Porters, South Island, New Zeland
Porters is an existing ski area located in the Southern Alps on the South Island of New Zealand. BHA was retained to create their Resort Master Plan. The vision is to establish Porters as the country’s first true all season mountain resort with direct lift serviced access from a resort village up to the ski fields.
Comprehensive Master Plan
The intent of this document is to provide the developer and consenting bodies with a conceptual road map to the ongoing development of the ski area. The content is designed to improve the quality of the experience offered at Porters in an environmentally and economically sustainable fashion. The Master Plan forms the basis to achieve the defined development goals and objectives over the next 5 to 10 years while entertaining the potential of further expansion well into the future.
Ski Area Planning
A detailed terrain analysis of the study area confirmed the technical viability for the improvement and expansion of the area’s alpine skiing and snowboarding. From this, detailed plans for the phased development of the mountain were created.
All effort was made to match the uphill capacities of the ski lifts with the downhill capacity of the terrain. Equally, the proposed terrain development was oriented to align with the skier marketplace, where generally the distribution of skier skill classes are 20% beginner, 60% intermediate and 20% expert.
Village & Base Area Planning
A primary goal of the Master Plan is to distinguish Porters from all other ski resorts in New Zealand by staging the mountain from an easily accessible village. Internal to this, specific built space was architecturally programmed to meet the pre and post skiing needs and expectations of day use and destination guests.
A variety of accommodation types were directly tied into the phased village plans.
Architectural Programming
At the buildout of Phase 4, the Stage One village development is complete. The core area of the village is a stand alone, self contained, pedestrian oriented attraction in its own right. It will be the “stage” for all of Porters activities. Programming will be critical to ensure continuous activity, animation and maximized lodge occupancy. The opportunity to engage fully in an all-season capacity will be in place.