Feted as hot new resort, ID's Tamarack goes bust

By JOHN MILLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

BOISE, Idaho -- Tamarack Resort in central Idaho billed itself as the first new destination ski resort in a quarter century when its first customers climbed aboard lifts in December 2004. Four years later, the resort operation, including lodging, is shutting down Wednesday, leaving owners of resort real estate once worth millions fearing the worst. Factors dooming Tamarack, at least for now, include a spending spree by French owner Jean-Pierre Boespflug that drained a $250 million construction loan, tight credit markets, collapsing resort real estate demand, foreclosure litigation and $20 million in unpaid construction bills.

Financiers at Credit Suisse Group are pulling the plug after a $2.8 million operating loss since Oct. 20 - "greater than the receiver (or anyone else) anticipated," according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press. Mom-and-pop ski areas come and go, the victims of fickle weather and fickle finances. Where there were once more than 800 such U.S. resorts, there are now about 475. Still, to find a failed Western resort approaching Tamarack's size and aspirations, Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, can recall only the 1974 demise of Stagecoach Ski Area, about 20 minutes from Colorado's Steamboat Springs.

Tamarack, on the shores of Lake Cascade reservoir, has seven lifts. Of 2,100 planned chalets, condos and town homes, only 250 are completed, near a Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed golf course.

Another 174 residences sit half done, a mountain lodge is similarly incomplete and the centerpiece Village Plaza required emergency measures late last year to protect it from winter's destructive forces. Tennis stars Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf bolted from a luxury hotel project, and Bank of America threatened to remove ski lifts after Tamarack missed payments. Credit Suisse and lenders it represents are now owed more than $275 million on the construction loan. They've committed to chipping in $1.7 million, on top of a previous bridge loan of $10 million in November, but the money is well shy of the cash needed to finish the ski season, let alone open up the golf course, Wilson said.

Meanwhile, George Bacon, Idaho Department of Lands director, said he has received Tamarack's $250,000 annual lease payment for the 2,100 acres of state land where the ski area is located. The next installment isn't due until January 2010. "The real telling point will be next year, to see if the lease is going to continue," Bacon said. "If the lease were to end, the state could look and see if there was someone else wanting to take over what remained."