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LEIF ENGER: The Quadna Mountain Resort complex is spread out generously on the wide rising shoulder of land overlooking Hill City. It's not a mountain exactly but still a pretty good slope by Minnesota standards. "A good slope," says Quadna manager, Beverly Dickens. But on this clear weekday, not a busy one.

BEVERLY DICKENS: Now the best day is when you turn that corner and you see this parking lot full because you know that all the skiers are out, then.

LEIF ENGER: Not full today.

BEVERLY DICKENS: Not full today.

LEIF ENGER: Dickens is the latest in a long succession of bosses here. She is the hand-picked choice of resort entrepreneur, Dennis Cole, who will add Quadna to his property portfolio. The veteran of half a dozen such transitional projects, she's the one who goes into a money-losing business, changes old policies and sometimes employees, who hopefully gets the business back in the black before moving on. That means convincing those that Quadna owes, and they are many, that the resort will repay hundreds of thousands in old vendors' fees and taxes. It means smoothing the bitter relations between the resort and its unhappy townhouse and timeshare owners. It means winning back the confidence of Hill City.

BEVERLY DICKENS: I think our biggest thing is to convince people that we're good now and it's great. They've gone through a lot in the last six, seven, eight years. And now is not the time to give up.

DAVE HASSKAMP: When Quadna first started, it was a booming success. People came from all over. They loved it. But when you look at that period of time, you see that the people that were running it and owned it lived there and managed it and loved it. And that was their business, and that's what they wanted to do.

LEIF ENGER: Dave Hasskamp is director of an Aitkin County development group and has watched Quadna's progress since the early days. He says the resort prospered under its founders, held even through ownership by the Blandin Paper Company and a Grand Rapids construction firm. Then began its long slide in the late '70s when it was purchased by a group of Twin Cities businessmen.

DAVE HASSKAMP: Those fellows didn't buy the resort because they wanted to be in the resort business. If they're honest with you, they'll tell you they wanted to-- they owned the resort because it was sexy to own a resort. They were CEOs of companies like Control Data. And they weren't interested in that.

LEIF ENGER: Nor were they interested, Hasskamp says, in the welfare of Aitkin County, one of the state's poorest. Since Land O'Lakes closed its Aitkin dairy processing facility in 1985, Quadna has been the county's biggest employer. 88 people work there full-time at present, 45 during the slower months.

In Hill City, mercantile owner, Ben Schulte, says Quadna still brings in enough tourists to make a difference on Main Street. At the same time, the resort has been a starving giant for so long that he wonders if it can ever be strong again.

BEN SCHULTE: Since I've been here, owners and managers on an average of one a year maybe. So you wonder sometimes, it's a pretty large operation that they can't really get control of things. And now they're supposedly supposed to be selling it again.

LEIF ENGER: Supposedly has become the watchword around town when it comes to Quadna. Each new owner has come in with promises of big new swimming pools, of nine more holes for the golf course, of rising property values. Few of the promises have been kept.

However, Hill City School superintendent, Darrell Nelson, says even an unhealthy Quadna makes up almost 30% of the district's property tax base. That's worth protecting.

DARRELL NELSON: If Quadna were to close or did close, there's that many-- there's that fewer jobs, fewer people, fewer kids. If we lose 10 or 20 students, we're small to start with, at what point is the operating efficiency cut so much that you would have to consolidate or close the doors?

LEIF ENGER: He said he did have a taste of life without Quadna a few years ago when the complex went briefly into bankruptcy. It lasted less than a year. Dave Hasskamp.

DAVE HASSKAMP: People were leaving the area, and businesses were closing and complaining and everything. But to get an idea of what Quadna does for the economy, I think you can best put it, their payroll last year ran about $720,000 for one year.

LEIF ENGER: Almost 3/4 of $1 million, much of it in a community of less than 600. School superintendent Nelson says, it's easy to see why Hill City needs Quadna and just as easy to understand why so many are skeptical of yet another owner, yet another master plan.

DARRELL NELSON: To see things come up and see the ray of hope, yeah, they say, gee, maybe they're finally got somebody in there that's going to do it properly. And then there may be a change another month or two down the line, and things start sliding down the hill. You think that maybe somebody's coming in just to try and maybe take whatever they can out of an area and maybe make a profit and then run.

LEIF ENGER: But Beverly Dickens says her group is committed to Quadna, that their pockets are deep enough to make the resort make money again. And while she admits that local people have reason to be disillusioned, she says giving the place one more chance is probably better than the alternative.

BEVERLY DICKENS: Do you just close Quadna? Do you padlock the doors? Does anybody get paid anything? Isn't it worth taking a chance? I feel it is, and my people feel it is. But we need a little help. We need a lot of help from people, a lot of understanding.

LEIF ENGER: Quadna Mountain Resort manager, Beverly Dickens. This is Leif Enger.