Telemark owners poised to surrender resort
Tue, Sep 14, 2010 - By Tom Held of the Journal Sentinel
The owners of the Telemark Resort, the historic Nordic ski destination near Hayward, are poised to surrender the resort to their mortgage lender, a move that would create more uncertainty for the major ski and mountain bike events that use the property.
Stressed financially, the Telemark Interval Owners Association will vote Saturday on a proposal to turn over the property if a sale cannot be completed by Oct. 1.
The ownership group, which bought the resort out of bankruptcy in 1999, closed the lodge on May 5 and has deferred mortgage and real estate payments due to its limited cash flow. A “friendly foreclosure” would relieve the owners of the $1.35 million in outstanding mortgage debt and roughly $350,000 to $400,000 in annual maintenance costs, according to Gary Crandall, the president of the interval owners association.
Getting out from under that financial strain would be a positive step for the roughly 1,700 members of the ownership group, those who own time shares at Telemark.
The transfer of ownership, however, could keep the American Birkebeiner, the Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association and the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival – the upcoming mountain bike races founded and run by Crandall - from using the property.