Suncadia began back in 1995 when Plum Creek Timber (which recently merged with Weyerhauser), approached TrendWest (which is now known as WorldMark – Wyndham) with an offer to sell a bunch of land in Kittitas County.
TrendWest bought the land for $15 Million. Bill Peare (the former CEO of TrendWest) is often cited as the founder of Suncadia. You can read more about him in this Seattle Times article.
The biggest challenge in the early days was getting permits. A small group of folks did not want the community in their area (namely the Roslyn-based conservation group RIDGE, who filed multiple lawsuits against Trendwest). TrendWest estimated that these lawsuits cost nearly $5M.
TrendWest was then sold to a New York company who didn’t want anything to with a resort. Jeld-Wen (a window and door manufacturer) got together with Lowe Enterprises (a real estate investment firm) and took over management of the resort in 2003.
Construction of Phase 1 began in 2003. In the first year, over 500 homesites were sold and it's been a big success ever since. Well, sort of......they had to survive the massive housing crash of 2007/2008.
A few fun facts about Suncadia:
- Suncadia was originally called MountainStar
- Out of the 6,400 acres owned by Suncadia, 3,400 will stay natural (ie, no golf courses, roads, structures, etc)