Contractor builds splendor with speed
Dollar Mountain Lodge builder sets blistering pace
By GREGORY FOLEY
Express Staff Writer
Kelly Bates, super-intendent of the Dollar Mountain Lodge construction project, explains how huge logs from Northern Idaho and Montana have been incorporated into the structure of the building. Photo by David N. Seelig
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When Sun Valley Resort General Manager Wally Huffman announced in April that the company was planning to complete by Christmas a new state-of-the-art day lodge at the base of Dollar Mountain, many locals were ecstatic.
However, by May, when the building was approved by the city of Sun Valley, it seemed more than a tall order to complete the 26,000-square-foot structure before the December crowds start to filter into town.
Today, the project is not only on schedule, but is currently on pace to be completed two to three weeks before the target completion date.
“This is a clean, mean job,” said Kelly Bates, project superintendent for general contractor Intermountain Construction. “I would consider this building a two-year building and it’s going to take us about seven months.
“It’s not something we have a choice about. It has to get done.”
Bates, a fifth-generation Idahoan and longtime figure in the Wood River Valley construction scene, has been at the building site on Elkhorn Road at least six days a week for 12 to 14 hours per day. On busy days, he said, he is joined by nearly 100 workers, most of whom are employees of local subcontractors.
“Most of the employees here are from Idaho,” Bates said. “And a big percentage is local.”
Based in Idaho Falls, Intermountain Construction has had a strong presence in the Wood River Valley since the early 1980s. Today, it maintains several offices in the region.
Noted for its work on stately mountain structures, Intermountain built Sun Valley Resort’s three signature Bald Mountain ski lodges, at Seattle Ridge, River Run and Warm Springs Village. More recently, it built the new headquarters for Smith Sports Optics in Ketchum and managed a complete remodel of the Sun Valley Inn.
“This is our total life when we’re doing these jobs,” Bates said.
Prior to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, Intermountain—with Bates—built the John Paul Lodge, a 14,000 square-foot structure at Snowbasin Resort, which hosted numerous high-profile skiing events.
The Snowbasin project, like the lodge projects in Sun Valley, was assigned by Sinclair Oil owner Earl Holding, who also owns the two mountain resorts.
The Dollar project, Bates said, has been unique, largely because of the shortened schedule.
With a total cost of approximately $7 million, the project started with the removal of about 26,000 yards of earth from the site. Today, at full tilt, it costs about $10,000 per hour to keep the construction operation going, Bates said.
Scores of giant, polished logs, up to 40 inches in diameter, have been trucked in from Northern Idaho and Montana. Tons of top-quality rock—extracted from a local mine in Triumph—is slowly being incorporated into the building’s columns and walls.
“There is no second best with Earl,” Bates said.
The lodge—which will include a cafeteria, day-care center and ski school—is well on its way to being finished. The interior rooms are starting to take shape. Huge window frames offer unobstructed views of Dollar Mountain and Bald Mountain.
Parts of the in lodge are on pace to be completed by October, allowing the site to be included as a venue in the annual Swing ’N’ Dixie Jazz Jamboree.
In the end, Bates said, the lodge will have been completed in about half the time required to build the popular Seattle Ridge Lodge, which took about 14 months of work.
“It’s going to be a beautiful building,” Bates said. “It’s like artwork.”
