CHAMPION, Pa.-- The Nutting media empire, part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, soon will be the sole owner of Seven Springs Mountain Resort, Pennsylvania's biggest ski resort.

The Nuttings are buying the resort from the Dupre family, which has tried to sell Seven Springs, off and on, for eight years. In 1998, the Dupres considered a $100 million offer from Booth Creek Ski Holdings of Colorado, but that offer was withdrawn as some members of the Dupre family contested the sale.

Resort officials broke the news to employees yesterday morning, then to the public later in the day. The sale price wasn't disclosed, but the resort was valued at $87.5 million in 1998, and is probably worth more today, especially in light of its pursuit of a casino license, which would allow Seven Springs to operate 500 slot machines.

Seven Springs is one of two applicants seeking one of two available "resort" casino licenses, meaning it has no competition for a casino and would lose its bid only if something was wrong with its application.

Herman Dupre, whose parents bought a small Laurel Highlands farm plot in 1932 and watched it grow into a 5,000-acre resort, said the sale was bittersweet. He was born in a farmhouse on the property -- now an upscale restaurant -- and still lives at the resort.

"It's like seeing your daughter get married," he said yesterday.

The sale had been negotiated for more than a year, he said, and must be ratified by shareholders next week. If ratified, the sale would take effect on July 1.

The sale eases one potential obstacle as the resort seeks a slots license, but adds another. The state's 2004 gaming law prohibits slots applicants from also being public officials, but several of the people whose names appeared on Seven Springs' application also happened to be elected officials in tiny Seven Springs Borough.

Now, that application will be amended, presumably to add the Nuttings and remove the Dupres.

But Major League Baseball frowns upon athletes who gamble. What will it think about a baseball owner who runs a casino, albeit a small one?

Robert Nutting, chief executive officer of West Virginia-based Ogden Newspapers and a member of the Pirates' four-man voting board, said there won't be any legal issues preventing the family from owning both a baseball team and a casino.

Instead, he said, the family will deal with an "image issue." But he assured fans of both the team and the resort that Seven Springs will be in touch with league officials and the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to make sure the resort's casino bid passes muster with both entities.

"We would do nothing that would embarrass the Pirates or the sport of baseball," he said.

Baseball pundits have speculated that the Nuttings could, or should, sell their share of the Pirates following the All-Star Game to be held at PNC Park. But Mr. Nutting said that the summer acquisition of the resort would have no impact on the team.

"We are here for the long haul," he said of the family's interest in the Pirates.

The Nuttings, who own 39 daily newspapers in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have a 25 percent share in the Pirates, more than Kevin McClatchy, the public face of the ownership team.

The family patriarch, G. Ogden Nutting, is said to have been an avid skier, and a 2005 Denver Post column said he'd visited 500 ski slopes in North and South America since 1988.

The offer to buy Seven Springs is the company's first foray into resort and vacation properties, though the family did once give $1.5 million to refurbish the ski slopes at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, W.Va.

Scott Bender, Seven Springs president and CEO, said the deal to transfer the resort from one family-owned company to another was a pleasant side effect of negotiating with the Nuttings.

"We've always been family-owned," he said. "I'm pleased to say that will not change under the Nutting ownership."

Mr. Bender will remain the resort's CEO.

The sale, if it is approved next week, will bring a formal end to a bitter Dupre family feud that has boiled for decades. The Herman Dupre and Luitgarde Dupre Sujansky families, which each own one-third of the resort, found themselves in court with the family of the late Phillip Dupre, including his widow, Lois Dupre Shuster, and daughter Lynda M. Dupre.

At the heart of the feud was a 1969 agreement, signed by all three family factions, which said any faction that wanted to sell its portion of the resort had to first offer its shares to the rest of the family. But when Booth Creek made its $100 million offer, the Herman Dupre and Luitgarde Dupre Sujansky families hoped to sell the resort through a "merger," which would have circumvented the 1969 agreement and cut Lois Dupre Shuster out of the loop.

The state Superior Court, in July 1999, ruled that the merger could proceed over the objections of Phillip Dupre's heirs, but by then, Booth Creek had already backed out of the deal, and Lois Dupre Shuster had been evicted from her office at the main lodge.

In 2002, she lost her appeal to the state Supreme Court, meaning she'd essentially exhausted her legal options in contesting future sales or merger deals.