Alyeska Resort has been owned by local ski bums, a French baron and, since 1980, a Japanese railroad tycoon.
Now Alaska's only genuine ski resort is for sale again and likely will be sold by the end of the year, according to the man who has run Alyeska for decades. Chris Von Imhof, Alyeska's chief executive, has worked at the resort since the 1960s and has been involved in each of its subsequent sales.
"This will not be a fire sale," von Imhof said. "It is the complete operation, the resort, the restaurants, the tram, the mountain and the real estate."
Alyeska owns the Anchorage Golf Course off O'Malley Road and 55 undeveloped acres just below its ski slopes.
Von Imhof said he expects that Alyeska's next owner will develop that land.
"We have the hotel and the skiing, but we need more of a village," he said.
Shareholders of Seibu Holdings Inc., the Japanese company that owns the resort, voted in early June to sell Alyeska and a Toronto hotel as part of a large sell-off of resort properties. Seibu owns 70 hotels and 30 ski resorts in Japan, along with four major hotels in Hawaii. Seibu founder Yoshiaki Tsutsumi built the railroad company into a high-flying investment group in the 1980s.
From 1987 to 1990, Forbes magazine listed Tsutsumi as the world's richest man.
But a worldwide bust in resort properties in the early '90s sent Seibu into several rounds of re-organization. Tsutsumi was convicted of securities fraud in 2004, and Seibu was delisted from the Tokyo Stock exchange. The company has been under pressure to raise cash since. A Japanese financial news service reported last month that Seibu's Prince Hotels, which oversees Alyeska, lost about $320 million in 2005.
Von Imhof, who said Alyeska generally operates $2.5 million to $3 million in the black every year, would not discuss possible buyers.
"It's an opportunity (for Seibu) to divest and raise funds and also allow an investor to buy the property for less than was invested," von Imhof said.
In all, he said, Seibu has invested about $200 million in the resort since 1980, including building the mountain's tramway and the 307-room Alyeska Prince Hotel, both of which opened in 1994. He said he hoped the resort would sell for more than $50 million. Seibu has retained Lehman Brothers and resort-consulting firm Trammell Crow to oversee the sale.
Von Imhof said he informed Alyeska's staff of the decision to sell June 28. Most Girdwood residents have gotten the word.
"This is the fourth time the resort has changed ownership and each one has resulted in expansion," said John Gallup, chairman of the Girdwood Board of Supervisors. "The bigger question is what's going to happen to Girdwood as a resort. What is the new owner going to do about expansion."
Debate over expansion in Girdwood has long centered on Alyeska. Among the next-big-thing possibilities that perpetually hang over the town are various golf course plans, new ski areas in Winner and Glacier creeks, and the notion of selling the town as a tourist base camp for day trips to Whittier and the Kenai Peninsula.
"This is more a summer resort than a winter resort in some ways, with all the tourists through here," said George McCoy, a longtime Girdwood real estate broker. "Admittedly, they don't stay that long, maybe three or four hours. If we get a new buyer who knows North American resort properties, it could be the best thing that ever happened to Girdwood."
Alyeska's history predates Alaska statehood. In 1954, a group of six Girdwood skiers installed a rope tow up the mountain. Francois de Gunzburg, a Frenchman with ties to the Rothschild banking dynasty and a youth spent skiing the Alps, purchased the budding resort in 1960 and imported a full-sized ski lift from Europe. Alaska Airlines, hoping to create a destination that would entice Outside tourists onto its planes, bought the property in 1967, then built Alyeska's first lodge after the 1969 earthquake.
Seibu bought the property in 1980 after Tsutsumi took a personal tour of the mountain.
Daily News reporter Matt White can be reached at mwhite@adn.com or 257-4350.
