A Winter Wonderland in the Desert

Because this is a Southern California story, it begins with--what else?--a dream. It is 1991 and a snowboarder named Jeff Solorio is driving to Mammoth, and, dude, it is a long, long drive.

So on the way, a thought occurs to him, and because he is only about 20, it doesn’t make him wonder whether he’s out of his mind. He thinks: What if you built a kind of mountain and put it indoors? Dude! What if you could snowboard all the time?

It’s the kind of fun thought any kid would have if the kid was living in a desert and had acquired a passion for snow. But because this is a Southern California story the kid took his idea to a grown-up, and the fun thought became (even more fun!) a goal.

And, as any Southern Californian can tell you, no goal here is complete without a business plan. And thus was born the notion that, if all goes as expected, will soon become the nation’s first indoor snowboard park, a $40-million, four-story extravaganza down the road from Disneyland.

*

If there were a map to the soul of this place, ground zero would lie at the intersection of adults and children, Money and Fun. Probably no other place on the planet takes the confluence of the two more

seriously than this, the spot where grown-ups have made fortunes selling approximations of the way it feels to be young.

Some would say we take the money-fun thing too seriously. What, after all, to make of a place where entire subcultures are devoted to the bizarre sport of paintballing? Where riots erupt among collectors of Beanie Babies? Where not even a cigar can be just a cigar, but has to involve smoke-filled rooms at restaurants belonging to movie stars?

And yet, what a great way to make a living! What a kick, to dream those dreams! Solorio, now a grown-up partner in a hip Hollywood eye wear company, can only smile when he talks about the genesis of the snowboard development, which, in the early stages, was far less extreme.

“It was just gonna be a half-pipe,” he said, referring to the downhill troughs that snowboarders use the way skateboarders use ramps. “It’s just the funnest sport. I just figured, if we build it, they will come.”

Back then, he was basically a full-time snowboarder. He and a childhood buddy, a guy named John Juniper, were supporting themselves freelancing pictures of guys surfing the slopes, “catching air.” One day, Juniper got them a gig moonlighting for a real estate agent, who asked them to shoot a picture of a house in Monarch Beach that was for sale.

The garage of the house was full of snowboarding gear, and before long they were pitching their idea to the homeowner, a fun-loving contractor named Bradford Kinney who specializes in million-dollar backyards.

It’ll be fun, they told Kinney.

“And I said, ‘Will it make money?’ ” Kinney said, his eyes lighting up at the memory of that spark of a plan. And before long, they had all the elements of the quintessential Southern California story, the fun and the money and the kids and the businessman.

*

The rest of the story took a few years to unfold. Experts were brought in. There were false starts. Kinney turned the idea into a consuming passion, polishing and honing. Finally he showed it to the chairman of Gotcha sportswear, a guy named Marvin Winkler, who had hired the contractor to install a hockey rink for his kids in his Laguna Hills backyard.

Winkler was close to Joel Rubenstein (the Peter Ueberroth partner of Rebuild L.A. fame), who had told Winkler about a 31.4-acre development to be called Sportstown, which was to be adjacent to Anaheim’s Edison International Field. Deals were cut. Last week, Anaheim officials confirmed that they are near agreement on a lease with the developer of Sportstown, the anchor tenant of which is expected to be Gotcha Glacier, the snowboard park.

As re-imagined by Kinney, it would have a 600-foot snow run, a 300-foot competition half-pipe, another half-pipe for beginners, skiing, skating and, as they say, much more. Kinney talks about the day when people of all ages and classes--not just those who can afford trips to the mountains--will know how it feels to glide and soar across the snow.

Meanwhile, just in case things don’t go as expected, the Gotcha Glacier folks have a wall map studded with backup and expansion sites, scores of pins representing snowboard parks from Greater L.A. to Florida to New York and points between. Because this, after all, is a Southern California story. And how else would it end but with the export of the dream?

Shawn Hubler’s e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.