About six years ago, when Otto was the lone resident of a stretch of land along Route 94 in McAfee, N.J., Jack Kurlander, a former New Jersey door salesman, and his long-time friend John Fitzgerald scraped together $30,000 each to turn the land into a ski area. Today the area is worth $6,500,000 and Otto follows Kurklander everywhere.
To finance expansion, Great Gorge has sold two bond issues to skiers. The first was a $1,000 series and raised $360,000 while the second netted about $700,000 in $1,500 units. The issues were attractive because of the dividend options—straight 5 percent interest, or 3 percent interest and a season pass, or no interest and a season pass with preferred lift line privileges. Needless to say, skiers usually choose the last two options, so servicing over $1,000,000 in debt costs Great Gorge a paltry $9,000 annually. And the bonds have appreciated to the point where bonds from the original $1,000 series are selling for around $1,400 each. Kurlander says there is a hidden benefit, too—the bond buyers turn out to be the area’s best salesmen. After all, they have an interest in it.
The latest expansion program, Great Gorge North, was financed through a $2,500,000 bank loan. The area is connected to the original Great Gorge by trails and lifts and will open in mid-December, completely lit, covered with man-made snow and served by three Borvig double chairlifts.
At the same time, Playboy will open its splendiferous $20,000,000 hotel extravaganza about a mile away across the valley. Playboy will offer 700 rooms in two eight-story wings spreading out from a three-level main lodge. In the lodge area are nine different entertainment and dining rooms, a 24-hour-a-day delicatessen, sidewalk cafe and extensive meeting and banquet facilities. There is also an exhibit hall with a capacity for 2,220 people or 180 display booths. And the recreational facilities are endless. Right now, there are 27 golf holes. And a skeet range, fishing ponds, horseback riding facilities, indoor and outdoor tennis, indoor and outdoor pools, a cross-country skiing area, a snowmobile track and a skating rink are on the way. The Playboy complex also has an assortment of health clubs plus a shopping arcade, where Great Gorge will have a sporting goods store. Here, says Kurlander, the Gorge will market all the equipment and clothing that can be used in conjunction with the recreational facilities offered by Playboy.
Next winter a jigback tram will connect Playboy and Great Gorge, landing skiers in the new Great Gorge North area, but for this season it’s strictly busville.
Last winter, Kurlander says the entertainment at Great Gorge (he insists he’s not in the ski business) logged 250,000 skier-days, running 14 hours a day non-stop seven days a week. This year, with lift capacity increased to 12,000 skiers an hour from 7,000, and the parking expanded by 1,500 spaces, Kurlander expects to hit 350,000 to 400,000 skier-days. And if his past performance is any indicator, he’ll hit it.
Kurlander’s area management creed is simple. You must have night skiing, you must have snowmaking, and you must be in business in the summer. Well, anyway, it sounds simple.
For night skiing, the Gorge is only 90 minutes from downtown Manhattan, about 52 driving miles. When you’re there at night, it’s difficult to tell, either by the visibility or the number of people, whether it’s night or day. And Great Gorge people are avid skiers. Last winter, I was leaving the area around 6 p.m. It was drizzling steadily. A car roared into the slot beside mine and a breathless skier leaped out. “How’s the skiing?” he asked. “Well, uh, you know it is raining,” I said. “I didn’t ask that,” he replied, “I asked how’s the skiing.”
Kurlander’s snowmaking operation, powered by a 3,000-horsepower jet engine he got in a deal with Curtiss-Wright, covers every inch of ski terrain on the mountain. His budget for snowmaking is based on a natural snowfall of zero inches. As a matter of fact, Kurlander would just as soon it didn’t snow because, he claims, his man-made stuff packs better and lasts longer. Last year, Great Gorge spent $200,000 on snowmaking, and that didn’t include depreciation on the equipment.
In the summer, Great Gorge becomes a zoo. (Some claim it’s that way in winter, too, but they’re welcome to drive five hours to Vermont.) Kurlander found a man who had animals but no site, so they made a deal. He and the Gorge split the $1.50 admission ticket, while Kurlander got all the revenue from the cafeteria, bar and lifts. As a result, Kurlander now grosses $7,000 to $10,000 a week in the summer, enough to cover the payroll for all staff except the accounting department and mountain crew. This way, he can employ the bulk of his people on a year-round basis.
