Mt. Hood Meadows Withdraws Purchase Offer for Mt. Bachelor; Board Staying On Sidelines

The buyers, who both have standing offers in front of shareholders, are Eugene, OR-based Pape Group, which already owns 23% of the estimated 1380 outstanding shares, and Powdr Corp., the Utah-based owner of several ski resorts. Pape Group is offering $21,100 per share. Powdr is offering $20,100 per share. Both offers end next month, Pape's March 9 and Powdr's March 16.

Pape's offer includes an offer to pay as much as $25,000 a share for people who commit to selling by the aforementioned deadline but choose not to execute the transaction until 2005. Randall Pape, head of Pape Group and the former president of Mt. Bachelor Inc until he resigned last week to focus on the buyout, has spoken against the sale to Powdr Corp. because it would take ownership outside the state. Ironically, if Pape wins majority control of the company, it says it would hire Intrawest of Vancouver, B.C. to manage the resort.

Intrawest runs the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort in B.C., which draws some 2 million visitors a year. Mt Bachelor, which has been hurt by bad weather and poor attendance the last couple of years, had 480,010 visits last season. Still, Mt Bachelor is considered Oregon's premier skiing resort.

In addition to trying to acquire majority ownership of Mt. Bachelor, Pape Group also is trying to gain a healthy share of Inn of the Seventh Mountain, one of the residential resorts that serves Mount Bachelor. Pape Group is financing Innspired LLC, a Eugene-based LLC founded by Douglas Cochrane that reportedly scooped up 26 of the resort's 262 condominiums for an average price of $26,000, and has eyes on another 24 units, all of which the company plans to renovate.

Innspired's plans also include acquiring and update the circa 1974 inn's convention center, as well as the restaurant building and ice rink. The company that owns the core areas is Seventh Mountain Management Inc, which is reportedly is in arrears on a $4-million note it signed at the time it purchased the property from San Francisco-based Moana Kauai Corp.