Brad Lutz said this week that he feels "like a bobsled being pulled by a race car."

As he finalizes his deal to purchase Sugar Loaf Resort from Kate Wickstrom, Lutz said he has maintained a hectic pace over the past week, touching base with dozens of people eager to help him revive the long-shuttered ski resort.

“I wake up at 2 a.m. because I can’t shut my mind off,” Lutz said. “I’ve been an extremely busy guy.”

Lutz said he’d been in touch with local and state economic development officials who may be able to bring some resources to bear on reviving Sugar Loaf. He added that Leelanau County Commissioner David “Chauncey” Shiflett – who also serves on the board of the county’s Brownfield Redevelopment Authority – had put him in touch with officials who can help guide him through the brownfield redevelopment process.

“These are all just very preliminary conversations at this point,” Lutz said. “We still have a long, long way to go.”

Lutz said talked over the past week with representatives of an engineering firm Wickstrom had hired before she abandoned her own plans to revive Sugar Loaf. In addition, Lutz said, he’d been in contact with Ed Fleis – one of the owners of a golf course adjacent to Sugar Loaf Resort as well as a sewage treatment plant that serves the resort and several neighboring subdivisions.

“He’s been very friendly and I’d describe our relationship as that of good neighbors right now,” Lutz said of Fleis, “but there is still a lot more for us to discuss.”

Fleis and his partner Ed Sculthorp of Florida purchased two golf courses, the sewage treatement plant and other properties in the Sugar Loaf area in 2005 just weeks after Wickstrom purchased the resort. Since then, however, Fleis and Sculthorp have been forced to relinquish one of the golf courses, King’s Challenge, to its previous owner, Sugar Loaf Ridge Development L.L.C., a corporation represented by another former part-owner of the resort, Birmingham attorney John Sills.

The golf course properties, the sewage treatment plant and other amenities were split off from the Sugar Loaf Resort property in 1997 when the resort was acquired by the Pacific XIX Corporation headed by Remo Polselli. Since then, the relationship between owners of the golf course properties, the sewage treatment plant and other nearby properties have been the subject of several lawsuits; and relations between owners have remained strained at best. Settlement of a recent court case between Wickstrom and Sugar Loaf Service Company, which operates the sewage treatment plant, are believed to have smoothed the way toward the deal between Wickstrom and Lutz.

The president of Sugar Loaf Service Company, Mike Waugh of Cedar, this week expressed “cautious optimism” about news that Lutz was acquiring Sugar Loaf Resort.

“We’re all happy to see some positive developments with regard to the resort,” Waugh said. “But there have been so many disappointments since March 2000 (when the resort closed for skiing),” Waugh said. “Obviously it will be good for everyone in Leelanau County if the situation improves there.”

The coach of Leelanau County’s cooperative high school ski team, Mark Fisher, said he couldn’t agree more.

“There’s just no doubt that if Sugar Loaf Resort comes back to life it will help Leelanau County immensely – from jobs, to recreation, to property values,” Fisher said. “As for the ski team, we’ve seen what the closure of Sugar Loaf has done. We used to turn out more championship ski teams around here than anywhere in the state – and now, fewer and fewer kids are getting into the program. For many people, the commute to Crystal (Mountain Resort in Benzie County, where the team currently practices) is just too far,” Fisher said.

Sugar Loaf area resident Mark Pilarski has been taking a deep interest in the fate of Sugar Loaf Resort for years. A well-known gaming consultant and columnist, Pilarski spent years frequenting major ski resorts out West and has been a regular contributor to online chat sites about Sugar Loaf Resort.

“Making a ski resort work is all about two things: compressed air and transportation,” Pilarski said. “By that, I mean snowmaking machines and high speed lifts.”

Pilarski speculated that the new owner of Sugar Loaf Resort would need to come up with “about $10 million right from the get-go” to get Sugar Loaf’s ski operation up and running.
“I certainly hope Brad Lutz can pull this off,” Pilarski said, “and I know I’m not alone.”

Indeed, Lutz said this week that he’d been receiving offers and advice non-stop over the past week from well-intended people interested in Sugar Loaf’s revival.

“In some cases, people are obviously looking for jobs,” Lutz said. “But we’re nowhere near offering any paying jobs right now.”