Alyeska Resort owner, John Byrne, talks in-depth about the Area Master Plan

By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times

Photo courtesy of Alyeska Resort Alyeska Resort owner, John Byrne, has completed the master plan for the resort, which goes to the Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission for a vote Dec. 10. Byrne said he would like to build the resort for his two daughters, Kalee, 8 (left), and Noelle, 11, who would be part owners someday.

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When John Byrne, a 48-year-old Alta, Utah, real estate mogul, bought Alyeska Resort from Seibu Corporation last year—officially closing the deal on Dec. 1—he spoke to the media a week later at a press conference talking about making Alyeska a world class ski destination and four-season resort. In February, he spoke again to an eager audience attending the Girdwood 20/20 Annual Dinner. Byrne was the featured speaker and gave an enthusiastic speech about a Master Plan being drawn up that would transform the resort and the valley, with a mountain base village, expanded ski terrain including a second tram to the top of the mountain, and additional trails for hiking and mountain biking. The Master Plan, he said, would be presented in the fall of 2007.
As promised, Byrne produced a Master Plan for the resort by the end of October, which was unveiled at last month’s Girdwood Board of Supervisor meeting Oct. 15. Representatives from the resort gave a general overview of the planned development for Alyeska both on and off the mountain.
There’s a mountain of detail to this Master Plan. Byrne and his team including internationally renowned design firm SE, local anchorage based DOWL engineers, led by Girdwood Resident Tim Potter, have all worked together for months, and, if fully realized, will transform Girdwood from a small ski town attracting mainly Anchorage skiers, to a world renowned ski resort and year-round international destination.
Alyeska is already attracting attention from major magazines touting its new owner and ambitious plans for opening up backcountry skiing accessible by lifts. Powder magazine had an article about Alyeska in its October issue and Outside magazine’s November issue has a small piece on the resort calling it “The most quixotic eight-figure splurge” and mentions the plans to build a mini-tram to increase the vertical drop from 2,500 to 3,350 feet. Ski Magazine rated Alyeska the sixth best mountain to visit in the 2007 issue featuring two pages of photography from local Girdwood resident and photographer Simon Evans. Evans captured Byrne skiing Slowboy 1 at sunset last season with the Turnagain Arm in the background.
But it is the future development of the resort that most intrigues locals and observers from abroad, and its all in the hands of one man, John Byrne, who spoke for two hours with the Turnagain Times in an exclusive interview to discuss the Master Plan in detail.
We met on Oct. 22 at 11 a.m. at the Pond Café at The Hotel Alyeska. Byrne sat across from me, and unrolled a large print out of the resort’s Area Master Plan, covering most of the table top. He quickly started describing various parts of the plan, details he has memorized from countless hours of discussions with engineers and designers.
The first question Byrne addressed was not, however, the Master Plan, but that other potential land development adjacent to the resort on land owned by the municipality in Glacier/Winner Creek. Byrne clarifies that there is no relationship between the Master Plan for the resort in regard to planned development of Glacier/Winner Creek. City planners have expressed interest in developing a second ski area on the property, and potentially a golf course, and residential housing. Byrne said he has met with the mayor and city administrators, and while he believes the resort’s Master Plan would integrate well with the potential development plan of Glacier Winner Creek, he said they have no interest in pursuing the project at this time.
“The municipality has determined they have to hire a consultant and develop a plan,” he said. “To me the opportunity is the expansion of Alyeska. It makes no sense to me to develop a new ski area on its own. If the muni initiates that process, then we might have interest; so far they haven’t. I don’t think it makes sense for us or anyone else to develop it other than as an expansion of Alyeska.”
But Byrne added that he sees Glacier/Winner Creek as an asset simply as it is—a wilderness area at the doorsteps of The Hotel Alyeska, where hotel guests and locals can easily and readily access wilderness.
“It’s incredibly beautiful out there,” he said, “and it’s a great amenity that there’s wilderness only 100 yards away. There’s a real question in my mind whether Glacier/ Winner Creek should be developed at all.”
With that said, our attention returned to the resort’s Master Plan, and to describe the plan as ambitious would be a vast understatement—it is monumental in scope.
