SUNRIVER The new owner of Mount Bachelor’s ski area said in a speech here that he wants to improve the ski area’s relations with Central Oregon.

John Cumming, 34, president and chief executive officer of Utah-based Powdr Corp., which last month purchased nearly 70 percent of shares in privately held Mount Bachelor, Inc., spoke to tourism and marketing representatives Monday at the annual meeting of the Central Oregon Visitors Association at Sunriver Resort.

Mount Bachelor is the Northwest’s busiest ski area and one of Central Oregon’s largest employers.

In answer to a question about Mount Bachelor’s marketing strategy next year, Cumming said, ”I want no strategy that makes the community mad at us. I know that happens easily in this business, but we’re not going to set out to do that. We’re going to set out to undo that.”

His strategy? More communication with restaurants, lodges and locals.

”If locals and lodgers love you, it’s exponentially the greatest marketing tool,” Cumming said.

One step to winning that favor will come with loads of early season snow. Cumming told the audience he plans to invest more into snow making equipment.

”Mount Bachelor does not lack snow, but sometimes it is sporadic,” he said. ”And the Thanksgiving opening is the most important marketing time.”

As far as discount packages, Cumming said they must be accompanied by an increased number of skiers. He also said he wants to work towards night-time skiing, which he said would attract more out-of-town overnight skiers.

Such a change in Mount Bachelor’s operations would require U.S. Forest Service approval.

”I’m in favor of night skiing,” he said. ”The view from a mountain on a beautiful night is amazing.”

Near the opening of his speech, Cumming said he once thought the day would never arrive when he would stand before COVA as a keynote speaker, having survived the end of a months-long battle with Pape Group of Eugene over who would take control of Mount Bachelor.

Both corporations made offers to individual shareholders for their stock, but a majority chose Powdr Corp.

”When I was asked to be the keynote speaker, and this is my first time as a keynote speaker,” he said, ”this moment seemed distant when I was in the middle of the battle over Mount Bachelor. But when I woke up this morning, it no longer seemed distant.”

Cumming spoke of his initial vision of owning Mount Bachelor when he was 28 years old, and learning about the business through his management job at Park City Mountain, a ski resort in Utah.

While visiting Mount Bachelor, he said he told the late Dave Marsh then the ski area’s president he wanted to buy it.

”In 1996, I landed in Bend at the ski resort for the first time and it was the most beautiful place I ever skied,” he said.

”I told Dave Marsh if he ever wanted to sell it to let me know. He gave me one of those fatherly smiles and just patted me on the head.”

Years later, he got a phone call saying the mountain was up for sale, he said.

Cumming said the weather, the beauty and the dedicated skiers attracted him to the mountain.

”Nowhere else in the country will people put a trash bag over their head and go skiing in the rain,” he said. ”I mostly just liked to ski here and it was for sale.”

Powdr Corp., owns and operates Alpine Meadows and Boreal Ski Area in Lake Tahoe, as well as the Park City Mountain ski resort and the Gorgoza Park tubing area in Utah.

Cumming also founded and is the controlling shareholder in Mountain Hardwear, a manufacturer of mountaineering and camping equipment.

His wife, Kristi Cumming, was a three-time national champion for the U.S. Ski Team and now owns and operates Primo’s, which has several cafes in Park City.