Vail Resorts Announces Their Intent to Purchase Crested Butte Mountain Resort
The Crested Butte real estate Market is buzzing with excitement as Vail Resorts announces their intent to purchase Crested Butte Mountain Resort along with three other resorts. The announcement came Monday morning that Vail will acquire Triple Peaks LLC which owns Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Vermont’s Okemo Mountain Resort and Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire. The Muellers who purchased CBMR in March of 2004, will receive a payment of $82 million while and additional payment of $155 million will be provided to Triple Peaks to pay off leases to the mountain operations. Vail also announced that they will be acquiring Stevens Pass ski area in Washington state for $67 million in a separate deal.
Crested Butte Mountain Resort opened in 1961 and has been a family run ski resort, passing through two other families before being purchased by Tim and Dianne Mueller and their two children. News of the sale has been met with mixed feelings from the community as many worry about how this will effect the character of the town, known as the “Last Great Ski Town”. Others are optimistic that the sale will help boost tourism and increase flights into the Gunnison-Crested Butte Regional Airport. For those skiing or riding with the Epic Pass, this is great news.
The sale is expected to finalize later this summer and once finalized, the 2018/2019 Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, Epic Military Pass and Epic Australia Pass will include unlimited and unrestricted access to all four of the newly acquired resorts. Season passes already purchased for any of the four resorts will also still be honored.
While the acquisition of Crested Butte Mountain Resort will deepens Vail’s roots in the Colorado ski resort industry, it may also mean we see some much needed improvements to Crested Butte Mountain Resort. With their announcement, Vail indicated that they plan on investing $35 million over the next two years at the four newly acquired resorts. In the mean time, ongoing annual capital expenditures are expected to increase by $7 million with the additions.
You can read more on the Vail’s announcement to purchase Crested Butte Mountain Resort at the following links:

Denver Business Journal
Ski Mag
Summit Daily
Gunnison Country Times

For more information on Crested Butte events, festivals, news and real estate, please visit  crestedbuttecollection.com.