If you’ve got more than five million dollars to spend, and also have elite bushwhacking skills, we may have found the lost ski area for you. The Conway Daily Sun spoke with the current owners of the former Tyrol Ski Area: Jim Progin and Judy Holmes. They are selling their 207-acre property for a price point between $5-$10 million. While the former trails have mostly been reclaimed by nature, there are still some hiking trails on the mountain and three buildings. There is the old base lodge that was gutted and renovated into a stunning 4000-square-foot Swiss chalet-themed home, a guest house that used to be the ski school, and the ski area’s old maintenance building. The zoning regulations that blocked it from becoming a commercial ski area again have gone away, so rebuilding a skiing operation is possible.
A few factors influenced the current owner’s decision. They are moving to Hanover, New Hampshire, which is home to Dartmouth College. Progin and Holmes are alumni of the Ivy League college, and many of their friends from their time there now live in the quaint town. Frequent trespassers may have also influenced their decision. A 2020 article from the Conway Daily Sun had the property owners plead for people to stop trespassing onto their private property. Unauthorized visitors committed “vandalism, unauthorized campfires, misuse of the trails and littering.”
The story of how Judy and Jim got the property is pretty hilarious. After the mountain closed in 1981, it eventually got sold to Walter Preble III. Walter had no interest in reopening the ski area and used the land to hide his drug empire. He bragged to associates and locals that he bought the land to leverage his cannabis dealings. In 1988, Barlett police chief Robert Snow completed his two-year investigation of the property and arrested Walter Preble III for importing 12.5 tons of marijuana from Jamaica, Colombia, and South Carolina. Retired real estate developer James Progin bought it from an auction in 1988 and announced that he had no intention of reopening the ski area. For a more detailed history of Tyrol, check out NELSAP and New England Ski History.
There are various options if a skier were to buy the site. You could try to reopen it as a ski area with lifts like how it used to be, but this would cost millions upon millions of dollars. Another concern would be the enormous competition among ski resorts around the Mount Washington Valley. A backcountry ski area is a more reasonable option, as the only thing you would need to do is clear the trails. Another option is making a network of hiking trails. An example of a former ski area that successfully did this was Mt. Agamenticus in York, Maine. Or you could keep the property as is, but the issue is that trespassers would likely remain an issue.
If you’re interested, you can contact the owners by emailing judy@judyholmes.com or japrogin@yahoo.com or by calling (603) 383-9051.
This article was originally published by Unofficialnetworks.com. Read the original article here.