The new owners of Snow Park NZ on the Pisa Range remain hopeful the freestyle ski resort can be made available for events and training this season, but confirmation of what will happen on the field this winter is still a week away.
Snow Park's former owners, the Lee family of the Cardrona Valley, announced last week they had sold the field to neighbouring Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds Ltd (SHPG). SHPG managing director Tom Elworthy said at the time Snow Park could possibly still operate as a ski area for snow sports events and high-performance training camps, but it no longer had a future as a public facility because of the high running costs and small market.
Competitions scheduled to be hosted at Snow Park this season include the Burton Open and two slopestyle World Cup qualifying events during the Winter Games New Zealand, in August.
Mr Elworthy said this week his company was still in discussion with a wide range of parties regarding the viability of Snow Park continuing to operate on some level.
''Our hope is to be able to offer some facilities to teams, events and a few private groups. Winter Games is obviously something we hope to accommodate also.
''We have laid out some options to those parties, and the level of uptake will determine whether we proceed or not.''
He expected to have further clarity by the end of next week.
Winter Games NZ chief executive Arthur Klap said the uncertainty over venues for games events made for ''tricky times'', with just nine weeks to go until the event started. He was working with SHPG to try to help secure team bookings at Snow Park for the season ahead by widely distributing information to international snow sports networks.
''The key thing, as I see it, for the Proving Ground is ... to be able to guarantee teams booking a space so they've got a guaranteed level of income,'' Mr Klap said.
''By the end of next week they'll see what their projected revenue is and then they'll make a call.''
If Snow Park is not available, Winter Games organisers plan to take the slopestyle competitions to Cardrona, which is already hosting several other events on the games programme.
''It's not ideal because of the pressure it puts on Cardrona ... if there's a heavy event load at Cardrona, then the facilities aren't available for a wider audience.''
