Jerry Andres is the President and CEO of Eagle Crest, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Jeld-Wen, Inc. in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Q: How did you get involved in the Silver Valley?

A: We became interested in the ski resort in the early ‘90’s as a result of an interest that the chairman of our company had; and we discovered that Silver Mountain was for sale. So we came up here and spent a year doing all of our research on the ski business and decided to acquire Silver Mountain. So we acquired Silver Mountain in the spring of 1996.

Q: So it seemed like a good fit?

A: Yes, our recreation real estate company is involved in rural settings, and of course we enjoyed the Silver Valley here, the emerging industry here that was going on at the time. So we really liked the area and saw great promise and potential.

I think one of the things that has occurred, particularly after 9/11, is people have started looking at their lives and their families. And we have seen a migration out of the larger urban areas to more rural settings, like the Silver Valley here. We’ve seen that in Oregon and Washington also.

The other thing is, technologies have come to the Silver Valley, so people can live here and still stay in touch with the world and have the high speed internet access and all those kinds of things, the cell phones, and so we’ve brought those urban conveniences to the Kelloggs of the world. All that is contributing to growth in these regions; and, quite frankly, when you talk to the people who live here, they’ll tell you it’s a better lifestyle here than fighting freeway traffic in the bigger urban areas.

Q: The mayor of Kellogg spoke highly of your company.

A: I come from the school that the hand shake means something. Even though our parent company is a large company, we really operate as a small company; and our founder Dick Windt has a famous saying, “Go out and make it happen.” You can’t do that by making false promises. You’ve got to live by your word and your hand shake; and that’s the way our company operates.

Q: The Superfund stigma must have made you think long and hard.

A: Superfund makes you research what the impacts potentially could be. But our federal government has spent a lot of money as far as mitigating those impacts in here. Our company has a risk management department, and of course we looked at it very carefully.

What we like is the rich mining history here and how this valley actually came into being. And so we saw a great opportunity; and we’re embracing the mining industry as far as the development we’re doing here right now. Instead of ignoring it or not acknowledging it, we want to be a part of that great history that has developed the Silver Valley.

Q: So it didn’t scare you?

A: It didn’t scare us at all, no.

The first project is the Morning Star Lodge, which is 68 units. We’re planning an additional 200 units here. We also have an indoor water park under design right now. I don’t have it financed yet, but i’m working on that, and we have a total of 26 acres in this area. We have a site for another hotel operator and possibly a time share company might be interested in coming in here at some time. We would like to see in the neighborhood of about 400 overnight lodging accommodations.

Obviously those overnight beds help the ski business, and so that’s our first initiative. We also have acquired two other parcels in this area within the city of Kellogg, for additional expansion. One we are currently calling the golf course property and the other one, the El Hambre area, which would create an alternate access to the ski mountain. We are fully committed.

Q: Where will the people come from?

A: Initially, we thought this area would draw from the Pacific Northwest, and with the sale of the Morning Star Lodge project, we also worked California.

To our surprise, we discovered that people who have acquired properties in other ski destinations throughout the United States had an interest in Kellogg, Idaho. In fact, our first phase, which was sold out in four days, was sold to people who live in fourteen different states in the United States. So the market was much larger than we initially had perceived.

We have had people who own in Aspen and Park City who have bought here already. One of these customers told us, you know this looks exactly like what Park City looked like thirty years ago. Park City was a mining area, if you will, and it was not very developed at the time.

And that’s exactly what we’re standing on here today. We won’t recognize this place thirty years from now.