BUTLER, Ohio – After closing its doors and being sold in parts, the fate of Clear Fork Resort is still uncertain.
The entirety of Clear Fork Resort’s property was sold on June 5 at the Richland County Sheriff’s Sale, after a foreclosure suit was filed more than a year ago and the resort closed its doors on May 14. The entire resort property sold for a total of $706,000 split into in three separate parcels at the Sheriff’s Sale public auction: 16.45 acres of unused land, 110 acres of land encompassing the resort, and a single-family home on the property.
The buyer of the 110-acre resort turned out to be the first lender on the property, Cache Private Capital Diversified Fund LLC. Cache purchased the resort property for $536,000 after it was initially appraised at $804,000.
The purchase meant Cache was acquiring the land back from Slater Run Land Development after Cache filed a foreclosure suit against Slater Run in June 2014. According to the foreclosure suit, Slater Run owed Cache more than $2.45 million.
Now that Cache owns the land again, the future of Clear Fork Resort is up in the air. The company has yet to comment on its plans for the resort property and whether Clear Fork Resort will reopen under a new owner, so for now Clear Fork Resort will remain closed.
According to SkiTown.com, a comprehensive guide to U.S. ski areas available, Clear Fork Resort hosts 60 acres of skiable area. The site lists the resort’s summit elevation at 2,400 feet with a 300-foot vertical drop, and its nine trails incorporate alpine skiing, night skiing and snowboarding, with the longest run measuring at 1,800 feet. SkiCentral.com, another online ski resort guide, breaks down the trails’ difficulty with 11 percent advanced, 45 percent intermediate and 44 percent beginner.
One new development in the works on the Clear Fork Resort property is two new public hiking trails. Eric Miller, the attorney representing Cache, said Cache is willing to donate two footpath easements to the North Central Ohio Land Conservancy (NCOLC) in order to create the hiking trails. Miller is also a trustee for the NCOLC.
“From the perspective of my client they saw this public trail as a good investment, it’s not going to harm the ski resort and it may be a property enhancer to have a public trail on their land, so they did this out of pragmatism,” said Miller.
The first trail will run from Resort Drive and meet up with a trail recently created by the Boy Scout Order of the Arrow Portage Lodge 619; it will travel through previously unseen areas of Mohican country. The second trail will run from Resort Drive down to a parcel of unused land purchased by Miller on behalf of the NCOLC, and will only be accessible by foot.
Note: This is the third in a three-part story describing the future outlook for the resort properties.