The Master Plan encompasses everything from an outdoor concert venue, relocating and building a new Sitzmark with an indoor music venue, an outdoor adventure area adjacent to the Tanaka lift, single-family home lots for sale, building a Nordic Center, building and relocating chair lifts, and building two villages—an Alyeska base village on the site of the existing Daylodge and land adjacent to the Jade Shop, and a second mountain base village on land next to the hotel, adjacent to the Winner Creek Trail.
The villages would include condominiums, restaurants and cafes, retail shops, and 300 residential units in each village.
“One of the big ideas was to bring the base village down closer to the road, which would give us room not only for more beginner terrain but also summer concerts and other activities,” said Byrne.
As for the Sitzmark, the resort’s old mountain base bar and grill, Byrne said he expects to tear it down in three years if all goes as planned. The new Sitzmark would be built at the proposed site of an outdoor concert venue at the current location of the Alyeska Ski School and ski patrol buildings. The new Sitz would be 10,000 square-feet and hold between 400 and 450 people in a two-floor building with a balcony upstairs and a music stage and bar and grill, and downstairs there would be a snack bar, lockers and a picnic area. Construction is expected to start next summer with the grand opening in the 2009-2010 Season.
The design for the outdoor concert venue would entail a deployable tent with amphitheater seating along the slope immediately above the existing Daylodge, facing out onto the Arm with a seating capacity of 2,500 and 3,000 people. The concert venue could be ready in two or three years.
Byrne said the Daylodge is second in line to be torn down and replaced, but the existing building will remain until the new Daylodge is built—expected completion is in the next three years.
The idea for the Alyeska Base Village, Byrne said, was to create a pedestrian walkway from the Daylodge parking lot up to the Challenge Alaska area, and bringing the village down closer to the road, which would allow for more beginner terrain during the ski season, and during the summer allow for concerts under the tent pavilion.
Byrne envisions holding summer festivals and theatre as well as concerts both outdoors at the concert venue and indoors at the new Sitzmark.
“We’d like to build a venue not only for ourselves but for other people to put on shows,” he said.
As for residential housing and condominium development, Byrne explained that there would be a mix of products, both multi-family condos and single family homes and cabins.
“I want land along Arlberg Avenue and Chair 7 for single family homes,” he said. “It’s a big guess what people want to buy. It’s more likely we’ll sell the lots and let people build there own homes, but keep architectural control with regard to what’s built.”
In total, Byrne said 12 to 15 single family homes could be built on the land between Arlberg and Chair 7, with an additional 15 sold on other tracts of land. The total number of units within the entire Master Plan would be 1,000, made up of a mixture of products: single-family condos and fractural ownership (a new term for time-sharing). Byrne said he would develop no more than 50 percent of the developable sites and sell the remainder of them. He expects the bulk (80 percent) of building construction to be completed in a seven to ten year period, but some sites could take longer.
In anticipation of the enormous work and real estate transactions on the horizon, Byrne established Alyeska Real Estate Company, L.C., and is building a new real estate office in front of the East Condos, staffed by six to eight people.
As for the East Condos, rumors have been swirling that Byrne would perhaps buy out the current owners and tear down the building, but he disproved that notion and said he has no interest in buying them out or in trying to force them out.
“If I really wanted to force them to leave, I would not be building next to them,” he said. Byrne does own one wing of the East Condos, known as the Nugget next to the Sitzmark, which was torn down last week.
“We tore down the Nugget, and in the future will tear down the Sitz and someday hope to bring the slope down past the East Condo building to Olympic Circle,” he said. “If the East Condo people would prefer to stay where they are, we’ve made provisions for parking on the side. I’m fine with their decision either way.”
That is where Byrne also plans to build a new chair 3, realigning the top terminal to the North and bringing it down the slope and taking it out of the choke of the run, reducing the steepness of the run, and making it safer at the bottom where people tend to congregate at the lift line and outside the Sitzmark.
When Byrne starts talking about the changes to chair 3, his passion and real interest in the Master Plan comes out. This is the area of the plan that really gets Byrne excited—the skiing part, and one can sense that this is the driving force behind his initial interest in purchasing the resort.
Byrne plans on investing $25 million alone on mountain improvements and the expansion of ski terrain. The centerpiece of the plan is construction of a second tram, extending from the existing tram at the top of the mountain, which will carry skiers to the top of the headwall.
