The co-owner of a restaurant and bar within sight of Sugar Loaf Resort says she isn't removing the "for sale" sign on her business anytime soon despite press reports that the defunct resort may soon be sold to a Leelanau County man who wants to reopen it for skiing.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Karen Bardenhagen, who along with her husband, Pete Bardenhagen, owns the former Sugarfoot Saloon in Cedar. The couple put their business for sale earlier this year and made the difficult decision to close it last week after years of struggling with a sharp dropoff in business resulting from Sugar Loaf Resort’s continued closure.

“We’ve heard so much about what’s going to happen at Sugar Loaf over the past several years – things that turned out not to be true – that I just don’t know what to believe anymore,” Bardenhagen said.

The current owner of Sugar Loaf Resort, Kate Wickstrom, has repeatedly announced plans to reopen or redevelop the resort since she acquired it from a corporation controlled by convicted tax felon Remo Polselli in 2005. The resort has been closed for skiing since March 2000.

Earlier this year, the Leelanau-Benzie Health Department declared the lodge at Sugar Loaf Resort to be “unfit for human habitation.” Although she was in receipt of a letter from the health department explicitly saying so, Wickstrom publicly denied that the lodge was “unfit,” declaring that the Health Department’s letter was “just not true.”

Asked Tuesday afternoon by an Enterprise reporter to comment on reports that a buyer had been found for the resort, Wickstrom said: “I’m not gonna say anything to you. Call Joe Quandt.”

Wickstrom’s attorney, Joseph E. Quandt of Traverse City, did not return phone calls from an Enterprise reporter.
The part-owner of a golf course near Sugar Loaf Resort and a former owner of the resort itself, Birmingham attorney John Sills, said news of an impending sale of the resort was “a shock and a surprise” to him.

“We knew a couple of parties had expressed an interest, but Ms. Wickstrom had rejected their offers,” Sills said. “We’ve found she’s very reluctant to disclose much of anything.”

Wickstrom is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the owners of the Sugar Loaf Service Company, a corporation that provides sewer service to the resort. The inability of the service company and Wickstrom to resolve their dispute has apparently hampered her efforts to sell the resort.

The president of Sugar Loaf Service Company, Mike Waugh, said that he, too, had heard that negotiations were ongoing regarding a purchase agreement and that “the price had recently gone down because of the condition the resort is in.”

The service company is owned by the two investors who also own the Sleeping Bear Golf Course adjacent to Sugar Loaf Resort. Real estate investor Ed Fleis of Leelanau County and his partner Brian Sculthorp of Florida also have a land contract with Sugar Loaf Ridge Development, L.L.C. to purchase the King’s Challenge Golf Course, but have been unable to meet their payments, in part because they had counted on business improving with Wickstrom’s purchase of Sugar Loaf Resort.

Sills is one of the principal members of Sugar Loaf Ridge Development, L.L.C.

An attorney representing Sugar Loaf Ridge Development, Norman Droste of Traverse City, expressed “cautious optimism” about the possible sale of Sugar Loaf Resort. He said he was also hopeful that Fleis and Sculthorp might be able to redeem King’s Challenge for the $1.5 million they owe and, eventually, reunite the golf courses with the ski resort.

“We’ve all heard so many rumors and so many announcements about things that were supposed to be happening at Sugar Loaf over the years that it may be premature to get too excited,” Droste said. “Like many people, I would like to see something good happen there.”

Cleveland Township supervisor Tim Stein agreed.

“I have some guarded optimism,” Stein said. “At this point, any change at Sugar Loaf Resort will be a good change.”