After Canada’s Red Mountain announced that it was crowdfunding the sale of its ski resort with its “Fight the Man, Own the Mountain,” campaign, it seems crowd sourced, community-owned ski resorts may just be catching steam. A group out of Nevada calling itself One Reno has started a marketing campaign to gauge interest in crowd funding capital to buy Lake Tahoe’s Mt. Rose Ski Resort (which received its first snow of the year last week).
Resort owner Fritz Buser sent an email to pass holders in early 2016 announcing he was ready to sell the resort that has a passionate local following. Enter One Reno. But according to a report in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, the group has yet to set up a website or crowdfunding page, leaving many to wonder if the campaign is all a giant ruse. “There’s enough big money in the Reno/Tahoe area to make this community-owned,” One Reno Marketing/Social Media Manager Ben Gaul said. “We want everyone to have access to the mountain and keep it from becoming corporate.”
The Daily Tribune raised some skepticism about crowdfunding in general, and crowdfunding ski resorts specifically, warning readers to look into campaigns before donating. “If we were asking you for blind money right now … Sure, I’d be skeptical too,” One Reno responded. “So far, we haven’t asked a single person for a dime. Before we ever DO ask anyone to invest any money, rest assured those people will be completely up to speed on the particulars.”
But we digress. The point of these crowdfunding campaigns is to keep local hills local and out of the corporate ski resort system. Whether that’s good or bad for an area’s long term health is obviously still up for debate.
