By Chris von Imhof
Special to the Turnagain Times
Photo courtesy of Randy Brandon
Mr. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi Owner of Seibu Leisure company of Japan (fourth from left) on his first visit to Alyeska in 1981. Chris von Imhof (far right) and next to him Michio Kobayashi in front of an Era helicopter with other Japanese staff and helicopter pilots.
In my previous chapter, I referred to the great robbery at Alyeska Resort on April 1, 1978 after the first Spring Carnival. Well, it's too long of a story, but it is published in a book, Cold Crime, by Tom Brennan with the subtitle: How police detectives solved Alaska's most shocking crimes.
On Page 147 the story is titled: Nightmare in a Ski Town. It starts, “Chris von Imhof awoke staring into the barrels of two pistols.”
“Are you going to shoot me?” he inquired.
The masked men wanted the cash from the Alyeska Resort safe. Well, I will never forget it as my entire family was held hostage during the robbery.
Under the ownership of Alaska Airlines from 1967 to 1980 Alyeska Resort had made great progress with the development of the ski area, the hotel and condominiums, and the development of the Alyeska subdivision. I received no financing or subsidy from the airline but managed to survive and grow the little local ski area to a successful year round resort.
However, Alaska Airlines wanted to expand the airline operation and needed more capital for its own business. So in the spring of 1980, I was informed by the President of the Airline, Bruce Kennedy, they had decided to sell Alyeska Resort. I was offered, if I was interested, to buy the resort at a discount if I could get the financing. Of course this was my hope and dream, but after lengthy consideration, I realized the resort needed more capital for the operation and expansion and needed someone with deeper pockets and resources.
For years Alyeska Resort had many large ski groups from Japan skiing on our mountain.
With the direct flights by many international airlines via Anchorage we developed a good business relationship with Japan. I asked Alaska Airlinene's Japanese representative Tom Yanagihara to search for a Japanese company if they might be interested to buy the resort.
In April of 1980, Seibu Leisure company of Japan, which operated over 25 ski areas in Japan and owned Prince Hotels, the largest hotel company in Japan expressed interest in our resort.
Seibu sent a four-man delegation of hotel and ski area experts and I showed them around for a week our ski area, hotel and real estate.
Three months later, I was notified that Seibu was interested to buy the resort. The owner of Seibu and Prince Hotels, Mr. Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, was listed by Forbes magazine as the richest man in the world. So I figured we had someone with deeper pockets that could really expand the ski area, build a new hotel and develop our real estate.
In the final negotiations, Seibu insisted that I come as part of the Alyeska Resort purchase and offered me a good management contract. We closed the sale of Alyeska Resort on Oct. 1, 1980 and started a new era under the ownership of Seibu.
Mr. Tsutsumi, who came in 1981, to visit Alyeska Resort to review plans to build a new first class hotel. He was actually surprised that we had also a large tourist market in the summer and decided we needed to built a 310-room hotel to make it large enough to be successful and profitable. He was not too impressed with our small Alyeska Nugget Inn and was looking for property large enough, so we had enough land to build the hotel, have plenty of room for parking and future expansion.
We took Chairlift 1 to the top and looked down the Northface side to the Valley and Moose Meadows. He asked me who owned the land, and I informed him the city of Anchorage. He said if we could buy the land from the MOA he would like to build a new Prince Hotel, northeast of the Moose Meadows below the Northface and connect the new Hotel with a Swiss 60-passenger tramway up to the Roundhouse. There he would build a new tramway terminal with two restaurants and shops. He also wanted to build a chairlift connecting the new hotel with existing ski area.
Yes, I must admit, I was very excited we had found an investor who had the money and interest to build such first class facilities and promised we would move forward to negotiate and buy the land from the MOA between the existing base ski area and the Nugget Inn, and the new proposed hotel and tramway site.
I also must admit, I was very lucky that I did not purchase the resort because the first two years after Seibu bought Alyeska, we had very poor and warm weather and lousy ski seasons.
I would have been broke before I really had a chance to develop the resort.
