Vail Resorts to Buy Whistler Blackcomb in $1 Billion Deal

Peter Landsman9 Comments

Winter-Dual-Mountain-Evening-Lights-Snowy-Trees-Village-DavidMcColm

The largest ski resort company in the world, Vail Resorts, announced a deal this morning to buy North America’s biggest ski mountain for just over USD$1 billion in cash and stock. The acquisition of Whistler Blackcomb brings Vail Resorts’ portfolio to a dozen mountain resorts including the most-visited in the United States, Canada and Australia.  Vail Resorts, Inc. will also own six of the top ten mountains by skier visits in North America. The company has been looking to grow internationally since acquiring Australia’s Perisher Resort in 2015.

Whistler Blackcomb Holdings currently trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange. CEO Dave Brownie says the company’s board has been “monitoring the unique challenges facing the broader ski industry due to the unpredictability of year-to-year regional weather patterns.”  As a result, the Whistler Blackcomb board accepted a takeover offer from Vail that places a 43 percent premium over Friday’s stock price, valuing W-B Holdings at CDN$1.39 billion.

The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.  On the season pass front, Whistler Blackcomb will quit the Liftopia-powered Mountain Collective pass after this season and join Vail’s Epic Pass.  Epic pass-holders will have access to 253 lifts at Vail’s 12 resorts in three countries.

Whistler Blackcomb announced a $345 million capital improvement plan called Renaissance earlier this year that will include new lifts on both mountains over the next 20 years and Vail intends to continue investing in this initiative.

Olympic Spotlight Shines on Rio and its Teleféricos

Peter Landsman1 Comment

With the Olympics opening tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, the world looks to a seaside metropolis with more than six million residents and the first South American city to host an Olympic Games.  While Brazil has no ski resorts, Rio features aerial lifts ranging from hundred year-old tramways to modern gondolas connecting the city’s favelas to the regional transit network.

The famous Sugarloaf Mountain twin tramways were among the world’s first cableways of any kind when they debuted in 1912.  A century later, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff championed development of a five-section Poma gondola connecting some of Rio’s largest slums, modeled after the pioneering gondola network in Medellín.  In 2013, Doppelmayr built a three-station gondola in Morro da Providência, serving more than 5,000 residents in one of Rio’s oldest favelas.  Further urban cable projects proposed for Rio have faltered as the city works to combat challenges we’ve become all too familiar with leading up to the Games.

Teleférico do Alemão

Teleférico do Alemão is one of the largest and most complex gondola systems in the world with six stations and 152 10-passenger Sigma Diamond cabins.  Built by Poma and operated by private train company SuperVia, Teleférico do Alemão opened July 7, 2011. The system is capable of transporting 3,000 passengers per hour over 2.2 miles of dense neighborhoods in 16 minutes.  The lift changes angle four times, including a 100-degree turn at Alemão Station.

Bondinho_do_Complexo_do_Alemão_Panorama_06_2014
Teleférico do Alemão’s striking gondola stations also serve as community centers.  Photo credit: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz via Creative Commons

70,000 residents are eligible for two free rides daily on the gondola, which links favelas in the Complexo do Alemão to the Bonsucesso train station. Six expansive rooftop stations that feature banks, stores and social services rise above the favelas.  The gondola system cost approximately $74 million to build and serves 9,000 daily riders.  Initial ridership estimates of 30,000 per day have not been realized as Rio has struggled to attract non-residents to ride the teleférico through crime-ridden neighborhoods.  Unlike in Medellín and La Paz, residents have criticized the construction of an expensive gondola through communities that lack electricity, clean water and basic sanitation.

Continue reading →

News Roundup: New Manufacturer?

Peter Landsman2 Comments

Medellín Pairs Urban Gondolas with Subways

Peter Landsman3 Comments

https://www.instagram.com/p/BILLC7aA6FZ/?tagged=metrocable

South American cities are world leaders in urban cable transport, with 24 urban gondolas either opened or planned in Bogotá, Caracas, Guayaquil, La Paz, Lima, Medellín and Rio de Janeiro.  I’ve written extensively about La Paz, Bolivia’s capital that went all in on cable transport with eleven gondolas either operating, under construction or planned.  But a full decade before the creation of Mi Teleférico in La Paz, Metro de Medellín opened the first of three Metrocable gondola lines in Colombia’s third largest city.  Metrocable Line K was the first urban gondola to seamlessly link with a subway anywhere in the world, providing under-served and poor neighborhoods access to the city’s transport network. Metrocable’s J, K and L lines, with ten stations over 5.8 miles, now compose a quarter of the Metro de Medellín network.  All three Metrocable lines are 8-passenger monocable gondolas built by Poma.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGvoGnIiQHy/?tagged=metrocable

Line K debuted in 2004 with a shockingly low construction cost of $26 million.  Its four stations branch off from the Acevedo Metro station over a length of 6,798 feet, giving three neighborhoods access to the core subway Line A that opened in 1996.  This gondola rises 1,309 feet with a rope speed of 5 m/s.  Metrocable Line J opened in 2008 at a cost of $47.5 million, serving four more stations from the terminus of the shorter subway Line B. Line J is longer than the original K at just under 9,000 feet.  A ride with seamless transfers between buses, two Metro subway lines and two Metrocable lines costs less than a dollar.

5mapa-metro-medellin-1
Medellín’s Metro system features two subway lines and three Metrocable lines with two more under construction.

Continue reading →

News Roundup: For Sale

Peter Landsman4 Comments

In Pictures: Sweetwater Gondola Towers Fly

Peter Landsman1 Comment

Teams from Doppelmayr and Timberline Helicopters put on a show yesterday in Teton Village as they flew 21 towers for JHMR’s new Sweetwater Gondola. The new gondola rises out of the base area with a mid-station at Solitude and tops out next to Casper Restaurant. With each tower flown in 4-6 sections, Brian and his co-pilot completed somewhere around a hundred laps up the hill over six hours using a UH-60 Black Hawk.  There’s still a lot of work to go before November 24th but Sweetwater is starting to look like a lift!

Continue reading →

News Roundup: Villages

Peter Landsman2 Comments

Mi Teleférico to Build 11th Gondola Line in La Paz

Peter Landsman3 Comments

The urban ropeway revolution will continue in Bolivia’s capital city of La Paz, where President Evo Morales announced Friday an 11th gondola line, Linea Celeste (Sky Blue Line) will join the Mi Teleférico gondola network.  La Paz and the neighboring city of El Alto announced the Red, Yellow and Green gondola lines in 2012 and the world’s largest urban gondola system opened throughout 2014.  President Morales unveiled plans for phase two with six more lines in 2015 with another added to the mix last February.  All 11 lines will be 10-passenger monocable detachable gondolas built by Doppelmayr. This latest investment of $110 million comes on top of $234 million for phase one and $450 million for the first six lines of phase two.

13775790_1455945891097548_85183511035693449_n

The Sky Blue branch will stretch nearly 9,000 linear feet with four stations, 27 towers and 159 CWA 10-passenger cabins. It is expected to be the busiest line in the system, serving the heart of the city and up to 4,000 passengers per hour at six meters per second.  The three existing lines operate at up to 5 m/s.  A trip from end to end on Linea Cileste will take 11.8 minutes.  A line previously dubbed Sky Blue will now be known as the Gold Line.  At the current rate, Mi Teleférico is going to run out of colors soon!

FOLLETO (85x61cm)OK

Continue reading →