New hope for Ski Rossendale (From Lancashire Telegraph)

New hope for Ski Rossendale

3:00pm Saturday 14th May 2011 in News By Tyrone Marshall, Reporter

BOSSES at Rossendale Council are “very confident” that Ski Rossendale will reopen by September.

Council chiefs said that they had received two viable tenders to take off the running of the Haslingden Old Road venue in Rawtenstall.

The facility closed in March when the council pulled the plug on funding and decided they could no longer carry on running it.

Coun Jason Gledhill, portfolio holder for leisure, said: “The ski slope is still on track to reopen.

“We have received two formal tenders which are viable and we will be inspecting them in the next few weeks.

“We are very confident the facility will reopen before the ski season starts in September.”

The future of Ski Rossendale has been clouded in uncertainty since 2009 when a report revealed it needed £10million worth of investment to survive against increased competition.

That competition was in the form of the state-of-the-art indoor skiing venue Chill Factore near the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

The search for private investment or new owners has been ongoing since June 2009, and six submissions of interest in taking the facility over were rejected by the council last December.

When the venue closed in March around 200 people, including staff, users and members of the local community, attended a meeting aimed at drumming up support to take over the centre as a social enterprise.

It is not known if that is one of the tenders that Rossendale Council is now considering.