Greek Peak Mountain Resort: A Man and his Mountain
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Wednesday, 01 July 2009
Greek Peak Mountain Resort: A Man and his Mountain
Al Kryger has taken it upon himself to turn Greek Peak into a regional attraction.




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Talk about a big lift. When Greek Peak Mountain Resort opens for the winter ski season, it will skyrocket from a $6 million-a-year business to an estimated $22 million. The giant leap can be attributed to many years of hard work by Peak Resorts’ Chief Executive Al Kryger—plus support from the community, assistance from the government, and water.

Yes, water. In its liquid form, not frozen. This year, Greek Peak debuts a 41,000-square-foot indoor water park, extending the resort’s family appeal. “For most of the people who come to the Fingerlakes region, this is the wine country; there’s not a lot of kid-friendly places,” Kryger said. “With the indoor water park, it’s all about kids and families. It gives us a real edge.”

Greek Peak Mountain Resort: A Man and his Mountain
Al Kryger, chief executive
Also new this season are 106 condominium units, which are being sold in quarter-shares and rented to visitors. Together, the $45 million Hope Lake Lodge & Indoor Waterpark should generate approximately $15 million in annual revenues, plus stimulate $1 million or so in additional business on the ski slopes. It’s the first phase of a master development plan being shepherded by Kryger, who started his career at Greek Peak just a couple of seasons after it opened in 1958.

Whenever the resort has had a chance to grow, Kryger has figured out how to make it happen, from learning to ski and launching the ski patrol to tracking down local Italian-Americans to translate chair-lift assembly instructions (and then assembling the lift himself) and seeking investors to create Peak Resorts, Inc. in 1987. “If you’re not growing, you’re going backward,” he said.

Kryger has been looking forward since at least 1966, when he became Greek Peak’s general manager. Along the way, he oversaw the construction of more than 150 homes in the nearby towns of Virgil and Cortland; got his real estate license so he could sell those homes; oversaw construction of a gas station, sewage treatment plant, and an underground snowmaking system; and formed a few companies for the administration of those projects.

In 1975, Kryger got the board of directors to approve the first master plan. “We tried to get all the elements you’d need for a regional destination resort,” he said. “All the studies said the biggest tourism attraction is water. There were two valleys nearby; the one closest was the most likely and was part of the master plan.”

That plan came to fruition in 1998 when, with help from New York’s Environmental Bond Act, Greek Peak partnered with the town of Virgil to create Hope Lake. “We get water for snowmaking, and the town gets a recreation area,” said Kryger, a Virgil High School graduate. Kryger, of course, supervised construction of a dam to create the lake.

With the lake came the potential to add resort housing and other attractions, such as a golf course, spa, and conference center. They’re all included in the current master plan. “The idea is to create a destination resort within a three-hour drive of 40 million people,” he said. “It’s not going to be Vail or Aspen, but it’s going to be a good-sized regional attraction.” Kryger has had both Vail and the Wisconsin Dells in mind as he has crafted his vision for Greek Peak. His wife is from the Dells region; that’s where the idea of the indoor water park originated.

Kryger invited Jack Marshall, the former president of Vail Associates, Inc., to spend a few days at Greek Peak and offer his professional assessment. “His recommendations were to develop the village first so that people would have this super sense of arrival. Then you have the golf course, the conference center, and so on.”

Rural development
It will all happen in good time, said Kryger. “Real estate is what drives the capital side of the ski area expansion. We’ve got 1,539 units we can build, and we’ve got additional land we can trade with the state of New York for the ski area expansion.”

After the Hope Lake Lodge & Indoor Waterpark opens in October, Kryger will set his sights on improvements to the ski area. The third phase of development, including the golf course and conference center, should begin by 2011.

“One of the ways we’ve been able to get banks in here is we’ve gone to the USDA. They have a section that deals with economic development in rural areas, and we fall into that category,” he said. “We get government guarantees on 70% to 80% of the permanent financing. Once they put money into an area, they like to continue to grow it. They’ve expressed an interest in giving another loan guarantee for the ski area.” In the meantime, other investors have approached Kryger with suggestions for joint projects, such as horseback riding stables.

The lodge and water park project will generate 250 full-time-equivalent jobs, the ski area expansion 40 to 50, and construction another 170. “The economic impact is huge on this area,” Kryger said. “Plus, we hire the students at the colleges here.”

The only thing holding the resort back is the slow economy. The first-phase loans won’t be paid off until 68% of the new condo units are sold, and Kryger said it may take eight to 10 months for that to happen.

“In these real estate cycles, you get eight to 10 years of growth, then it gets overheated and goes into a crash. Being the age I am, I’ve experienced three or four of those.” His guess is that once visitors get to stay in the new condos this winter, sales will spike. “They see it, they experience it, and then they want to buy into it.”

Kryger isn’t worried. If anyone knows how to see a project through, it’s him. If the completion takes a little longer than planned or costs a little more than expected, so be it.

He remembers that first big project, the construction of the Italian chair lift. One of three employees at the time, he won the task when one of his co-workers quit and the other became the local police chief. Kryger had never seen a chair lift before, but he figured out how to get it done.

“It was the first chair lift in the area, really. It was like April through December, and we opened it in December—on time, on budget. I haven’t always been so lucky since,” he joked.
 
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