Thread: WTF Rusty?

Shithouse....

http://www.junemountain.com/JuneRelease.pdf

well that's sad news

Sled skiing anyone?

Sounds like Rusty is playing his hand at getting some major concessions for the plans they have had for June (like developing the rodeo grounds.)

Sucks for June Village, it is going to kill some of the local businesses. I hope the FS makes them replant everything back to original.

This sucks. June has a great vibe and is teh only reason I still go to Mammoth area on the weekends. All the money and resources went to Mammoth

^^^That is why June operated "at a loss" for 26 years, because Mammoth set it up that way. Typical corporate accounting.

It is a fun mountain, and a great storm day alternative to Mammoth. It's only downside was lack of hard terrain.

Getting to the Negatives is going to be a bitch now.

Originally Posted by Eastside

Sled skiing anyone?

I'll break trail.

So now mammoth just buys the businesses in June for cheap, flattens them and puts in more nasty condos. Rusty land grab??
Mammoth is only good during the week. I will speak with my money and hope others do the same. Damn, sad day...
Co-op anyone

http://forums.mammothmountain.com/vi...p?f=13&t=13693

For those who want to read more.

I agree it is about a land grab (or more exactly land use change.)

unfortunately, Mammoth does not have what it takes to run a small, local ski area

the FS won't let them get away with just shutting it down - something will have to give

I smell an opportunity.

Originally Posted by telemike

I smell an opportunity.

"Maggot Mountain" does have a certain quality, don't it?

I wonder if they will let people return their MVP passes? Not that I would anyway.

I wish there were more alternatives for weekend skiers. I will continue to ski Mammoth because that is the choice I have. It is Mammoth, or count on Baldy/Waterman for snow.

This highlights one of the nice things about San Francisco: Tahoe has more resort options. In socal you are stuck with Mammoth or local mountains.

Originally Posted by Long duc dong

This highlights one of the nice things about San Francisco: Tahoe has more resort options. In socal you are stuck with Mammoth or local mountains.

The other nice thing to highlight is not living in SoCal.

Originally Posted by Ottime

The other nice thing to highlight is not living in SoCal.

There's that.....

Originally Posted by Long duc dong

I wonder if they will let people return their MVP passes? Not that I would anyway.

I wish there were more alternatives for weekend skiers. I will continue to ski Mammoth because that is the choice I have. It is Mammoth, or count on Baldy/Waterman for snow.

This highlights one of the nice things about San Francisco: Tahoe has more resort options. In socal you are stuck with Mammoth or local mountains.

Yes, they are allowing a full refund of MVP pass, but not pass cash that was purchased with the pass.

For anybody interested there are some county/FS meetings scheduled in July, see my link above.

Give it back to the town

This petition is quickly approaching 1,000

http://mammothtimes.com/content/june...ki-season-gone

June Mountain shuts down; 2012-13 ski season gone
June 22, 2012
By
wendilyn@mammothtimes.com
wendilyn@mammothtimes.com

June Mountain Ski Area on Thursday suspended its operations for the foreseeable future, Mammoth Mountain Ski Area announced on Thursday.

The resort will shut down immediately. Its summer season, set to open yesterday (Thursday), was cut down.

The 2012-13 winter season will not happen at all, leaving the lifts idle and employees scrambling to find work.

The news came as a “complete surprise” to June Lake’s incoming county supervisor, Tim Alpers. He was in Southern California on business when he found out.

“I was wondering why my phone started ringing off the hook,” he said. “When my wife, Pam told me, I thought maybe I misheard her. Then, I saw Connie Black (the owner of June Lake’s award-winning Double Eagle Resort and Spa) had called and I knew it was bad.”

What made the news worse was the abruptness.

“I’m concerned about the complete lack of warning,” he said. “I think we need to call a special board of supervisors meeting, a town hall meeting, we need to look at the lease, we need to see if there are any options at all, see if any entrepreneurs might be willing to look at buying it. This is going to be absolutely devastating to the whole community.”

Alpers was not the only one caught off-guard.

“A lot of people are going to be out of work,” said Black, who said she is the second largest employer in June Lake (after Mammoth Mountain), with about 80 employees on the payroll. “This is a real blow to the June Lake community.”

“We are all talking among ourselves, we are wondering how the community is going to absorb this kind of impact. Do we say, ok, this is the way it is, or do we put our heads together and try to figure out a way to change this.

“We’ve lost a lot of people in the past few years. If we keep going this way, June Lake would be a ghost town.

“Right now, we just don’t have enough information to know what the facts are but we are going to find out.”

It came down to a business decision for Mammoth Mountain, CEO Rusty Gregory said in a press release.
“June has operated at an annual deficit each year since its purchase in 1986,” he said.

