The Town of Nederland’s plan to buy Eldora Mountain Resort has raised a lot of eyebrows in the resort industry. Few industry players thought it was possible that a rural town of 1,500 residents — with an annual budget of $3.2 million — would be able to spend more than $100 million for a ski area.
The town and Eldora’s owner Powdr are not really sharing much. It’s a very unique deal, with Powdr remaining at the helm for the next two years as the town and its partners — a roster of heavyweight investors and resort industry veterans gathered under the newly minted “Ski 303” shingle — take the reins of the 680-acre Boulder County ski area.
Both sides are being exceptionally quiet right now as they work through due diligence before reaching a final purchase agreement that hinges on a plan to issue municipal revenue bonds to fund Nederland’s acquisition and operation of the ski area. No one has shared the price for the ski area, but the town has estimated it would need somewhere between $100 million and $200 million to buy the resort. Last week the town said if due diligence unfolds as planned, it could possibly sell the bonds and close the deal by October.
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Andy Daly, who ran Eldora in the late 1980s with a plan to purchase the resort and build a collection of smaller ski areas.
Daly ran Vail Associates for years as it evolved into the publicly-traded Vail Resorts empire and recently sold his majority interest of Powderhorn ski area on the Grand Mesa to the Pacific Group Resorts out of Park City, Utah.
He does not know any of the details on the Nederland – Powdr deal. But he’s excited to see a disruptive ownership plan that defies the growing trend of resorts either selling to or partnering with industry giant Vail Resorts or Alterra Mountain Co.
“In this day and age, what ski towns are finding is that being in bed with Vail Resorts or Alterra, particularly Vail Resorts, tends to change the vibe in the community,” Daly said. “You lose the sense of having a partner you can work with toward the betterment of the community and the success of the ski area. I’m excited to see how Nederland can make this work. Their challenge will be providing the leadership needed to run a for-profit business while having a willingness to commit the capital needed to keep Eldora competitive. Skiing is an extraordinarily capital-intensive business and … is Nederland capable of making those investments?”
303 Ski and municipal revenue bonds
In 2023, Nederland — which has fewer than 30 employees — shut down its police department and contracted with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office to handle policing. The town police department endured a series of resignations in 2022 and voters that year approved increased taxes to support the local police department.
The acquisition plan includes Powdr, which acquired Eldora in 2016, remaining at the helm of the ski area for two years as Nederland transitions to ownership. After those two years, the 303 Ski team — including former Vail Resorts executives Dwight DeBroux, Mark Gasta and Blaise Carrig as well as Powdr’s former general counsel Emily Smith and Boulder investor Justin Gold, who sold Justin’s Nut Butter to food giant Hormel in 2016 for $280.9 million — will support Nederland’s management of the ski area.
It is unclear how that public-private management strategy will work but the initial plan calls for Nederland to employ more than 700 employees at the ski area at the peak of the ski season. The town says it will be hiring a deputy manager to handle ski area operations.
Nederland plans to pay for all this with municipal revenue bonds. A list of details on the town website says mountain revenue will cover payments for those bonds — at 6% to 8% interest — while building a reserve of $10 million to cover payments if revenues drop in a low-snow year. The town said early projections show the town generating “some excess cash flow,” but nothing meaningful until subordinate bonds are paid off in the first 10 years.
“After that, free cash flow will fall between $2 million and $5 million and we can reinvest those funds in streets, sidewalks and water infrastructure,” reads the town’s Frequently Asked Questions post from July 8. The town also expects to annex the ski area, which allows greater control over land use and could grow sales tax collections for Nederland by $1 million to $2 million a year.
Daly said his top piece of advice for Nederland would be to keep that rainy-day fund robust. And he said Nederland should find equity partners — like his ownership team did at Powderhorn.
“That way you get someone who really has some skin in the game and your interests are aligned and they are going to be doing absolutely everything necessary to make it successful,” he said.
Municipal bonds are an emerging tool for rural communities tackling big projects. The Town of Vail — with a budgeted plan to spend nearly $160 million for the next fiscal year, the most in the town’s 58-year history — collected $126 million from a municipal bond sale in May to support construction of a 268-unit housing project. The housing revenue bonds — with a long-term interest cost of $387 million — will be paid back with rental revenue from the town-owned units.
The Town of Vail last month said the demand from investors far exceeded the amount of bonds available for sale.
A multi-resort operator selling to an independent single-hill owner is uncommon in the resort industry and marks the first such sale in Colorado since 1997, when the U.S. Department of Justice forced then Vail Associates to sell Arapahoe Basin to a Canadian company after the federal government raised anti-trust concerns about Vail’s acquisition of Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin from Ralston Resorts.
(The Department of Justice’s antitrust division also scrutinized Alterra Mountain Co.’s $105 million acquisition of Arapahoe Basin last year. It’s safe to assume that the federal review of that deal played a role in the apparent lack of interest by Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Co. in buying Eldora, a resort that fits each company’s noted desire to buy ski hills close to urban centers.)
“I was sure it was an Onion headline”
There’s a noticeable lack of vocal community cheering around the Nederland plan, which is surprising considering the recent surge of mountain-town angst directed toward corporate resort operators.
