger, an Austrian and former racer who had previously trained the Spanish Olympic ski team. He arrived in 1956. He developed a method of teaching parallel skiing that avoided first having to teach the student snowplow/stem turns. Instead, students were taught to change direction by means of a slight hop keeping the tips of the skis on the snow, and displacing the back of the skis sideways. He called his ski teaching method "Natur Teknik" (natural technique). The Jay Peak ski school offered a "learn to ski in a week" guarantee. The method was adopted by a number of other ski areas.

In 1955 a T-bar and a ski lift were purchased. In January 1957, the resort was opened for skiing.

In 1968 Weyerhaeuser invested $300,000 in the predecessor organization, Jay Peak, Inc., and loaned it $2.2 million.

In the mid-1970s, a 48-room hotel was built.

In 1978 Mont Saint-Sauveur International bought the resort.

To encourage Canadian tourism, the resort used to accept Canadian money at par. As of 2010, this is still true for lift tickets and the cafeteria.

In 2007, the resort agreed to pay the state $105,000 for violating stormwater rules in polluting a stream while building a new golf course.

Despite a drop in skier visits statewide during the 2006-07 season, Jay Peak saw a record year with skier visits up 7%.

In 2006, the resort employed 550 people in the winter, 100 in the summer. In 2008, it was the second biggest employer in the area.

In 2007-8, the resort reported a record 320,000 skiers for the winter.

In 2008, a group headed by Bill Stenger purchased the resort. Stenger's plan was to invest $100 million in capital improvements for the resort over the next few years.

The new management announced plans for capital improvements. A new 57-room hotel would be added in 2008-9. Then the current 48-room hotel would be demolished in 2009-10 and replaced with a 120-room hotel in 2010-11. It would include a spa, conference center, skating facility, and a 33,000 square feet (3,066 m2) water park. They projected that employment would be 600 year around instead of just in the winter, as it was in 2008.

Management planned to expand the skiing to a third peak for the 2011-2012 season. The new area would be known as the West Bowl and had been marked on trail maps as a Proposed Ski Expansion Area since the 2002-2003 ski season.

The company raised $250 million for improvements in 2009-10, from 250 investors from 43 companies through the incentive of the federal EB-5 visa. Under this visa, every $500,000 invested in the U.S. that results in ten new jobs gains the investor permanent residence.

A three-way swap was made with the state in 2010. The state deeded 59.8 acres (24.2 ha) to the resort; the resort relinquished its lease to a 418 acres (169 ha) parcel of nearby undeveloped forest back to the state; and the resort sold 166 acres (67 ha) to the Green Mountain Club to ensure that the nearby 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of Long Trail would have a permanent buffer from ski-area development.

In 2010, $13 million worth of improvements were made including an indoor ice arena, a parking garage, an enclosed beginners lift, and a new RFID ticketing system. The old Hotel Jay was razed and replace with a new 170-room one.

In 2010, Yankee magazine named Jay as the best ski resort in New England.

In 2011, the resort agreed to pay an $80,000 fine to the United States Environmental Protection Agency for filing in 2 acres (0.81 ha) of wetlands to construct a golf course in 2004-6, without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This was the same event that the resort paid a fine to the state in 2007.

In 2012, Jay Peak experienced its first fatality in over two years when a snowboarder collided with a tree and was never resuscitated.