“It is time to invest some of this subsidy into the analysis and planning required to position the resort for a sustainable future, then secure the approvals and financing required to create it.”

Elsewhere in the press release, communications director Joani Lynch said in the weeks to come, Mammoth Mountain will be working to determine if and to what extent it can absorb June’s year round workforce, which suffered 75 layoffs this season as a result of a low-snow year.

June was heavily subsidized by Mammoth Mountain.

Mammoth purchased June Mountain in 1986 with the idea of significantly increasing the size of the resort by building new facilities, extending new runs to the June Lake Village, and fostering additional developed ski areas along the San Joaquin Ridge, resulting in a connection between Mammoth and June Mountains, she wrote in the release.

“For a number of reasons, these plans were never realized and June Mountain has, in turn, suffered from an identity crisis that has both stifled its ability to achieve its full potential and required substantial financial subsidy from Mammoth on an annual basis.

“Cessation of operations will help the company dedicate its focus to a new future for June Mountain. Mammoth will be working with its partner the U.S. Forest Service to reach the best possible result in this endeavor.”

http://mammothtimes.com/content/june-mountain-gloom

June Mountain gloom
June 29, 2012
By
Wendilyn Grasseschi
wendilyn@mammothtimes.com

There is no shortage of gloom in June Lake.

When Mammoth Mountain Ski Area announced last week (June 21) that it would close down the June Mountain ski area at least until the end of the 2012-13 ski season, the reaction was swift and tense.
“I think it’s been pretty clear the entire eight years since I was elected that this is exactly what I have been working to avoid,” said June Lake’s county supervisor, Vikki Bauer.

She said she has had to fight local anti-development groups who tried to stop or slow the big, 90-acre, 780-unit Intrawest condominium development project called the Rodeo Grounds—a project she believed was critical to the long term success of June Mountain.

That project now appears to be dead after Mono County staff confirmed this week that Intrawest had asked for, and received, a refund for all the money it deposited toward the Rodeo Grounds plan in January of this year.

The same parcel of ground was also listed for sale for $2.9 million earlier this week, according to local realtors.

“With that said, I am still here now and starting to do what I can about it in the next six months,” said Bauer, who will lose her seat to supervisor-elect Tim Alpers in January.

“I spoke with (ski area manager) Carl Williams and Rusty (Gregory, CEO of Mammoth Mountain). I have called a special June Lake Community Advisory Committee meeting for July 10. Rusty will speak. I will work closely with the Inyo National Forest (June Mountain is on forest service land and is operated under a “special use permit” between the forest and MMSA) to review the lease and look at options.”

More fallout came from Alpers.

“It’s devastating,” he said. “This is a community that was already barely hanging on and this is going to be devastating.”

“If this goes through, June Lake could be a ghost town,” said Connie Black, longtime resident and Double Eagle Resort and Spa owner.

Dozens and dozens of similar comments made their way onto Internet social media sites and hundreds of emails and phone calls were exchanged as residents struggled to take in the news.

A week later, there is just as much fear and not much more understanding of what might happen next.
Gregory, who delivered the news to the general public via an email last Thursday, said the “door isn’t closed” on re-opening the mountain—but not this summer and winter.

Even if the mountain were to reopen next season, the impacts to June Lake might be irreversible.
A year—or more—is a long time to wait for a job that might not come back.

About 650 people live in June Lake, according to the 2010 Census. There are 13 full-time employees who work at June Mountain, with about 200 employees needed to keep the mountain running on a busy winter weekend, according to Gregory.

What makes the issue of what to do with June Mountain especially complicated is that the ski area, like MMSA, is on public land, not private land. The minute the federal government gets involved in business, things usually get both more intricate and more time consuming.

The ski area is on Inyo National Forest Service land under a “special use permit” that allows MMSA to run a ski area operation. The permit was granted to MMSA in 2006. It is a 50-year permit and can be revoked if the permit holder does not meet the terms of the permit (see accompanying story on p. 16).

Although MMSA has indicated that it will offer all of June Mountain’s fulltime employees jobs at Mammoth Mountain Ski Area this winter, it is the rest of the employees and the indirect impacts that the shuttering of the resort will have that worries local residents.

Making lemonade out of lemons

“I talked to some of my students when this happened and we realized that 30 percent of their parents are employed by June Mountain,” said Lee Vining Elementary School teacher Anna Strathmore. “Then we started adding up how many of their siblings and relatives worked for the resort, or worked in businesses that depend on the resort. We put a “J” by all the ones who work directly for the resort and an “H” or “R” by the names of everyone who works in the hotel or restaurant business. Pretty much every single one of them has family members who will be impacted by this.”

