NEDERLAND - The Nederland Board of Trustees (BOT), after citing positive feedback from the community, announced their intention to continue pursuing the potential acquisition of Eldora Mountain Ski Resort.

The next steps for the Town would include entering into a non-disclosure agreement with POWDR to inquire about the business’s financial status and profitability.

While the fiscal strength has been questioned by the community, not only of Eldora, but of the ski industry in general, measuring that strength is contingent on many other factors yet to be determined.

For instance, Eldora may be labeled a financial risk as it currently operates, but that status may change if summer activity were allowed on the mountain.

Other factors include how the Town plans to manage Eldora, which may not necessarily change the cost of operations, but may dramatically affect how revenue can be earned and collected from the venue. Also to be considered is what funding and partnerships Nederland can expect to harvest. 

While no official statement has been made regarding what Town staff and the BOT prefer for a management structure, they have professed to have no intention of managing the ski area themselves. 

There has been mention of the current management team contracting their services to the Town of Nederland and staying on to continue doing the expert job they already do in managing the mountain. But there has not been much discussion on whether Eldora would continue to run as a for-profit entity, or if a community co-op scenario for ownership is out of the question.

One scenario the Town may be hoping to avoid in their pursuit of Eldora is that of Powder Mountain in Weber County, Utah, where Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings became the majority owner in 2023, only later to unveil his plans of privatizing parts of the ski area to save it from its “financial struggles.” 

Hastings, who also owns a home in that area, acquired Powder Mountain from venture capitalists Summit Series with a $100 million investment. Summit’s plans for a sustainable luxury resort for tech millionaires, complete with a village containing science and medical facilities, was scrapped after numerous “challenges.” 

Summit Series had purchased the 8,500 acre property for $40 million in 2013.

Hastings’ initial investment was intended to make the mountain “more easily accessible by bolstering infrastructure and amenities and by maintaining the uncrowded feel Powder Mountain is known for,” as he said in his 2023 interview with Forbes.  

And though the mountain is seeing improvements to its lifts, worry of sudden growth in the Ogden Valley area is causing a focus on how to manage that inevitability which, coupled with the resort’s current financial struggles, has resulted in Hastings’ decision to privatize parts of Powder Mountain.

“In order to pay our bills, we need to sell more real estate, and to do that we are introducing private homeowner-only skiing a year from now,” Hastings wrote in a blog post to the Powder Mountain community. “We will be designating the Village and Mary’s lifts, plus a new lift on Raintree, for this private skiing, starting a year from now.

“We believe this blend of public and private skiing secures us decades of exceptional uncrowded skiing for all, funded partially by real estate. To stay independent and uncrowded, we needed to change, and we didn’t want to join the successful but crowded multi-resort pass model (i.e, Snowbasin) or sell to a conglomerate (i.e, Vail).” 

Though Powder Mountain’s scenario is not too common, recent history indicates that independently run mountains are more susceptible to financial troubles.

The popularity boom of the ski industry in the 1980s and 1990s created a strain on independent owners as they invested so much in amenities and accommodations that it became untenable to afford the high cost of infrastructure improvements required to operate. 

By the 2000s the number of ski areas operating throughout the country had dropped drastically, making it easier for big entities, like Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Company, to rise to power in a real estate war. 

But these companies’ pure buying power was not enough to sustain the properties or businesses that they had purchased, so the interconnected season pass system was invented in the late 2000s to encourage current ski enthusiasts and stoke the interest of potential new customers.

According to a January 2024 report by the online business news publication The Hustle, Vail Resorts sold nearly 60,000 of their Epic Pass its first year of release in 2008; the pass cost $579 then. Eight years later, Vail sold 650,000 passes; 1.2 million passes in 2019; and 2.4 million passes in 2023, with each of those passes costing $909.

However, a resentment against the corporatisation of recreational skiing has resulted in a backlash that has made less crowded, more affordable, independently run ski resorts popular again. Though the problem of “more overhead than revenue” still exists for such resorts.  

But despite how the industry trends, there are always alternative models that may suit Nederland’s sensibilities better, including running Eldora as a non-profit organization. 

Many smaller communities across the country operate recreational areas as non-profits in order to ensure affordability and accessibility for all within those communities, and as a way to truly enhance that symbiotic connection to the local residents. 

2,600 acre Bogus Basin in Idaho runs as a 501(c)(3) non-profit so it can thrive on tax-deductible donations. 

After a monumental negotiation with land owners in 1949, the State of Montana purchased 120 acres of land to connect to National Forest lands and create the 2,500 acre Bridger Bowl state park and ski area. The financially stable recreational asset is managed by the volunteer efforts of the Bozeman State Park and Recreation Association.

 Mount Ashland in Oregon was saved from bankruptcy by a locally-run “Save Mount Ashland” campaign which raised $1.7 million to create the non-profit foundation that would manage the fee-based ski area.

But perhaps what would serve the Nederland community best is to follow in the footsteps of the residents of the Killington and Pico Mountains in Vermont, who formed an ownership group and acquired the ski areas from POWDR in September, 2024.

Though Killington and Pico have been sold (for an undisclosed price) to a local ownership group, previous owners POWDR and real estate developer Great Gulf Resort Residential still remain minority investors. Additionally, the identities of 12 investors who are part of the ownership group have not been disclosed. 

Local homeowners and businessmen Phill Gross and Michael Ferri are the public faces of the ownership group, and have stated their intention to invest $30 million into snowmaking equipment upgrades, to create and expand mountain biking trails for summer recreation, to create a new Board of Directors, and to remain as a support system for the ski area.

“The management team, we’re not going to tell them how to run the mountain, we’re just going to let them do their jobs,” Gross wrote in a press release. “We’re going to make sure the resources are there to upgrade the facilities and make the mountain the best, best place it can be and support the local community.”

The new Board of Directors reportedly consists of the John Casella, Director of Casella Waste Management; Carolyn Kepcher, owner of the local Inn; Killington Mountain School Board Member Mike Hone; and POWDR CEO Justin Sibley.  

The Nederland Board of Trustees will continue to discuss the potential acquisition of Eldora Mountain Ski Resort as the process moves forward and updates are provided to the Board by Town staff.

Trustees meet on the first and third Tuesday of every month. The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 17, 2024, at 7 p.m. and can be attended either online or in person at the Nederland Community Center. 

For more information, including access to meeting agendas to see what Trustees are to discuss, go to: https://townofnederland.colorado.gov/board-of-trustees.