Department of Justice investigating antitrust issues with Alterra’s plan to buy Arapahoe Basin
The federal government has asked the National Ski Areas Association, A-Basin and Alterra Mountain Co. to deliver detailed information about visitation, demographics and resort industry economics
Hugh Carey/The Colorado Sun
The Department of Justice is taking a closer look at Alterra Mountain Co.’s planned acquisition of Arapahoe Basin ski area.
The department has requested information from the ski area and the 18-resort Alterra Mountain Co., as well as annual surveys and studies of the resort industry conducted by Boulder’s RRC Associates for the National Ski Areas Association.
“It’s taking time,” said Alan Henceroth, the longtime boss at Arapahoe Basin, who described the information requested by the federal government as demographics of visitors, visitation numbers, financial information and “all the business issues” involving the ski area.
Alterra Mountain Co., which owns the Steamboat ski area and operates the city of Denver-owned Winter Park ski area, in February announced its plan to buy the 1,428-acre Arapahoe Basin from Dream Unlimited Corp, the Canadian real estate investment trust that has owned the Summit County ski area since 1998.
The Justice Department served the National Ski Areas Association and market research firm RRC Associates with civil investigative demands earlier this month. The inquiries seek data from RRC’s annual surveys of U.S. ski areas, including the NSAA’s yearly Kottke Report as well as demographic and economic analyses of the resort industry. In a letter to NSAA’s member resorts in the Rocky Mountains, the association on June 26 said it had worked with the federal government to narrow the scope of its inquiry to just ski areas in the association’s six-state Rocky Mountain Region.
Read more from Jason Blevins at ColoradoSun.com
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