Her students, young as they are, understood immediately what could happen to them.
“My freezer is filled with dozens and dozens of cans of lemonade,” she said with a laugh. “They all are worried about their parents or their friends’ parents losing their jobs and the end of their little community, and they decided they were going to do a lemonade stand and give the proceeds to Rusty Gregory to help save June Mountain.”

The students said they know the money they make won’t alone save June Mountain, but they had to do something, she said, and that’s what they chose.

The lemonade sale will be next week in Mono City at Strathmore’s mother’s house.

The students, many of them members of the June Mountain race team, are also writing a letter to present to the Mono County Board of Supervisors next week at the board’s July 3 meeting (see breakout box).
“Many of them were angry,” she said. “But I reminded them, they still have to be respectful, they still have to be courteous.”

Black said this past week has been terrible for June Lake residents.

“We are still in shock, still trying to understand what our options might be,” she said. “I know Gregory has agreed to come to June Lake on July 10 to talk to the community, but that’s a long way away and we are still trying to find out more information about this.”

It could have been handled better, she said.

“It was just so abrupt to get information like this that will have profound impacts on June Lake,” she said.

She, too, is getting ready for the Tuesday Board of Supervisors meeting, where she and other June Lake residents and business owners intend to come out in force, putting pressure on the county to get involved.

“This affects June Lake, yes, but it also affects the county,” she said. “The county takes in a lot of revenue from the visitors that came to the mountain.”

(A preliminary study done by the June Lake Coalition a few years ago shows the county receives about $200,000 a year in transient occupancy tax from June, in a $59 million total county budget).

Can anyone else save June Mountain?

Then there is Jarrod Lear. Lear is a 10-year June Lake resident, who worked for June Mountain as a ticket taker. The closure of the mountain prompted Lear and a group that he said includes local groups, community members, and organizations like the Mono Lake Committee, to organize to fight the closure.
“We have investors ready to purchase June Mountain,” he said. He declined to name whom those investors might be. He said he recognizes there will be challenges to make June a functioning ski area again, given the long history the ski area has of operating in the red. But he said he believes the threat of closing the ski area will prompt a solution.

“We, as a town, are ready with a cooperative solution in place as soon as a decision is made by MMSA,” he said, while again declining more details.

He also charged that June Mountain was never really given a chance to be successful.

“Mammoth has under-budgeted our resort for so long while making costly improvements to Mammoth Mountain,” he said.

“We hope to reach a compromise with Mammoth to either release their permit or find a new plan sooner than this ski season. If that is not feasible, then we hope the general public will recognize what’s going on and make an extra effort to spend a little time in June Lake this winter and help increase our commerce.”

He said his group, which as of yet does not have a name, would be ready with a clear message and plan by the July 10 meeting with Gregory.

Black, Alpers and Bauer all said they are talking to potential investors and community members who might be interested in buying the ski area and/or forming a cooperative, should Mammoth Mountain decide not to re-open the mountain, but none of them could be more conclusive.

For anyone interested in the Jaded Local's take:

http://www.powdermag.com/stories/jad...al-june-gloom/

^^^and be sure to check out the props for Gunder while there...http://www.powdermag.com/latest-news...do-photo-camp/

Sucks.

But, money doesn't lie. py economy and anti development = closed mountain. Don't take me for some right wing, pro condo honk but the reality is the numbers don't work at June. I'm no economist (although I did take that class twice in college) but it seems to me those that want to hold onto the small town vibe and resist corporate america (for many, many valid reasons) are now going to pay the price. If Intrawest wants to build 780 condo units it will put people to work and ideally get people to June Mt on a consistent basis.

Shitty, no-win situation.

Money may not lie, but accountants do. The town and mountain could survive with out 780 condo units, at least they do not need to be built as a high rise eyesore at the Rodeo Grounds. A real euro-style village, not that faux crap in Mammoth or Winter Park could work well. They certainly do throughout hundreds of small European ski hills.

None of us are privy to the numbers Mammoth, Rusty and Starweed use, but there are many small hills that do well enough to survive if ran and positioned right. No June will not be a West Yellowstone Club, or a Beaver Creek, but it could be a Brian Head or MRG and the town could survive, and maybe even thrive.

"The town and mountain could survive with out 780 condo unit..." But it's not surviving. Are Rusty and MM fudging numbers to justify closing June? Why? Maybe someone will buy it and do it right. Would take some deep pockets for very thin margins I imagine.

This does indeed suck, but the reason is actually due to complete lack of interest. That place is a ghost town %95 of the year. You can say what you want but it is "IMO" a flat boring mountain unless it is a powder day. The on mountain food is HORRID. And the place is like Canyons when it comes to lifts. Sucks for the town but until they can get more beginer/novice families and pump up the quality on the hill (stewpot slims styrofoam and plastic and shit loads of trash) is not gonna play well going forward.