With the opening of Great Gorge North, Kurlander feels that about 50 per cent of his skiable terrain will be in operation. Now the main thrust of his program will be to capitalize on his extensive land holdings. In total, the corporation owns about 700 acres and leases another 1,000 acres on a 50-year deal from the government. This fall, construction began on 50 condominiums and vacation homes. “It’s only about an hour and a half to the city. Why not live here and commute?” says Kurlander. He has also negotiated a joint venture with Arnold Palmer, who will build several golf courses on the backside of the mountain along with clubhouse facilities. As part of the deal, Palmer is also involved in the condominium development.
What is Kurlander’s market? Many a Sunday skier has asked the same question: “Where the hell do they all come from?” The Gorge draws mostly from New York City and New Jersey, but people also make the trip from Philadelphia and even Washington. “I’m sitting in the middle of 30,000,000 people and I’ve got the only mousetrap,” enthuses Kurlander.
A key to Great Gorge’s marketing effort is its high school program. Last year, 350 schools were involved, with about 60,000 youngsters signing up for a 12-trip program that included skiing and lessons. This year, Kurlander is shooting for 500 schools. “We had to cut it off last year because we couldn’t handle any more,” he adds. Five Gorge salesmen are on the road pitching to the schools to make sure Kurlander hits his target.
In line with Kurlander’s belief that he’s in the entertainment business is his emphasis on keeping the customer happy. And he insists it starts with top management. “If we get a couple of letters complaining that our people were discourteous, we have to take a look at ourselves. If we’re walking around with long faces, it ricochets all the way down the line.”
To make sure his people are content, Kurlander doesn’t rely solely on his own enthusiasm, although it certainly plays a great part. He also has a social director to look after details such as staff parties and the company Christmas tree. He’s even running a ski trip to Europe this spring for employees, with the company picking up part of the tab. “They work their fannies off all winter and they’re entitled to a holiday,” says Kurlander.
Another secret of Great Gorge’s success is management’s ability to organize. During construction of the new North area, there were no less than five different contractors at work on the mountain at once, in addition to the Gorge crew. Yet everything seems to run smoothly, with three lifts under construction, a 5,000-foot pipeline for snowmaking underway and an extensive lighting system being installed, plus the blacktopping of a 1,500-car parking lot.
Things run smoothly because Gorge management pays attention to detail. This fall, for instance, Kurlander decided to hold a ski swap. Now ordinarily this would be a pretty simple affair. You send out a direct mail piece, do a little advertising, the people come to trade skis, you generate a little traffic in the shop and perhaps sell a few season tickets. But the Gorge is different. No less than 17 meetings were required to organize the swap. And to make sure it would run like clockwork, two dry runs were held before the big weekend. The result? In two days the Gorge grossed $54,000. Plus the public relations benefits were immeasurable as Playboy buses picked up bodies in Manhattan, whisked them out to northern New Jersey for a tour of the new hotel and the new North area.
As if Great Gorge South and North were not enough, Kurlander is already hard at work on his third and fourth areas. Area No. 3 is in Woodstock, N.Y., about two hours from Manhattan and two hours from Albany. Trail-cutting began this fall. The deal is a joint venture between Great Gorge and the owner of the land, with a 10-year management contract for the Gorge. Area No. 4 is Tocks Island on the Jersey side of the Delaware River, about a half-hour west of Great Gorge. “Now this is a real ski area,” says Kurlander. He claims it compares favorably, for instance, with areas in southern Vermont. However, it will be about four years before work starts. The ecology cult is entrenched for a long battle with the federal government, which plans to dam the Delaware River, form a gigantic lake and create a summer recreation area. With Kurlander’s ski area, the operation would go year-round and the slopes are situated such that they can use the same base facilities as the beach-sitters would use in the summer.
“I’ve known about Tocks Island for many years,” explains Kurlander. “As a matter of fact, if the roads to it had been a little better and if it had been a little closer to New York, I would have built there first instead of Great Gorge, but it was really too far away for night skiing.” As far as the ecologists are concerned, Kurlander thinks they better start thinking about the ecology of man instead of worrying so much about the land. “The average person has more and more leisure time on his hands and if we don’t supply him with more and more to do with his time, he’ll probably blow his brains out.”
What’s next on the Kurlander agenda? You can be sure it will be some wild scheme to provide somebody with something to do and a profit for Great Gorge. Kurlander claims to have maps of every inch of land within a 200-mile radius of Great Gorge, and he’s climbed every mountain that has any skiing possibilities. Sooner or later, he’ll have to slow down, but it will more likely be later. But then, Otto’s not getting any younger.
