The story
Intrawest was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, by Joe Houssain.
In 1986, Intrawest acquired Blackcomb Mountain from the Federal Business Development Bank, a Canadian Crown Corporation, and Fortress Mountain of Alberta (no relation to Fortress Investments LLC), a wholly owned division of Aspen Skiing Company. The company later went public, listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges and, in 1996, merged with Whistler Mountain Ski Corporation to form Whistler-Blackcomb resort, a venue of the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games. Intrawest eventually spun off Whistler-Blackcomb and sold the last of its shares in that company in 2012.
The Intrawest network included mountain resorts, the Club Intrawest private resort club with nine locations in North America, and Canadian Mountain Holidays, the largest heli-skiing operation in the world.
Intrawest was acquired by Fortress Investment Group in 2006, at which time CEO Houssain stepped down, and the company was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. In 2011, the company relocated from Vancouver to Denver, Colorado.
On November 12, 2013, Intrawest filed an initial public offering with the New York Stock Exchange to raise up to $100 Million.
In 2016, Intrawest initiated significant reductions in full time staff to achieve rapid cost reductions. Numerous key staff positions have been eliminated at its corporate headquarters and resort locations. This follows the sale of the Club Intrawest time share lodging operation to Diamond Resorts International at the end of 2015. It is unclear regarding the company's longer term strategies as it continues to display inconsistent approaches in its business and staffing model. In 2017, Intrawest was sold to Henry Crown and Company (which owns Aspen Skiing Company) and KSL Capital Partners for $1.5 billion.
In May 2017, it was announced that Intrawest would no longer exist as public company. The newly formed company is called Alterra Mountain Company, which was announced at the 2018 Outdoor Retailer Show in Denver, Colorado.
From Wikipedia’s article on Intrawest, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4