The Summit County Citizens' Voice is reporting that CNL Lifestyles Properties, a Florida-based real estate investment trust, is privately pitching the sale for 7 of its holdings, which include the base villages at Stratton Mountain, Copper Mountain, Mammoth Mountain, Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia, Ontario's Blue Mountain, and the occasionally struggling village at Whistler Creekside. The sale also includes the Village at Baytowne Wharf, a Florida golf destination, and adds up to 426,000 square feet of commercial real estate, all of which is going on sale for $142.5 million.
CNL has spent the past decade buying up ski resorts (16) and base villages (7), including Crested Butte, Maine's Sugarloaf, New Hampshire's Loon Mountain, and Northstar-at-Tahoe, and leasing them back to the operators, as CNL does to Vail Resorts with Northstar. CNL's war chest was also an attraction for ski area owners hampered by tough access to credit during the recession, and helped them expand their holdings in the ski world alongside their much bigger portfolio of golf course development and senior housing facilities.
CNL is starting to dump some of its holding because it's REIT (real estate investment trust) expires in 2015, at which point the trust is required to liquidate its entire portfolio. While the properties are being listed in a bundle, they're also being listed out individually for anywhere from $9.9 to $30 million. CNL could be thinking that with ski town real estate values starting to climb again, it's time to cash in on the good deals it made during the recession.
· Is Copper Mountain's base village up for sale? [Summit County Citizens Voice]
· CNL Lifestyles Properties