The new Blue Grouse gondola will speed some 1,000 patrons per hour to Grouse Mountain’s ski runs and attractions at the plateau, with plans to expand summer activities into mountain biking and a mountain roller-coaster.
Tom Gaglardi paused mid-conversation Thursday during his first trip up the new gondola at Grouse Mountain to marvel at the engineering feat of its construction.
“Jeez,” the Northland Properties CEO exclaimed as the gondola car hit the highest-angle stretch between towers, opening up the view below of Vancouver, the University of B.C. and English Bay’s cargo ships resting on the water like toys.
“This is my first time on it, this is really steep.”
Northland’s $35 million gondola is the company’s first major capital expense since buying the Grouse Mountain resort in 2020 with a vision to transforming the 95-year-old facility for the next several generations.
“It’s just a game-changer for Grouse and the perception of Grouse Mountain,” Gaglardi said of the new lift that’s been named the Blue Grouse Gondola. “This gondola gives us the opportunity to double the capacity (for) getting people up the hill.”
Blue Grouse will speed some 1,000 passengers per hour along its 1.7 kilometre route, augmenting the mountain’s existing red Skyride trams. The gondola has 27 eight-passenger cars or cabins now, with the potential to double that number.
“So people whose experience with Grouse is long wait times, (that) should be a thing of the past,” Gaglardi said.
Gaglardi paid a visit to Grouse Mountain early Thursday, about eight hours before the Blue Grouse’s opening, to inspect the final product and talk about his company’s expansive vision, which include plans to expand outdoor sports activities, including building new mountain-bike trails and a mountain roller-coaster.
After 2025, there’s a vision to rebuild the mountain base with more modern facilities and a major renovation and expansion of its mountaintop chalet to include more than 300 restaurant seats.
Longer term, there’s the possibility of a hotel, spa and conference centre on the other side of the mountain plateau, which is perhaps a natural impulse coming from a company that started out in hotels and hospitality.
“That real estate is really unbelievable,” Gaglardi said after stepping off a gondola cabin at the plateau and pointing to the east. “That might be a spot, so we’ve contemplated this building (so that you) can actually get off the gondola, into an elevator, across a walkway into a possible development.”
Grouse Mountain planned an opening to host some 190 dignitaries and guests, but District of North Vancouver Mayor Mike Little wasn’t available before deadline to talk about how Grouse Mountain’s plans fit with the municipality’s.
The resort owns 4.85 square kilometres of land on the Grouse Mountain plateau, but new buildings would require permits from the district. It leases the rest of the land it operates on from Metro Vancouver.
“It’s certainly not imminent, but it’s one of the things where we’re saying, ‘Where can you go from here?’ ” Gaglardi said.
Gaglardi’s Northland Properties has had a long history with hotels and hospitality in B.C. having started the Sandman Hotels chain in the 1960s, then the Shark Club, Moxies restaurant chain, and the Chop Steakhouse & Bar brand. It also owns the master franchise for 60 Denny’s diners in Western Canada.
The company, which also owns the NHL’s Dallas Stars and WHL’s Kamloops Blazers, got into the ski resort business by taking an ownership stake in Revelstoke Mountain Resort, which opened in 2008. Northland took over full control in 2009 after the resort hit financial difficulties.
“We ended up kind of liking (the business), which we didn’t really expect to,” Gaglardi said.
So, when Grouse Mountain’s previous owner, China Mingsheng Investment Group, put the local resort up for sale in 2020, there was a natural fit for Northland to want to enter the bidding.
“There was quite a bit of sentimental pressure for Grouse Mountain to be back in the hands of local owners,” Gaglardi said. A lot of that pressure, he added, came from Northland patriarch Bob Gaglardi, Tom’s father.
“Within the family, he was the guy who grabbed the baton early and said, ‘Hey, this is something we should really try to own,’ and he rallied us,” Tom Gaglardi said.
Winning the right to purchase Grouse Mountain, however, was competitive among “double-digit” bidders, he said.
COVID-19 made for a challenging start to the Northland era of ownership. Gaglardi said the health emergency delayed their initial plans by a couple of years, but “we’re a long-term family” and held out to capitalize on what he called “one of the jewels of Vancouver.”
Gaglardi said their plans, including opening up mountain-bike trails, are intended to cushion operations from the uncertainties of climate change.
The 2023-24 winter was one of Grouse Mountain’s worst years for snow in almost 50 years. So far this season, while November snows allowed for an early opening, only two of its four lifts, four of 15 ski runs and one of six terrain parks were open Thursday, with a snow base just 26 per cent of normal.
Climate scientists project that by 2050 bad snow years will be as frequent as good years and by 2080, some 50 to 75 per cent of North America’s ski resorts will disappear.
But Gaglardi isn’t fazed.
Summer is, by far, the resort’s busiest season, with attractions that include ziplines, theatre in the sky and grizzly-bear viewing, Gaglardi said.
“No matter what, people want to be in the mountains and there’s always attraction to be in the mountains, especially Grouse Mountain,” Gaglardi said. “We have to be ready for a world with less snow and we have to think about that and we are.”
With files from Glenda Luymes and Postmedia News