Killington’s New Owners Are Independent, Local-Minded

Dave McComb, a snowboarder who administers a Facebook group called Killington Locals+, was worried in early 2023 when he heard that POWDR, owner of Killington Resort, was selling to Alterra Mountain Company, a Denver corporation that owns 11 ski areas.

He was relieved when Killington officials announced last summer they were headed in a different direction — Utah-based POWDR, a big corporation, was selling control to more than a dozen private investors, many of them locals and people who have long skied the mountain east of Rutland.

“It’s going into the hands of a few guys who really care about the mountain and want to invest in it,” said McComb, who owns vacation rentals in the Town of Killington. He’s particularly relieved the resort wasn’t purchased by Alterra, which owns Stratton and Sugarbush in Vermont, or by Vail Resorts, which owns 42 ski areas, including Vermont’s Stowe, Okemo and Mount Snow.

Both Vail and Alterra have drawn complaints about overcrowding on the slopes and at parking lots, McComb noted — a situation that skiers largely blame on Alterra’s Ikon and Vail’s Epic passes, which allow skiers access to the companies’ networks of ski resorts around the world.

While Killington will continue to accept the Ikon pass, the new owners have pledged to avoid crowding problems in part by limiting use of the pass to just seven days per season, as POWDR did. Killington skiers had worried that a new corporate owner wouldn’t impose that limit.

“Great win for Vermont. Now do Stowe,” one Reddit commenter wrote of the resort’s buyers, the Killington Independence Group.

Killington opened in 1958, and S-K-I Ltd., the company formed by its founder, Preston Smith, grew to include Sunday River in Maine and Mount Snow in Vermont. In 1996, S-K-I sold Killington to the now-closed American Skiing Company. POWDR bought the area in 2007 and invested millions in a new lodge, new high-speed lifts, new gondola cabins and snowmaking improvements.

The ski industry has experienced years of consolidation, and it’s rare for a resort to return to private ownership. While there are still several privately owned and nonprofit ski areas in Vermont, including Bolton Valley Resort, Smugglers’ Notch, and Mad River Glen in Fayston, the trend has been for companies such as Alterra and Colorado-based Vail to snap up the larger resorts. Jay Peak was sold two years ago to Pacific Group Resorts in Utah.

“It bucks the trend,” David Meeker, editor in chief of the Connecticut-based Ski Area Management magazine, said of the Killington sale. Meeker lives and works in Wardsboro. “For it to go to private ownership, and to folks who had a vested interest before owning it, it’s just different from what we have seen in Vermont in recent years.”

Killington’s 16 new partners include 14 individuals and groups, as well as POWDR, which retains a 5 percent share, and Great Gulf, a Toronto-based real estate firm that is building a large village development at Killington, according to Amy Laramie, the ski area’s VP of brand marketing and events.

The new owners have worked hard to reassure their customers and the community that the investors are all Killington skiers and snowboarders themselves and that daily operations won’t change. Killington will continue to host a Women’s World Cup event on Thanksgiving weekend and will work with Great Gulf on the plan for the village, which calls for more than 650 ski-in condominiums, stores and restaurants, two public squares, and a ski lodge to be completed by the 2027-28 ski season. The town is contributing to road and infrastructure improvements, and the resort has pledged $700,000 to help create worker housing.

Lead organizers Phill Gross and Michael Ferri, both longtime second-home owners, said they set out to find investors in February after POWDR’s expected deal with Alterra fell through. Gross is the cofounder of the Boston-based Adage Capital Management; Ferri is board vice president at Killington Mountain School and co-owns Valvoline Instant Oil Change franchises.

POWDR was selling Killington because it didn’t fit in with the rest of the company’s property portfolio, Gross said in an interview on Monday.

“Killington was the least connected to their operation, being back East,” he said.

When the Alterra deal fell through, Gross called Ferri, and the two agreed they didn’t want a different corporate entity to take over.

