Turn your thoughts away from these dreary February days and think ahead to the hot and hazy days of summer.
Not this summer, but summer 2016. By then, if all goes well, the Blue Mountain Ski Area and Resort will also be home to a massive water park called Summit Splash -- wave pool, water slides and a "lazy river" feature where you'll drift along like old Huck Finn on the Mississippi.
Enticing, yes? Groundbreaking on the roughly $30 million project is scheduled for April 1, said Matthias Fenstermacher, vice president of Serfass Construction in Allentown and project executive for the long-planned park.
"A very cool thing," Fenstermacher said, speaking specifically of the panoramic views that visitors will enjoy from the wave pool but more broadly of the project itself, which will be built in phases and ultimately cover about 60 acres of the Palmerton-area resort.
Serfass was awarded the construction contract earlier this month. The project, however, which will create about 100 full-time and 400 part-time jobs, has been discussed for years.
"I started here about five years ago and one of the first things I was hearing from customers during the winter months was, 'Why don't you have a hotel here?' " Blue Mountain President Barbara Green said. "So we did a feasibility study for a hotel, and they said it's a 'no go' without a summer activity."
Green reviewed all the warm-weather activities offered at similar resorts -- zip lines, mountain biking -- and concluded none would create enough business to sustain a hotel.
But a water park? Camelback Ski Resort in Tannersville, less than an hour from Blue Mountain, had hit a home run with its own, Camelbeach, touted as the largest water park in Pennsylvania.
A park at Blue Mountain could draw up to 3,000 visitors a day, studies estimated.
"It's a good operational fit," Green said. "Between 3 and 5 percent of people will ski or snowboard and about 85 percent will go to a water park. To me it's a natural fit with a ski area. And Camelback has proven it can be done and done well."
Blue Mountain already offers such non-skiing attractions as disc golf and mountain biking. It also hosts weddings and other events, including a blues festival. Green said the addition of the water park should be more than enough to fill the planned 110-room hotel.
Blue Mountain is hardly the only resort looking to expand beyond the cold months, and the reason touches on one of the hot topics of the day -- climate change.
In December, the New York Times reported that fears of climate change were prompting many ski areas to convert into four-season destinations, adding spas, pools and other attractions.
The newspaper cited one report that said more than half of the Northeast's 103 ski resorts would not be able to sustain a 100-day ski season by 2039 because of warming.
Green, however, said the Blue Mountain project had nothing to do with climate change.
"What entered my calculus is that we would service 350,000 to 400,000 visitors [during the ski season] and for nine months lay dormant," she said. "It doesn't make financial sense to have all this property and not do anything with it."
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Copyright 2013 - The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)
