Save My Ski Resort!!

As a snowboarder currently living in St. Louis, Missouri, snowboarding is already difficult enough.  Unfortunately, St. Louis’ local ski hill (Hidden Valley) is in danger of being shut down, leaving thousands of St. Louis skiers and snowboarders without a place to ride and hurting local outdoor sporting goods stores (take away the one place to ski and snowboard in St. Louis, and ski and snowboard sales plummet in St. Louis).  For anyone living in the Midwest, you know how hard it is to be a skier or snowboarder.  Unfortunately, skiing and snowboarding are in danger of becoming even more difficult to enjoy if St. Louis’ single resort (and the closest resort in a radius of 8 hours) closes its doors forever.

This all started when the newly formed city of Wildwood decided that it should start charging ridiculous taxes to the local ski resort that has been around years longer that the new city ordinance.  The city is making it difficult for the owner of Hidden Valley to expand the resort, add tubing runs for children, and increase the size of the parking lot even though the resort is attempting to develop land it has owned for years!  Basically, the city is making it impossible for the owner to improve his resort without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city (They city wants $250,000 before they'll give the resort permission to add 250 parking spots to its lot!  A $1000 per parking spot?!).

Hidden Valley is becoming the least profitable ski resort owned by Peak Resorts simply because of the money being spent to appease the local city ordinance that is constantly looking for new ways to tax Hidden Valley.  So Peak Resorts is thinking about closing Hidden Valley forever because of its struggle with the city of Wildwood, Missouri.