“He didn’t need convincing,” Gross said of Ferri. “He was like, ‘We have to do this. The alternative is not good for the neighborhood, not good for the mountain, with overcrowding, and losing control of our cash flow.'”

As news of the investment group spread, “we actually had to turn investors away because we raised more money than we needed,” Ferri said at an October 9 community meeting at the resort. The group has declined to say how much the deal cost.

Gross and Ferri said they raised $30 million for an array of capital improvements over the next two years, including a new base lodge, new cabins for one of Killington’s two gondolas, a new six-seat chairlift to replace an existing four-seater and 1,000 new snowmaking guns.

Customers have pushed the industry to be more sustainable, and Killington is part of a state pilot project aimed at find new ways of saving energy, protecting the climate and supporting the local community.

One of the biggest ways Killington can make a difference is through replacing inefficient snowmaking equipment, Gross said. The resort is also switching out diesel equipment for electric.

The snowmaking expansion currently under way is the largest at Killington since the 1970s, resort CEO and general manager Mike Solimano said at the October 9 meeting. It’s critical at a ski area that strives to be the first to open for the season in New England and the last to close, he added.

“It helps us get open earlier and be able to move much quicker, especially early season,” Solimano said. The resort opened last week, the first in Vermont.

The investors are also putting money into the company’s smaller ski area at Pico Mountain, just a few miles from Killington. Along with the nearly 2,000 acres of ski resort property, the purchase from POWDR included the Wobbly Barn Steakhouse and nightclub, the 18-hole Killington Golf Course, the Killington Grand Hotel, and employee housing.

Ferri introduced many of the investors at the community meeting, briefly describing their long connections to Killington and pointing out a few in the crowd. He’s said he’s been skiing there since his parents bought a condo in 1970, and his three sons attended Killington Mountain School, where he has been a trustee since 2008. Gross said he first bought a Killington home in 1986 and now owns two.

The two investors have repeatedly pledged to stay out of the way of the managers, including Solimano, who has been at Killington for 22 years. They plan to offer about a dozen employees some equity in the company, Gross said in an interview on Monday.

With seven mountain peaks, nearly 2,000 skiable acres and 92 miles of trails, Killington and Pico make up the largest ski resort in the East.

Like many areas, Killington has positioned itself as a four-season resort, offering mountain biking and other activities in the warmer months. Laramie declined to say how many people ski and board there annually but said the resort draws about 1 million visitors year-round and employs 1,600 people in the peak winter months.

Running a ski resort is expensive, and that’s why so many independent ski area owners have sold to corporations, Gross said on Monday.

“The conglomerates are a godsend to mountains that are not as profitable as Killington,” Gross said, crediting the resort’s size, snowmaking and amenities. POWDR put millions into capital improvements at the ski area, including new lodges and lifts, before giving up most of its stake.

A downside of corporate ownership is overcrowding related to the Epic and Ikon passes. Killington has that problem, too, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays. The new owners are looking for ways to spread the visits out.

“If you want to ski at a private mountain, ski at Killington on a Tuesday,” Gross said.

Killington is now one of the largest privately owned ski resorts in the world, according to Steve Wright, president and general manager at Jay Peak in northern Vermont. Wright serves on the board of the National Ski Areas Association.

Solimano said many people have asked whether ticket prices will drop under the new owners. (An unlimited season pass is $1,780, and one-day tickets vary. An adult pass is $94.30 on Thanksgiving Day and $187 near Christmas. There are many deals, including some for veterans and for residents of New Hampshire and Vermont.) Prices haven’t gone up this season, but skiers shouldn’t expect them to go down, either, Solimano told the crowd at the October 9 meeting.

“The problem is we need to buy a whole bunch of things. The model doesn’t work to give stuff away,” Solimano said. But he added that the new owners are trying to find ways to make skiing a little more affordable, maybe by offering some midweek deals. They also plan to expand Killington’s free ski program for elementary school students.

“We get the ‘too expensive’ thing,” Solimano said.

This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2024.

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