Almost a decade after Intrawest sold Panorama Mountain Resort, the resort owner is back. Well, at least its planners are. Panorama and Replay Resorts have teamed up to create a new master development plan for the ski hill 20 minutes from Invermere, B.C., in the Purcells. Replay is a Vancouver-based resort planning company partially made up of former Intrawest employees.
“Replay is a great group of tenured and visionary people,” says Steve Paccagnan, president and CEO of Panorama. “You can get myopic when you stare at the same resort day in, day out. They bring an outside perspective that will help make Pano the best it can possibly be.”
With a master plan completed in 1998 (by some of the people now at Replay), Intrawest turned sleepy Panorama into a four-season destination with a modern lift network, an award-winning golf course and vibrant village. In 2010, the owner of Blue Mountain, Tremblant and other resorts, sold Panorama to a small group of local investors. In the last four years those owners have groomed $25-million into the resort, mostly focused on the skiing: a new quad chair, terrain expansions and snowmaking.
The new partnership with Replay will focus on the village. “We want to complete the hug of development around the upper village,” says Paccagnan. Where there’s now just a parking lot, they’d like to see the resort’s first full-service hotel and a mix of residential and commercial space, including a spa.
With initial planning just getting underway this winter, he says it’s too soon to pin a number on the investment, but the hotel will be the priority. Construction on it could start as soon as this summer.
