Pretty Soon You Will Be Able to Ski in Texas — Well, in Grand Prairie, at Least

When we visited Tokyo a few years ago and our hosts told me about the indoor ski resort there, outskirts of Tokyo, I did not believe it until I saw the dome for Zaos, as I think it was called. Sure enough the Japanese loved to ski indoors. The indoor ski resort was on the way to the airport. Now I hear it may no longer exist. But that’s OK, because soon we will have own own little interior ski village in Grand Prairie.

And it’s not a little village, either: try a $215 million 350,000-square-foot indoor ski resort and a Hard Rock hotel. Does this mean we can ski in the middle of August?

Grand Prairie unveiled plans for a Grand Alps Resort and Hard Rock Hotel off Belt Line Road, north of Interstate 30 at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. The indoor ski resort — which includes a ski slope, ice climbing wall, luge track and winter play area — will include restaurants and specialty retail from Park City, Utah, and Vail, Colorado. Of course, we will need a place to buy ski hats and sunscreen!

Oh wait, indoors means we won’t actually NEED sunscreen!

Apparently the deal has been in the works for a bit, and Grand Prairie is even kicking in some dirt and about $100,000 in tax increment financing  to help launch the year-round ski facility, which will be located somewhere across Belt Line Road from Lone Star Park.

Be careful there: that’s the spot when power lines fell on my car about three years ago while I was barrelling west, bashed my front end and windshield.

Plans include a 300-room hotel with 28,000 of meeting space and 20,000 square feet of meeting space, plus restaurants, workout gym, luxury spa and resort-sized pool on the roof! The developer, Grand Alps Resort DFW, Inc. of Allen, says ground breaking should start in early 2015 if all financing comes through, for a target completion date of early 2018. The project is estimated to cost $400 million and may also include a second hotel.

So here’s what I want to know: will people really ski in 100 degree heat? How will they keep that snow cold mid-July? Could the Grand Alps development elevate Grand Prairie property values?

(Or will Grand Prairie become the Las Vegas of North Texas.)

The owner of Great Alps is actually a former Dallas assistant city manager named Sherman Thurston, who lives in Plano. He’s quite bullish on what he’s creating in Grand Prairie, and thinks it’s the perfect place for an indoor ski resort:

Thurston said he wanted to locate the development in Grand Prairie because it was a central city in the region, pulling from Dallas and Fort Worth. The site is also affordable for families to access, without toll roads, he added.

This is not the first time a developer has tried to bring indoor skiing to Texas, but it may be the right time. Recall that plans for a ski resort in both Grapevine and Fort Worth were planned but never brought to Fruition. Of course, there was THEE RECESSION.

 “From a city perspective, wouldn’t we be foolish if this went to another city,” said Mayor Ron Jensen. “We are at no risk and the only thing we have to pay up front is $100,000 of hard-riding dollars out of the box to be able to possibly put together a $215 million project. There’s not a city in the area that wouldn’t do it… If the economy had not tanked in 2009, we’d be skiing in Grapevine right now,” he said. “The economy died in 2009. The economy is vibrant right now and we think the timing is right.”