A tentative agreement has been reached to buy Telemark Lodge and Resort in northern Wisconsin, with an anchor tenant that says they would make it the "Lillehammer of the United States."
The plan is to have signatures in place by April 1. Mortgage holder Dick Short says he's confident this deal will be sealed. He says Paul Eckerline and Telemark Partners will purchase and operate Telemark.
Cable Chamber of Commerce Director James Bolen says CXC cross-country skiing Association will be the anchor tenant. He says CXC will build an Olympic grade training facility that holds monthly clinics.
"Those clinics run about 70,000 participants a year," says Bolen. "The intent is to have all of them housed at Telemark this year. So the boon for our area is going to be huge regionally. If each of those participants just brings one person with them, that's 140,000 more people coming to the Cable area in northern Wisconsin."
CXC Skiing Association spokesman Yuri Gusev says they'll create a strength and conditioning facility for skiing, biking, and running, a sports science center to test athletic ability, and a spa.
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"Most of our training camps for the elite team and the junior development team and the masters team will be at Telemark Resort," he says."So it will be our primary destination."
Gusev says they needed a home and Telemark Resort's trails make it perfect. He calls the resort "a mecca" of cross country skiing, and he hopes to make it like Lillehammer in Norway.
Details of the sale are not available yet. But Bolen says the current staff of 40 employees at Telemark will more than double to 100 by next month. He says the potential is to have 200 or more employees working there in a year.
