Arcs 1950 demonstrated Intrawest Alpine style.
Snowshoe’s corporate owner Intrawest has announced the pending sale of two resorts in the Haute-Savoie region of the French Alps. A French resort operator called Pierre et Vacances will buy the lodging and commercial operations at Intrawest’s Arc 1950 Resort (part of Les Arcs) and Flaine Montsoleil (part of Flaine). In both places, Intrawest had recently clustered low-rise Alpine-inspired buildings instead of the monster-sized concrete behemoths that typify many French resorts originally developed in the 1950s and ’60s. Intrawest’s own parent, Fortress Investment Group— which acquired Intrawest in a leveraged deal at the height of the real estate bubble in 2006 for $2.8 billion— has run into continuing losses, and Intrawest CEO Bill Jensen had recently warned of asset sales amid a languishing ski industry.
