DESIGN
Loon Mountain, Bretton Woods
and Keystone.
The 1972 and subsequent amendments
to the United States Environmental
Protection Agency’s Clean Water
Act had a profound impact on the
ski resort industry. Mountain resorts
are built on environmentally sensitive
terrain and not all ski resort developers
followed what would now be deemed
sustainable or green design principles.
“This was one of the factors that
caused policies and regulations to become
much more stringent to protect
natural habitat and water systems,”
Cushing said.
To stay on the leading edge of the new
requirements, SE Group acquired an
environmental consulting firm in the
early 1980s and expanded its services
to include environmental permitting.
The next major shift in the ski industry
occurred in the late 1980s,
when ski resorts became much more
elaborate with expanded recreational
activities, amenities, services and
overnight accommodations.
21st-century
mountain resorts
To meet the growing demand for designing
complex, sustainable mountain
resorts and communities, SE
Group merged with a landscape and
architecture company, expanding services
to include detailed landscape and
architectural planning and site design
as well as land planning. SE Group also
expanded its environmental services to
include public lands projects.
“Many resorts were hosting hundreds
of thousands of visitors every
winter and operations shut down in
the summer. That is not sustainable,”
said Cushing, referring to the oneseason
paradigm that many resorts are
finding is no longer viable to remain
profitable. Most mountain resorts have
evolved to offer year-round attractions,
including mountain biking, ziplining,
bungee jumping and festivals.
SE Group helps its clients with
everything from strategic planning,
Snow Kitten used by Sno.engineering
permitting and design to construction.
It currently has 150 projects on the go,
including its largest project to date
which is being built in China.
When it comes to planning a mountain
resort, every project is different
and the timelines can be long. For instance,
SE Group began working on
British Columbia’s Revelstoke Mountain
Resort in 1992 and it opened for
business 15 years later.
“Revelstoke was an interesting project
because here’s a resort that has
one of the highest vertical drops of any
resort in North America and is one of
the largest in terms of skiable terrain,
around 3,000 acres, all serviced by four
Most mountain resorts have evolved to offer year-round
attractions, including mountain biking, ziplining,
bungee jumping and festivals.
Zipline at Stowe Mountain Resort
PHOTO CCOURTESY OF STOWE MOUNTAIN RESORT
PHOTO CCOURTESY NE SKI MUSEUM
36 September 2019 | snowopsmag.com
/snowopsmag.com