More than a decade ago, residents around Eldora vehemently opposed the resort’s expansion plan. The Middle Boulder Creek Coalition argued Eldora’s request to expand its boundary and build ski runs in the Hessie, Middle Boulder and Jenny creek drainages would damage watersheds and wildlife habitat. The group helped sway the resort to contain expansion plans to within the existing boundary after more than five years of review by the Forest Service.
Dave Hallock lives in the unincorporated community of Eldora near the ski area and led the Middle Boulder Creek Coalition in its opposition to the ski area’s boundary expansion proposal. He said his neighbors are mostly concerned about the annexation suggestion and how that might impact summer traffic in a quiet valley where development has been limited by strict Boulder County land-use regulations. The ski area largely sits quiet in the summer months and both residents and wildlife enjoy the warm-weather respite from the busy winters, he said.
“From what I can see, Nederland sees this as their cash cow. Well, what happens if it goes the other way and does not work financially like they are projecting? Will they form a special district with added taxes?” Hollack said. “We feel most comfortable with the county controlling use up here and cities are just entirely different animals. It’s all too early to know anything but we are definitely watching.”
Isaac Stokes has been skiing Eldora for nearly 25 years, estimating he has skied somewhere close to 500 days at the ski area.
When he saw the news that Nederland was buying Eldora, “I was sure it was an Onion headline,” he said, referring to the satirical news site.
Stokes suggested a better headline: “Eldora buys Nederland.”
“I mean come on. Nederland can’t even run their own police department,” Stokes said. “This is going to be a train wreck of epic proportions. Dollars to donuts this ends up bankrupt.”
The financial and operational plan will require approval by the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, which will need to transfer a special use permit for access to 480 acres of public land to the new owners. That process involves the federal government assessing the financial capacity and technical expertise of the new operator.
“I’m encouraged they brought in experienced ski area professionals and that Powdr will work with them on the transition,” said Jim Bedwell, who spent more than four decades working for the U.S. Forest Service and ended his career as the director of recreation, land, minerals and volunteers for the agency’s Rocky Mountain Region.
Bedwell has been watching the Eldora sale process as a longtime advocate of community-centered recreation on public lands. He’s seen many community groups push for control of dormant or struggling ski areas, with mixed success.
Eldora is different. It’s got a proven track record as a successful and thriving ski area.
“Eldora has a long history of income and building their business,” Bedwell said.
In 2018, Powdr unveiled $10 million in improvements at Eldora, marking the largest one-time investment in the resort’s history. The improvements included a $10 million Doppelmayr six-pack lift, lodge renovations, a brand overhaul with a new burnt orange color and a fresh logo.
A good chunk — sources say between 60% and 75% — of Eldora’s lift ticket revenue comes from Alterra Mountain Co. payments for Ikon Pass visitors. The ski area will remain an Ikon Pass partner as part of a long-term agreement with Alterra.
Eldora signed on with the then new Alterra in 2018, offering unlimited access to Ikon pass holders. Eldora first dabbled in the pass partnership world in 2013, joining Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass. But the Boulder County hill was overwhelmed with traffic and the Epic Pass partnership ended after one season.
Nederland felt the Ikon bump. Net taxable sales for the town during the ski season climbed 14% the first season Eldora started welcoming Ikon Pass skiers. And since 2018, taxable sales in the town have climbed 33%, reaching a high of $19.5 million for the 2024-25 season.
How that long-term agreement — forged between Powdr and Alterra in a deal that included Ikon Pass access for Powdr’s Copper Mountain, Killington and Pico ski areas — might shift under the new single-hill municipal ownership structure. And when considering those tens of thousands of critical Ikon Pass visitors, here’s another worry point:
“This is a major challenge Nederland has to address up front,” said Daly. “People in town are going to buy season passes and consider themselves sort of like owners, right? So when it’s really crowded on weekends, they are going to complain. It’s an inevitable conflict in this model.”
Shifting priorities for Powdr
Powdr, which will have seven ski areas if the Eldora deal goes through, down from 11 three years ago, declined to comment on the sale. The company is very measured with its public statements, following a path set by the media-shy owner John Cumming and a highly decentralized ownership strategy that focuses on individual properties. A spokeswoman noted that “a lot needs to happen between now and the close.”
The company — which was founded in 1994 by Cumming and bills itself as a “lifestyle adventure company” — last year announced plans to sell Eldora, as well as Mt. Bachelor ski area in Oregon and Silver Star ski area in British Columbia. The company last year sold Killington and Pico ski areas in Vermont to local investors and sold Lee Canyon ski area in Nevada to Durango-based Mountain Capital Partners in 2023. The company said shedding ski hills is part of an overhaul of its brand and operations, which now includes running visitor concessions at two national parks.
Earlier this year Powdr said it was pulling Mt. Bachelor off the market. A local community group in Bend, Oregon had enlisted investors in a bid to acquire the 4,300-acre resort, but the group was unable to engage with Powdr.
Powdr’s challenge in selling ski areas marks a shift in the resort market, which has seen aggressive consolidation in the last several years as Alterra Mountain Co. amassed ski hills to build a rival to Vail Resorts’ growing empire.
“I’m excited they are working with Eldora. They did the right thing. Now we know this can be done,” said Chris Porter, who helped form the Mt. Bachelor Community Inc. group that was vying to buy the Bend ski area. “We know that Powdr has the capacity to work with communities. Maybe we can get another shot if Mt. Bachelor ever goes up for sale again.”