Sunday River 2030 -- Huge Improvement Project For Maine's Largest Ski Resort
Looking to the future is never the wrong move when it comes to running a ski mountain. To that point, Sunday River, Maine is in store for several improvement projects that will be coming together over the next decade.
The Sunday River 2030 project has come out of a long-term capital improvement plan that first began being developed in 2008 after the mountain joined Boyne Resorts, the third-largest resort company on the continent. This initial envisioning process included multiple groups of stakeholders and created a set of experiential "zones" across the resort which guided decisions and investments. The 2030 vision builds on this foundation by establishing a set of five guiding principles, or pillars, to steer future development based on feedback and insights from season passholders, resort team members, and New England skiers.
The plan over the next ten years is broken into four phases-first steps, short-term, mid-term, and long-term. Several of the projects that are part of the first phase are already underway and include:
- Purchasing the Sunday River Golf Club. In 2019, Sunday River began managing operations of the Sunday River Golf Club. In order to make improvements and achieve growth, this month, the resort purchased the course and solidified the long-term future of one of the most spectacular mountain golf courses in New England.
- Acquiring unique ski-in/ski-out real estate on Merrill Hill. With the recent purchase of 450 acres of land adjacent to the South Ridge and Aurora Peak areas of the resort, Sunday River will be offering unparalleled mountaintop home sites with ski-in/ski-out access via a new chairlift, located in the heart of the resort.
- Adding Dual-Frequency Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology for Chairlift Access. Sunday River will install dual-frequency RFID technology ahead of winter 2020-21 to offer direct-to-lift access for ticket and season pass holders. Once a guest has a Sunday River-enabled RFID card, they will be able to load lift tickets or their season pass product onto the card and head directly to the lift upon arrival. The dual-frequency technology was unveiled this winter as the first of its kind in the world for Sunday River's sister resorts: Big Sky Resort in Montana and Loon Mountain Resort in New Hampshire.
- Renovating the Resort's Largest Conference Space. Conferences and weddings have become of vital importance to Sunday River's year-round sustainability as a business. As such, the resort will renovate the Grand Ballroom in the Grand Summit Hotel to not only improve the appearance of the space, but to incorporate new technologies for audio-visual services to provide an excellent guest experience.
- Installing an Observation Tower at the top of North Peak. A new observation tower will be built atop North Peak as phase one of enhancing year-round offerings at the resort. The tower will be accessible by the resort's signature Chondola lift, which is open in the summer and fall for scenic lift rides.
Projects that will be part of the short-term, mid-term, and long-term phases of the Sunday River 2030 project include replacing and/or upgrading several of the mountain's chairlifts, enhancements and upgrades to the snowmaking system, the addition of a hydrotherapy spa, the addition of a mountain coaster, as well as several others projects that will upgrade and enhance the mountain as a whole.
As the project continues, one can stay informed by following Sunday River on any of its social media pages or by heading to the Sunday River 2030 website.
Photo Credit: David McLain/Sunday River
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