Winter sports enthusiasts have been watching and waiting patiently for several seasons now. The signs are all here: a $32 million upgrade to Flowery Trail Road, 16 kilometers of new Nordic trails and a new quad chair installed for the 2007-08 season. It’s clear: 49 Degrees North is undergoing a transformation. The ski area’s owner, John Eminger, has been working hard to expand his snowy getaway into a city on a mountaintop.

In fact, Eminger is just a few red-tape-covered steps away from initiating construction on the dream he envisioned in 1996 when he bought the property. Having already received approval of the resort’s master plan and having met Stevens County zoning specifications, he is just a few environmental surveys and a development agreement away from an all-inclusive ski destination.

“It could really only take a few months’ work (to get started), depending on how fast (Eminger) wants to go,” says Clay White, director of Stevens County Land Services Department. Yet those plans have been put on hold, largely due to the economic slump and, oddly enough, a stroke of luck.

In the summer of 2007, Eminger had been ready for the next step.

“We (had) reached a point in the permit process that it was time for us to go out and look for money,” he says. In August 2007, US Resort Venture LLC announced it would finance an initial $45 million to cover the first phase of Eminger’s project and then deserted the agreement a month later. Although the withdrawal was a huge disappointment at first, Eminger later saw it as lucky timing.

“Could you imagine if I had gotten that contract and then had this (economic decline)?” Eminger says. After watching the economy continue to slump throughout the winter, he decided to go about things differently. Without a financial backer to start constructing a residential village, Eminger is focusing on the core business of improving and sustaining the quality of the runs.

“We’ve just changed the sequence of events,” he says. Having already installed a new chairlift, completed construction on the road leading to the mountain, implemented a massive system of Nordic trails and added smaller details, such as Wi-Fi in the ski lodge, he is now improving both summer and winter grooming and creating more runs. Last August, the U.S. Forest Service, which owns the land on which the ski runs are constructed and leases it to 49 Degrees North, approved an area on the west side of the mountain, near the bottom of Chair 4, for more runs. Another chairlift and a new lodge are also high on Eminger’s list of priorities, the latter of which he plans to design as an outdoor plaza. This spin on the traditional lodge will save skiers the hassle of taking off their winter gear just for a quick rest by providing an outdoor deck with all the standard lodge amenities, in addition to heated floors, fire pits and warming lights.

These projects will lead the way for other components of the master plan, which includes two new chairlifts, more trails and an expansive ski village holding 2,700 residential units.

“We plan to have restaurants, bars, hotels, shopping and condominiums units,” says Bill Grimes, Eminger’s primary planner at Spokane-based Studio Cascade, which drafted the master plan. “We’re also looking at an amphitheater to be in that area.”

Housing accommodations will be available in a variety of unit styles, some of which will be for rent and others for purchase.