KILLINGTON — Twenty years ago, the Snowshed base area would have been vacant on a Friday afternoon in July.
It hops with activity now, as mountain bikers use the chair lift and families tackle the ropes course in the adventure park. It is visible evidence that talk of the Killington ski area becoming a fourseason resort has become reality.
While the resort tends not to release exact attendance numbers, officials have said lift-ticketed sales during the summer have seen double-digit increases in each of the last few years. Business owners say the effects are being felt away from the slopes as well.
“Things are definitely changing for the better up here,” Liquid Art owner Beth Sarandrea said Friday.
Now in her seventh year on the mountain, Sarandrea said she saw enough potential that she decided to keep the coffee shop open on weekends in June.
“Last year we weren’t even open a single day in June,” she said. “I’m not going to say we’re making money yet, but there’s potential for seeing more. … I want to be consistent and I want to see the town build on being a four-season resort.”
Sarandrea thinks the mountain would be doing even better if not for an unusually rainy summer.
“I feel good about August and September,” she said. “I think it’ll be better than previous years. … I really think it is the way this community needs to move forward. We really can’t just depend on the winter anymore.”
Sarandrea and other said the near-catastrophe of the 2015-16 ski season showed that they did not want to depend on winter weather.
The Inn at Long Trail has long stayed open through the summer, though they would close for much of the spring to make repairs and go on vacation. Co-owner Murray McGrath said their summer business has gone up by about a third in the last few years.
“I always knew summer would be huge if someone got into it and stayed the course,” co-owner Patty McGrath said, adding that previous campaigns to pull in more summer business had fizzled after about a year. “This signified the first persistent effort and it’s really paying off.”
McGrath said the success is due in part to the targeting of multiple demographics. In addition to mountain bikers and through-hikers, she said, the mountain is pulling in families with the adventure center.
“People who like to get away for the weekend know there’s going to be music, Cooler in the Mountains (free concert) going — all those things add up,” she said.
Mary Cohen, CEO of the Rutland Region Chamber of Commerce, said the activity is even trickling down the mountain to the city and surrounding towns.
“We certainly have had quite a few people come down and look for trail maps down here,” she said. “ We need the locals to go up there as well in the summer — that would be a good base for them.”
Cohen said the whole region is expected to benefit from Killington’s expansion, and mountain biking is the centerpiece of the first phase of the regional marketing campaign.
“I think it’s safe to say we’ve seen pretty steady growth,” said Sasha Parise, general manager of the Karr Group, which owns Jax, the Foundry and the Pickle Barrel nightclub. “ The last two summers especially, we saw a marked increase in traffic.
This has applied to both the Foundry, which offers fancier dining, and Jax, which offers pub fare, pool tables and arcade games.
However, Parise said the growth stops short of the Pickle Barrel, which remains closed for the summer except for particular weekends with major events.
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