“This will get us into that select club of ski areas with over 3,000 feet of vertical,” said Byrne. “There’s only a handful in the country, and it will add some terrific advanced and expert terrain.”
Byrne repeatedly skied this section of the mountain last year, taking a helicopter to the top of the mountain to better understand the mountain and the possibilities for expanding ski terrain. He skied two sections that he hopes to open up with the mini tram: Tea Cup Bowl and Slowboy.
“We see this being the Tea Cup Tram,” he said with a smile. “That’s very exciting; possibly beginning in ’09 and being open for the 2010 and ’11 ski season.”
And Byrne doesn’t stop at the top of the mountain; he would like to see a backcountry gate at the top of Tea Cup Bowl that leads skiers down into the Virgin Creek drainage.
“You would need to be properly fit with a shovel, probe and partner,” he said. “You could spend your day skiing backcountry and return to the resort by TV Corner. It could be an alternative to Turnagain Pass.”
Byrne added that lift-assisted backcountry skiing was pioneered in the 80’s and 90’s at ski areas in Alta, Utah and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
In addition to these proposals, there are other less extreme ski plans like replacing and relocating chair 4 with a high-speed detachable lift (a $5 million cost), and changing the alignment of chair 1 to make it an upper mountain lift.
Byrne hopes all the additional ski upgrades puts Alyeska on the map nationally and internationally, translating into higher annual ticket sales. Right now the annual sale of lift tickets is 160,000 to 180,000 annually. Byrne would like to see that number increase to 250,000 to 300,000 annually.
Aside from winter recreation, Byrne’s wants to work extensively on developing summer activities on the mountain offering additional hiking opportunities by expanding the trail system and making the mountain easier to hike by implementing switchbacks on steep terrain, opening up mountain biking trails. And for kids and adults alike, he’s looking to build a mountain coaster in the outdoor adventure area on Tanaka Hill, and possibly adding one or more zip lines at several locations on the mountain.
Of course, if you build it they will come, which means more people and the automobiles they drive. To accommodate the larger number of vehicles, underground parking will be constructed, and the Daylodge parking lot will nearly double in size. There will also be a new parking lot closer to the tram and hotel.
Byrne said they are striving to not only build the resort with a vision of economic sustainability, but also a long-term commitment to incorporate environmentally sustainable practices. The resort has already started the process by offsetting the electrical output or carbon footprint of 100 percent of the energy used by its tram by purchasing 403,200 kilowatt-hours of annual renewable energy this year. Purchase of the carbon footprint translates into $10,000, some of which will be contributed to the wind farm project at Fire Island.
“Another environmental thing I’d like to see happen is more recycling,” Byrne said. “We continue to recycle cardboard. We’d like to expand to recycling aluminum, and plastic, but the Transfer Station doesn’t accept it right now.”
In regard to human resources, Byrne stressed that he wants to work with local business people and residents on developing local businesses, so it’s not all resort venues.
“We’d like to integrate their ideas into the fabric of the resort,” he said. “We’re looking for the right opportunities.”
He specifically mentioned is high regard for The Bake Shop, a popular eatery on the Boardwalk in the East Condo complex.
“I feel very strongly that we need to keep The Bake Shop in the Base Village finding a solution that works for them,” he said. “I love eating there.”
Byrne said he’s also working with the Java Haus, a local coffee café that was a popular hangout for locals when they were operating at the corner of the boardwalk in the East Condos. The owner, Emma Kramer, has signed an agreement with the resort to operate at the Daylodge starting in November, and it is a working relationship Byrne said he’d like to maintain in the long-term if things work out this year.
So now, with a Master Plan in hand, Byrne must wait until Dec. 10 when the Anchorage Planning and Zoning Commission meet to vote on it. If they approve the plan, it will clear the way for the largest development ever to take place in Glacier Valley, and one of the largest in the state.
For Byrne, it will be a legacy he hopes to leave behind for his daughters, Kalee, 8, and Noelle, 11.
“We’re here to stay,” he said. “I think of myself as owning the resort with my children. The Alyeska Resort Master Plan approval represents for me the end of the beginning. It has been great working at the resort with old and new friends alike. Living the dream.”