Mt. Sima board holds summit to save Whitehorse ski hill

A summit to save Mt. Sima got under way in Whitehorse Thursday.

The cash-strapped ski hills board of directors invited about 40 stakeholders, including government and city officials, to the closed-door meeting.

The multi-million dollar facility is in desperate need of funding to continue operating.

The summit was called in response to news earlier this year that Mt. Sima is broke, in debt, and needs more money just to stay open.

The facility has a brand new, state of the art ski lift, a beautiful lodge, and now a summer adventure park. At least $12 million in government money paid for it all.

The Mt. Sima directors now say they need at least $400,000 to stay open.

City of Whitehorse director Rob Fendrick said they are looking at all options for the hill, from a complete shutdown, to operations continuing as they are today.

"The problem though is the parameters are that it needs to be a sustainable operation. And the way governments are today with their own funding restrictions means they have to come up with a different model, and it's going to be an exercise in deciding what kind of model is going forward in terms of, is it going to be full winter operations, full winter and summer operations, limited operations or no operations at all," said Fendrick.

For the summit tonight, the Sima board brought in special expertise from western Canada to talk about how community ski hills can operate sustainably in small communities.

The meeting is being billed as an information gathering session. A second meeting next week is planned to come up with solutions.