Dear Editor:
The opportunity to design the best ski resort in North America is a dream project that I was hoping would crown my professional career when I started it, more than twenty years ago.
It was the best project I was ever given. It also became a much more challenging job than I and many other people ever
anticipated, taking a very long time, with controversies that seemed to go beyond reasonable proportions, but I feel that with the final approval, the goal has been achieved.
We will be able to bring people to the highest point in Canada to ski year round and to comfortably look at a mountain scenery that anywhere else would only be available by helicopter. This will match and surpass the Eagles Eye restaurant that has become so popular near Golden, where I was able to create a similar project (Kicking Horse Mountain Resort) on a smaller mountain in a much shorter time.
Like in that project (and for that matter, like in the example of Blackcomb after Whistler was created), we know that the success of providing access to Glacier Dome and to Jumbo Mountain will not take anything away from the success of the other destinations.
I am pleased that the design team is still focused on the project and ready to bring it to the construction stage. The creation of the Jumbo Glacier Mountain Resort Municipality completes the process started in 1991, in accordance with the land use designation of the East Kootenay Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) table endorsed by the province in 1995 and by the East Kootenay Regional District by unanimous vote and request in 1996. The municipality allows us to move forward according to the mandate of the Environmental Assessment certificate (2004) and on the basis of the approved Master Plan (2007).
We have been incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to develop a great relationship with the Shuswap Band of Invermere and to move forward on the basis of a trend setting Impact Management and Benefits Agreement.
I was fortunate also to meet Grant Costello, the visionary proponent of Farnham Glacier skiing, who gave us
incredible support in the local community. To him and to all those who helped bring the project to this point, I wish to convey my deepest feelings of gratitude. To those who disagreed, I wish to say that I hope we can persuade them with facts that their fears were not necessary, and that at some point we will agree that this is a very good project.
We look with confidence at the cooperation with Panorama Mountain Village as a vital step for this project to become, with local support, the iconic destination for North American skiers, skiing year round, in British Columbia.
Oberto Oberti
Oberti Resort Design, Vancouver
