Swiss municipalities agree to take over Weisse Arena ski area
Citizens in the Swiss municipalities Falera, Laax and Flims have voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking over the ski infrastructure of the Weisse Arena ski area in southeastern Switzerland.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
In all, 85.5% of Flims residents voted in favour of the project, with voter turnout at 67.7%. This followed a vote in Falera (93.2%), and Laax (93.2%).
The clarity of the result is a clear vote of confidence in the authorities and the Weisse Arena Group, the mayor of Laax, Franz Gschwend, told reporters in Laax, canton Graubünden, on Sunday.
Following the yes vote, the municipality-owned Finanz Infra AG will now take over the cable cars, ski lifts, buildings and cable networks of the Weisse Arena Bergbahnen. Project manager Adrian Wolf told the Keystone-SDA news agency that an attempt will be made to finalise this before the end of the year. However, a precise timetable is not available.
More
The Swiss Alps ski village that is luring nervous Americans
Swiss mountain railway history
The takeover is the first so-called “sell-and-lease-back” procedure in Switzerland. The mountain railways will lease back the infrastructure from Finanz Infra and operate it as before. It’s “really easy”, said Reto Gurtner in Laax. A model that will “set a precedent in the future”, project manager Wolf was certain.
With the purchase, regional interests are now secured for the long term. The mayor of Falera, Norbert Good, has called this a historical step. The aim is to protect the facilities from foreign investors who have already expressed an interest.
More
The Swiss Alps, a new Eldorado for real estate developers
Translated from German by DeepL/sb
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
External Content
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.