Local elected officials last week got their first formal face-to-face with Whistler Blackcomb’s (WB) new Chief Operating Officer Belinda Trembath, who offered a midseason update on summer operations, as well as a look-ahead to the lift upgrades slated for this fall and winter.
The former GM of Perisher Ski Resort in her native Australia, Trembath and her husband recently settled in Whistler, and she spoke to the common thread uniting mountain resorts across the globe.
“Mountain resort communities are unique worldwide and yet share a deep love of the mountains which connect all of us,” she said at the regular meeting of council on Tuesday, July 18. “I’m grateful for the Whistler Blackcomb team and the many members of this community who have been so willing to share their knowledge, care and expertise. It’s been both humbling and energizing at the same time.”
Before offering an update on the summer season so far, Trembath spoke to the importance of the relationships WB has forged with the local Lil’wat and Squamish First Nations. The comments came on the heels of Lil’wat Nation Chief Dean Nelson declining to re-sign a Framework Agreement last month between the Nations, the ski resort, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, and the province, claiming that the relationship with the Lil’wat has never really been developed, despite his requests. The ceremony was expected to be a mere formality after the parties were unable to hold an in-person ceremony when the agreement was originally inked in 2020.
“The importance of our partnership and the meaningful engagement with our First Nations communities cannot be underestimated. Listening to their stories, learning from their incredibly strong connection to the land and from their prioritization of family and community is enriching and inspiring,” Trembath said. “We still have much work to do, and this will be a priority for me as I settle in, and beyond.”
Midseason metrics
Trembath said while visitation to the ski resort so far this summer is trailing behind last year, when pent-up demand for domestic travel was strong coming out of the pandemic, business has stayed consistent.
“We’re seeing a nice, steady pattern of visitation,” she said. (WB does not share business figures publicly.) “It’s been a steady rise in visitation over the last month, and we’re starting to see more folks in the bike park. I think there was probably some hesitation from bike riders initially, from wanting to see what it was like with the Whistler Village Gondola operating exclusively without the [Fitzsimmons Express]. I think it’s worked for us and we’ve had great, positive feedback.”
Asked if WB’s head office was “inspired” to invest in summer infrastructure at WB, given Whistler’s second season now sees more visitors than winter, Trembath said, “Nothing is off the table in terms of what we’re looking at as far as our Master Development Agreement goes, and looking for opportunities to draw people up into the alpine is important for us and we know it’s important for the community in terms of taking pressure off the village in the summer.
“We’ll continue to look at opportunities to invest in summer where it makes sense to do so.”
Fitz Express replacement ahead of schedule
The anticipated replacement of WB’s Fitzsimmons Express chairlift is moving ahead of schedule, Trembath told officials last week.
Announced last September, the plans to replace the existing four-seater with a high-speed, eight-person chairlift is meant to majorly boost uphill capacity from Skier’s Plaza. Trembath noted the new lift’s return and drive stations are already installed, while placement of the tower foundation continues, and concrete pours were slated for completion last week.
Installed in 2000, Fitz has long been the primary workhorse for the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, typically seeing more traffic from riders in the summer than from skiers and snowboarders in the winter. As work got underway on the Fitz replacement, bike park upload shifted to the Whistler Village Gondola.
“Watching the progress of the Fitzsimmons lift project alongside the reimagined bike park, loading onto the Whistler Village Gondola has been a testament to teamwork and collaboration,” Trembath said. “The depth of knowledge and innovation on the Whistler Blackcomb teams was impressive for me to learn about as we sought to minimize the impact on the guest experience this summer.”
Meanwhile, the first phase of WB’s replacement of its four-seater Jersey Cream on Blackcomb Mountain officially got underway on July 19, Trembath said, with testing at the bottom lift terminal to help determine the most suitable foundation design for the new high-speed six-pack that will take its place.
WB hopes to install between five and seven tower foundations and completely reroute its high-voltage distribution and snowmaking infrastructure this summer as part of the Jersey Cream replacement, work that will continue “well into the fall as we seek to minimize the disruption to our alpine hiking community,” Trembath went on.
“Our drive is to complete as much of the work as possible this year to give us a head start on next year’s aggressive construction timelines, given this lift’s location in the high alpine.”
The resort initially planned to upgrade Jersey Cream in 2023 as well, but confirmed in April that construction on the replacement .
What about that parking agreement?
At two hastily arranged special council meetings in March, mayor and council adopted bylaw amendments and a development permit that ultimately paved the way for the expansion of WB’s Fitzsimmons Express chairlift without the usual requirement for additional parking.
Under the current bylaws for RR1 zoning at Whistler Village Base, 0.50 parking spaces are required per hourly rated capacity of all base lifts. As the Fitz Express upgrade will significantly increase capacity from 1,850 to 3,300 skiers per hour, WB would typically be required to provide an additional 725 parking spaces.
Instead, officials are requiring the mountain operator to pay $200,000 annually in lieu of the additional required parking, until pay parking is implemented on WB-owned lots. The resort must also share parking revenues with the RMOW if it decides to implement pay parking, funds that would be directed towards transit and active transportation initiatives.
For a community that has watched as pay parking has spread across the resort, whether it be year-round pay parking in all of the day lots, or the introduction of parking rates at Whistler’s major parks as part of a pilot project, the decision against adding more parking spots at WB struck many as tone-deaf, particularly as the local cost of living balloons.
Another condition of the agreement requires WB to draft a parking study, with the results to be shared with the municipality, intended to improve the understanding of parking utilization in Whistler, quantify how parking is being used, and develop a database to inform the design of future parking solutions.
“One of the difficult things we went through this past spring was working on the parking agreement,” Councillor Cathy Jewett said to Trembath. “A lot of people don’t understand it’s going to be business as usual this winter in the parking lots.”
Trembath confirmed as much, saying the WB team is “always looking for ways to improve our efficiency in terms of parking and encouraging folks to choose transit over driving, but yes, the primary purpose this winter is to undertake a study to drive further improvements for the future.”
