The recent $44.6 million dollar overbid contract before the Governor and Executive Council for the replacement of the Cannon Mountain aerial tramway asks a continuing question:
Should New Hampshire be in the ski area business?
Completed in 1980 and used beyond its design capabilities, the tramway is a centerpiece of a ski area inside a historical state park that itself has a powerful Gilded Age hotel lineage and a history dating before the Revolutionary War.
Franconia Notch State Park is in New Hampshire. But my question remains: Should New Hampshire be in the ski-area business?
Some years ago, a consortium of experienced local business leaders based in Littleton, including Joel Bedor of Mount Washington Hotel preservation fame, created a quality, realistic, and detailed plan to lease Cannon Mountain from the state. The plan included a clear direction to preserve the historical integrity of Franconia Notch State Park and then upgrade the entire infrastructure of an aging Cannon Mountain, thus bringing it to what it’s always had the potential to be: a world-class skiing destination.
The 30-year lease would have brought millions of dollars in lease payments into the state treasury, plus a decisive expansion of tourism, improving economic conditions across the entire North Country.
But here we are, beleaguered taxpayers of New Hampshire. A broken-down state-run ski area and unrealistic state contracts that are costing New Hampshire taxpayers millions of dollars, with no real or apparent strategy from Concord except to continue on a well-worn path of more of the same.
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