Utah businessman to purchase Montana’s Holland Lake Lodge

MISSOULA – A Utah businessman originally from Montana is set to purchase Holland Lake Lodge from longtime owner Christian Wohlfeil and POWDR, the Utah-based ski resort corporation behind a widely opposed and ultimately abandoned plan to drastically expand the historic lakeside lodge two years ago.

According to Kira Powell, public affairs officer for the Flathead National Forest, the U.S. Forest Service was notified Oct. 11 of a purchase agreement between buyer Eric Jacobsen and sellers Wohlfeil and POWDR.

Holland Lake Lodge Inc. – the business, the buildings and other infrastructure – is a private company. But it’s located and operates on federally owned public land in the Flathead National Forest. That dynamic means that whoever owns Holland Lake Lodge needs a special-use permit (SUP) from the Forest Service to operate the business.

Powell wrote in an email earlier this month that the Forest Service had not yet received an application from Jacobsen for a new SUP for Holland Lake Lodge.

“The Special Use Authorization, as issued in 2017 to Holland Lake Lodge Inc., remains valid until a new controlling interest submits an application for a new authorization,” she wrote, “the application is reviewed, the screening criteria is applied, and a determination is made by the Forest Service.”

Details of the purchase, including the closing date of the sale and the purchase price, must be requested from the parties involved in the sale, Powell wrote.

The Missoulian requested that information from POWDR’s Vice President of Communications Stacey Hutchinson on Friday. An email auto-reply indicated she was out of the office.

The sale of the treasured property at Missoula County’s far northern end is the latest development in a now yearslong saga that began when POWDR’s since scuttled proposal sparked widespread public outcry in late summer 2022.

The company’s proposal envisioned 32 new buildings – including a 28-room lodge, a restaurant and 26 cabins – and the removal of 10 structures around the lodge. The plan would have expanded the business’ permitted area from 10.53 acres to about 15 acres. The Forest Service ultimately rejected POWDR’s proposal and the company announced last fall it would scuttle its full purchase of the lodge from Wohlfeil, who put the property back up for sale.

At a meeting on Sept. 3, Jacobsen and business partner Thomas Knowles, who is married to Jacobsen’s niece, said Wohlfeil and POWDR – the latter of which still owned a minority stake in Holland Lake Lodge Inc. – had accepted a letter of intent to purchase the business. Jacobsen held a series of public meetings at the nearby Condon Community Center to take community input on what should happen to the lodge if he went through with the purchase.

Attendees at the meetings pressed Jacobsen on his plans for the lodge should he become its next owner, and almost all expressed a strong desire for the lodge to remain mostly the same, save for a shift to more community-oriented, year-round operations, and the completion of long-deferred maintenance.

Jacobsen maintained in a mid-September meeting that he doesn’t have a firm idea of what he would do with the business. But, he said, although he believes some expansion is necessary to make the operation financially viable, he was strongly opposed to expansion on the scale of what POWDR proposed. (Jacobsen and his sister, a key financial backer, each commented in opposition to POWDR’s proposal at the time.)

But attendees at the meeting and online expressed strong suspicion and a significant trust deficit with Jacobsen, who they fear may significantly expand and change the lodge.