New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘The community wanted their mountain back’
Re-opened Middlefield ski resort now a destination for all seasons
Imagine an ice maker the size of two stacked shipping containers, spewing chunks high in the air for days at a time to create a football field’s worth of frozen water in a 24-hour period.
That’s what it takes to create a snow tubing course at Middlefield’s Powder Ridge Mountain Park & Resort. That tube run was set to be ready for action by Black Friday.
“That is what we refer to as our snow factory,” said Sean Hayes, president and CEO of Powder Ridge, gesturing proudly at the $1.5 million Demaclenko snowPro 260.
“It makes granulated ice, which we can till to a fine, almost powdered snow,” Hayes said, gesturing at a huge mound of ice chunks perched above a muddy slope. “It really complements our other snowmaking and creates a very effective base.”
Despite heavy rain on Tuesday, Powder Ridge employees were set to push that mound of ice flat and then till it into a 450-foot-long run using heavy equipment.
Hayes is hoping for between 200 and 500 daily visitors as the season ramps up.
What will make for a successful season at Powder Ridge this year?
Hayes paused. His goal is to keep the attraction open year-round, with a range of activities to bring people into the outdoors to have fun. In coming weeks, the resort will host a winter festival with vendors, Santa, food trucks and an “ice bar” inside a huge inflatable igloo to entertain visitors.
“I think our whole thing here was the community wanted their mountain back,” he said.
Historic ski hill survives stall
The southernmost ski area in New England, Powder Ridge first opened in 1959 and prospered in the 1960s and ’70s under the management of the Zemel brothers, owners of a New Haven appliance store.
The park was even set to host a 1970 music festival billed as “The Second Woodstock” until the town of Middlefield pulled the plug at the last minute, resulting in a legendary fiasco that inspired a recent documentary.
But a run of warm winters in the 1990s and early 2000s forced the ski area to shut down in 2006. It remained dormant for seven years as new owners of the 255acre property attempted to create a huge water park at the site, stymied by the town.
In 2012, the shuttered ski area caught the eye of Hayes and his brothers Ed and Frank. The trio had launched the Brownstone Exploration & Discovery Park in 2006 at the site of abandoned quarries in Portland along the Connecticut River, making it a seasonal success.
Sean Hayes said he saw the same opportunity in Middlefield.
“We want to create a destination,” Hayes said. “We did it at Brownstone, we took a property that was basically a giant liability to the local town and converted it into an outdoor recreation.”
The brothers formed a management company to oversee both parks, and soon determined that Powder Ridge could not continue with its recent business plan especially as winters continue to get warmer.
“The only way we could do it here was we had to redo the entire business, we could not do it as a ski area. It just wasn’t going to work,” Hayes said. “How do you create the destination resort?”
The Hayes brothers looked back to the Zemel brothers, who had added a pool club and a host of summer activities to Powder Ridge to keep revenue flowing in the warmer months. New technology and sports trends allowed for even more options.
Powder Ridge soon added activities like mountain biking, paintball, disc golf and zip lines. Water slides and an astroturf-like synthetic tubing run add to the summer fun.
A chef with reality TV fame revived the event and catering business at the park’s restaurant,
Fire at the Ridge. Recovering to near its prepandemic peak, Powder Ridge hosted 75 weddings and corporate events last year.
In 2022, Powder Ridge added the Haunted Trail attraction, a chairlift ride followed by a half-mile walk through woods infested with spirits and ghouls. More than 15,000 people hiked the trail in 15 days in the first year, although a run of rainy weekends kept numbers lower this year.
Now the focus is on adding fun and a range of activities to winter, with tubing and snow sports for the kids and shopping, food and socializing down the hill at the ice bar for the adults.
All the newer attractions revolve around the mountain and the property’s rural landscape.
“There’s a way to make open space more effective and a revenue generator for the town,” Hayes said. “We’re a mountain resort you have to leverage the mountain.”
Warming chills region’s ski industry
Visitor numbers are growing steadily at Powder
Ridge even as warming weather continues to play havoc with the ski season. A recent study found that Southern New England was losing its snow cover at the fastest rate of any region in North America, with days with snow cover dropping from an average of 62 days to 31 in the last two decades.
Climate change is challenging ski areas across the region, and only four are still operating in Connecticut: Powder Ridge, Mount Southington, Mohawk Mountain in Cornwall and Ski Sundown in New Hartford.
Powder Ridge alone has announced plans to open so far this year: A live trail cam at Ski Sundown on Wednesday showed muddy slopes still tinted green with mere traces of white at higher elevations.
The Middlefield resort’s strategy to shift to year-round activities mirrors those of successful tourism businesses across Connecticut, said Anthony Anthony, chief marketing officer for the state within the Department of Economic and Community Development.
“They’re getting creative with the natural resources that they have,” Anthony said. “I encourage all businesses around the state to be thinking about how they can be accessible and grow and thrive yearround.”
State tourism dollars are increasingly going to promote outdoor activities like hiking and winter sports, Anthony said, with more spending on social media and niche marketing to those both within and outside of Connecticut.
“I’m willing to capitalize on anything that’s going to help us grow and be different,” Anthony said. “For example, I’m very excited by the fact that Powder Ridge has Connecticut’s only halfpipe… I love being able to promote that.”
Expensive evolution
Looking back over a decade of developing Powder Ridge, Hayes said he would think twice before doing it again. His company’s initial $5 million investment has ballooned into more than $20 million, with costs rising at a relentless rate and financing and insurance increasingly hard to come by.
Customers are also getting harder to please and less likely to tolerate long lines or inconvenience. The restaurant especially has been challenging due to the difficulty of hiring staff for an eatery with seasonal swings in patronage.
The resort’s owners also tangled for years with a Middlefield building official who they say had denied permits and slowed renovations. That official has since left and Hayes said the town is now working cooperatively with the company on planned Powder
Ridge additions including a proposal for seasonal campsites. The search for new attractions continues.
“It’s not that I don’t love Powder Ridge, I love what it does. I love who it is and what it is to the community. And I love developing her and bringing her back to life,” Hayes said.
On the hardest days, he thinks back to his childhood, exploring the outdoors with his brothers in a then-rural Rocky Hill. He wants that experience for his kids and grandkids, both at Brownstone and Powder Ridge.
“We want the kids to be kids, to be able to explore themselves and see who they are and what they are in a safe environment,” Hayes said. “Let them be kids. Give them the opportunity to explore, to jump off a cliff. I mean, where else can you go jump off a cliff ? Where else can you put a piece of wood on the bottom of your feet and step off the side of a mountain?”