From today's Union Leader newspaper, 12-6-2021:
https://www.unionleader.com/news/bus...497f23466.html
Dave
And in case the link doesn't work:
GILFORD — A plan that would significantly expand facilities at the Gunstock Mountain Resort got a warm response from a near capacity audience in the Base Lodge on Saturday that included Penny Pitou, the first American skier to win a medal in an Olympic downhill event.
The turnout came on the heels of an equally well-attended Nov. 16 meeting of the Belknap County Delegation, at which the delegation was ostensibly poised to remove three of the five current members of the Gunstock Area Commission: Chair Brian Gallagher, Gary Kiedaisch and Rusty McLear.
Earlier this year, the commissioners asked the delegation to unseat fellow Commissioner Peter Ness over allegations that Ness had an apparent conflict of interest in trying to sell Gunstock a software system his company had developed and because he was verbally abusive to employees.
In a motion filed in Belknap County Superior Court for an emergency injunction to prevent their removal at the Nov. 16 meeting, Gallagher, Kiedaisch and McLear said the delegation’s effort to replace them was retaliation for their wanting to remove Ness.
Judge James O’Neill III denied the motion, but scheduled a hearing on the matter for Dec. 23.
Opened in 1937 as the Belknap Mountains Recreation Area, Gunstock is located on land owned by Belknap County and its operation is overseen by the Gunstock Area Commission, whose members are appointed — and can be removed — by the delegation.
Made up of Belknap County’s 18 New Hampshire House of Representatives, the delegation is seemingly divided on whether to privatize Gunstock.
Under the proposed master plan, Gunstock, among other improvements, would see an increase in skiable terrain; get a new lift and a toll road to the summit; and possibly have an on-slope restaurant and hotel.
Tom Day, who is Gunstock’s president and general manager, said the vision being presented Saturday represented “a long-term project and a long-term investment” for the mountain.
“We’re not going to go and do something we can’t pay for,” he stressed.
Several speakers said the expansion proposed by the master plan would ease overcrowding while getting more people to the summit, which would be great for visitors and also for Gunstock’s bottom line.
McLear, who developed the Inns at Mill Falls and Church Landing in Meredith, which he sold earlier this year, said the Gunstock Area Commission has ideas regarding a hotel at Gunstock.
Gunstock is already “a great ski area,” McLear said, and the challenge is to “build the right kind of hotel” that would enhance it further.
Asked if the hotel would generate money for Belknap County, Kiedaisch replied that “there would be a couple bites of the apple” including lease income that would go to the county and a percentage of the hotel’s revenue that would go to Gunstock itself.