The future is looking a little brighter for a Fortress Mountain reboot as Alberta plans to make it easier to develop all-season resorts on Crown land, also known as public land.
More than 60 percent of Alberta’s 661,848 square kilometres is Crown.
Fortress Ski Area opened in 1967 on 1500 hectares of leased public land just north of present-day Kananaskis Village.
That was 11 years before Kananaskis Country was established.
The ski area closed in 2004 because it could not attract investment for needed upgrades.
Keeping the Dream Alive
The lifts might have stopped turning, but the ski vibe remained.
The resort became a popular movie set, starting with the 2010 filming of Inception, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio.
In 2011, KPOW Cat Skiing opened on the slopes of the mothballed ski area.
Meanwhile, a small group of investors and ski enthusiasts clung to the dream of reopening the ski area.
The all-season resort act could be the initiative that kicks life back into the moth-balled ski resort.
Alberta’s proposed All-Season Resorts Act (Bill 35) will, among other things, extend Crown land leases from the current maximum of 25 years to 99 years.
Chris Chevalier, President and Chief Operating Officer of Fortress Mountain Resort, calls it a “game-changer.”
“Our issue has been getting the big investor. We’ve been able to attract, I would say, small to medium investors under the current regime,” Chevalier said in an interview with the Calgary Herald.
He said 25 years is simply too short for anyone to make a decent return on the $55 to $65 million investment required to build five new ski lifts, a new day lodge, and to complete a water treatment and reservoir system.
According to Chevalier, Fortress Mountain has been lobbying the province for years to create legislation encouraging resort development on Crown land.
Will Provincial Parks Be Up for Grabs?
Not everyone is cheering the resort-friendly act. Some critics are worried about a provision in Bill 35 that enables the government to remove provincial park designation to allow resort development.
That’s a slippery slope.
“This Bill should be of major concern to all who value Alberta’s provincial parks and other protected landscapes. Once developed, there’s no going back to what that land was, and certainly not in an intact condition,” wrote Timothy Johnson in a letter to the Rocky Mountain Outlook.
Things have changed a lot since Fortress Mountain first opened nearly 60 years ago. The old ski hill is in a sensitive habitat and is surrounded by protected areas like Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and Elbow-Sheep Wildland Provincial Park.
If the All-Season Resorts Act becomes law, applications for tourist developments on Crown land will be handled by a new ministry in charge of water, public lands and environmental protection.
The act allows the province to classify public lands as resort areas and requires public consultation to determine where resorts can be located.
Alberta Wants To Take A Bite Out Of BC’s Resort Economy
Neighbouring British Columbia has had stand-alone regulations for resort development on Crown land for 20 years. According to the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, Albertans spend $2 billion holidaying in BC annually. Alberta wants that spending to stay in the province.
Bill 35 aims to keep more of these discretionary dollars in Wild Rose Country and boost Alberta’s visitor economy by $15 billion over the next 10 years.
At the same time, the provincial government hopes it will relieve pressures on mountain parks that have been grappling with overcrowding at popular spots like Banff townsite, Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, and Johnstone Canyon.
In 2023, about 1,200 vehicles crammed the Lake Louise parking lot every day during summer, while Parks Canada was forced to turn away between 3,000 and 5,000 vehicles daily.
The All-Season Resorts Act could be a lifeline for Fortress Mountain Resort, but Albertans will be furious if development spills over into provincial parks. The government’s own survey confirmed that Albertans want more parks and less development within parks. Will they listen to Albertan’s wants, or will the temptation of the wallet be too much to resist?
