Ski Season (Long the Short-Term; Short the Long-Term)

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It's ski season and so we imagine a number of our readers will be heading out West for some client boondoggles. We thought you'd be interested in knowing that, this past week, Sonnenblick-Eichner arranged a $60mm set of construction and financing loans for the joint venture that owns the St. Regis hotel in Park City, Utah. It's a 10-year financing consisting of separate loans secured by hotel revenue and condo inventory. Use of proceeds? Takeout existing debt on the property (Deer Valley) and construct more condos. The funds came from a domestic life-insurance firm.

Wait, what? A life-insurance firm funded $60mm worth of loans secured by hotel revenues and condo inventory? NOW...when there is, like, virtually no snow on the ground? Apropos, the Commercial Observer notes "some experts argue that climate change threatens to erode the ski industry's profits - although perhaps not over this loan's 10-year term. Last year, a group of researchers from the Arctic and Mountain Regions Development Institute and the University of Colorado, among other institutions, used a climate model to predict that the length of the Rocky Mountains ski season could decline by more than 50 percent over the next three decades, resulting in tens of millions of fewer recreational visits to the area." We hope the owners of those new condos enjoy Spring hikes and Sundance movies.