November 2015

10 Most Intriguing—These Mainers dared to be different.

Les Otten, Dreamweaver
Bethel

By Colin W. Sargent

We know him as the Man From Sunday River. How about The Man Who Saved Fenway Park. This year, Les Otten is also The Dreamer Who Is Quintupling the Balsams to Become an International Destination on the Order of Banff. We reached Otten at his home in Bethel by telephone:

The Balsams is etched into memory as a ShangriLa run by Steve Barba. You’ve dared to think bigger about this wilderness resort to put it on the map as a huge attraction. The scale is astonishing. Can you tell us about your original vision and how it was essential to dream differently than others might?
The opportunity was once-in-a-lifetime. We’ve had the chance to envision a year-round destination resort from scratch, with no limitations on how you could imagine the project. We rethought everything: real-estate ownership, skiing, yoga, fat-tire biking, water sports, how it all comes together. Our model is more like a college campus than an Olympic Village, and it goes like this. In a student union–in the 1960s sense of a student union–you slept in one place, in the hub. The other attractions, such as classes, athletic facilities, the library, were on the outside of the wagon wheel. We liked that. The thing that was cool about the original Balsams was that lake right outside your front door and the ability to have a hot-spring sauna at your back door. The Balsams had great food, ice-skating, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, but the route to making it universally known wasn’t as available to Steve and Neil Tillotsen. Now you can see that we’ll have world-class skiing available. It was exciting to envision what a 21st-century resort would look like. We’re well on our way to at least get our permits. The launch is underway.

With the lodging we are contemplating in the first phase, that figure is $143 million. That will leave us with three hotels, Hampshire House, Dix House, and the Gloriette House. The key component is the gondola. The gondola will take guests right up to the downhill skiing, right from the hotels. Most ski resorts were not designed as summer and winter. You’d have the parking lot, the base lodge, the lifts that get to the ski lodge, and then the skiing. If you’re going to go paddlewheeling or skimobiling, etc., you’d have to get in your car. With us, everything we’re doing is within walking distance. Hot spring spa. Walking distance. Gondola. Walking distance. Cooking school. Walking distance. Starting from scratch, we could design to let people walk from their bedroom. ‘If I want to go to cooking school and you want to go cross-country skiing and our wives want to go four-wheel driving, there doesn’t have to be a transportation plan.

I’ve known and loved The Balsams for a long time. I played golf when I was a member of Rotary, maybe 35 or 40 years ago. With The Balsams of the past, the food was always great, the cross-country ski great, the alpine skiing…ehhh. We will have guests who will come to enjoy the spa and cooking school and the spring, ride the gondola just to go up to lunch, and they’re never going to ski. They need not. We’re the full component. We don’t need to have hotel partners. We don’t share in revenue–we are the revenue stream. If there’s a dollar being spent, it’s being spent with us.

How much bigger can The Balsams possibly get?
We’ve got it up to 11,000 acres.

When you think of The Balsams, you think of politics, because the first few votes of a presidential election are tallied there. You’ve ventured into politics before. Are there any politics in your future?
The politics of life. I have not ruled out being an astronaut, either. I have no present plans about politics.

How about your romantic life? Do you have a significant other?
I’m out of the significant-other category. I’m dating a wonderful aesthetician from Freeport right now.

You’re not afraid to diversify. Tell us about ventures of yours that some Mainers might not connect with you.
We’re doing very well with our renewable energy business, wood-pellet boilers. Our wood-pellet furnace just made it through EPA testing with flying colors. Largest manufacturer in the U.S. of wood-pellet furnaces, made in Maine. We’ve been in the business eight years.

In our indoor-golf business, we’ve had a breakthrough. Most ball spin golf systems are priced in the $10,000 to $50,000 range. Ours is going to hit the $3,000 range. Dramatic decrease in price that puts it in somebody’s home. That’s pretty cool. Then there’s the drumbeat at Sunday River.
I got together with Joey Kramer from Aerosmith. He and I are presenting Joey Kramer’s Rockin’ & Roastin’ Cafe & Restaurant.” transforming a restaurant at the base of Sunday River and roasting coffee. It’s going to be a fun venue. Think Battle of the Bands.

When you see the Red Sox play, what one part of your part of being on the $700M ownership team on December 21 of 2001 comes back to you?
Fenway Park. When I entered the fray in October of 2000, there was a plan to remodel Fenway Park, with a $625M price tag. The plan was to move the park across the street. I couldn’t understand why someone would want to tear down a ballpark like Fenway. It would have been an exacting model of it, the same dimensions of it. With a single thought, we launched the purchase of the Red Sox around Fenway Park. Six of the other seven bidding groups were going to move it across the street. Or to the waterfront. Or to Suffolk. I was the guy who said no. It wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t debunked the myth of it sinking in the Fens. I hired Leslie Roberts & Assoc., the prestigious engineering firm who had done the evaluations of the World Trade Center repairs needed when the bombs went off in the WTC years before 9/11.

You create dreams for vacationers. Where do you go to get away?
Paris, London, and Holland. But it’s not a matter of going on vacation. That’s not tourism. I’m not generally a tourist. That’s visiting family. I’m one of the lucky Jews. How many can say I have surviving relatives in London, Paris, and Holland? Also related to luck, I certainly appreciate the ability to be intriguing after all these years.