Shane Gadbaw, a 35-year-old New York hedge fund exec, grew up night skiing with buddies after school in Michigan, taking the occasional trip to Colorado and Vermont. He enjoyed skiing and the outdoors, but owning a ski resort wasn't a career goal. Now, he’s running Eagle Point, Utah, formerly known as Elk Meadows, building on the dreams that were the ill-fated Mt. Holly Club.

“I don’t have any real background in the ski industry,” Gadbaw confesses. Still, he, along with his two long-time partners Terry Leighton and Joe Clough, bought the bankrupt resort with its 1,200 acres out of auction in December 2009 for an incredible $1.9 million. When the resort hit the block, there wasn’t much time for evaluation, so the intermediate skier summoned “skier friends” from Colorado to take a little trip with him.

From Investor to Owner
Gadbaw was somewhat familiar with Elk Meadows/Mt. Holly already. Real estate investor Robert O’Neill introduced him to the Mt. Holly Club project in 2006. Gadbaw's company, XE Capital Management, became the lender in a joint venture to develop the land that operated as Elk Meadows Resort until 2002, when it went bankrupt. The plan was to transform the area into an exclusive private ski and golf resort where potential homeowners would have to prove a minimum net worth to join, à la the Yellowstone Club in Montana.

“At the time, Yellowstone was the most successful operation of its type in the whole world. It made sense to invest,” Gadbaw says. “The real estate market was booming. There was a lot of optimism.”

When Mt. Holly crashed and burned, XE held the note that secured the land, and foreclosed on it in 2009. “Our shareholders would either have had to put up a ton of money to try to make it work, or sell it at auction so we could fund other investments,” says Gadbaw. They all agreed to dispose of the asset.

But something about the property intrigued Gadbaw on a personal level. “I had never run a ski resort or been a lifetime skier,” he says. “I had friends from Aspen [and other parts of Colorado] meet me in Utah last season, avid skiers and resort employees who could tell me what I was looking at and whether I should pursue it; what shape the lifts were in and whether we could rehabilitate them.”

The look on their faces was telling. “One told me, ‘I can imagine how after a day of fresh powder this would be your own little paradise,’” he says. The clincher was more emotional than financial. “Maybe I’m superstitious. A bald eagle circled above us as we started our drive down the canyon,” he recalls. It was an omen of what was to come. Gadbaw and partners won the auction.

It’s still something of a real-estate play. “We didn’t buy a ski resort,” Gadbaw says. “We bought private land on a mountaintop setting with a ski resort infrastructure.” The plan is to turn Eagle Point into a viable ski resort while waiting out the real estate market.

In this, Gadbaw has freedom no other Elk Meadows owner has ever had. The area, above the town of Beaver, about four hours south of Salt Lake City and 90 minutes northeast of Brian Head Resort, comes free of debt and legacy development. Aside from a few older residences, it’s a blank slate.

Staying Flexible
Gadbaw believes he could still turn the area exclusively private, like the Mt. Holly Club developers dreamed, or keep it public for local pleasure, or craft some hybrid to satisfy both types of guests. “We won’t conceive a plan overnight, but it will be the outgrowth of what happens in the market,” he says.

The short-term plan is to build a loyal following from southern Utah and Las Vegas. The area is offering one of the cheapest season passes in the nation, and ticket packages that start as low as $20/ day. This first season is all about getting skiers up to Eagle Point. “It’s easy to fall in love with the place. We want you to feel special when you’re here and talk about it when you leave,” he says.

This season, visitors will see pretty much the same area riders played on back in 2002, but with refurbished chairlifts and two completely renovated base lodges. The 1,200 acres in the Tushar Mountains is home to some of the best powder, steeps and backcountry terrain in the state. The area worked with the Forest Service to open five backcountry gates that provide access beyond the inbounds runs. For now, additional inbounds runs, lifts, lodging and snowmaking will have to wait.

Diving In
Renovations have been extensive. “Multiples of the purchase price” were spent to spruce up the facilities and hire the personnel to run the resort. Gadbaw’s brother and master chef at Marea (N.Y.), Jared Gadbaw, took charge of the new full-service restaurant that adds a lunch, aprés and dinner spot to Beaver this winter. Former Snowbird ski school director Steve Bills is running ski education programs.

Shane himself is working with Brick House Creative in Bozeman, Mont., on marketing. “I haven’t had this much fun in my entire career,” he says. "Wall Street has a financial model, but it’s nothing tangible like a resort. All of my experience deals with the business of private placements. If you have 100 large clients, your approach is confidential and private, with rules that prevent you from advertising or communicating. [Eagle Point] is a very, very public business. You have to talk to the press, Facebook, be clever, create and maintain a brand.”

He’s got high hopes. “We have an understanding of why it didn’t work in the past,” he says. He pointed to the economy, the overhead, and Elk’s illogical attempts to market to New York City and other metros that wouldn’t possibly be interested in a small southern Utah ski area.

Gadbaw believes he’s ready for this new spectrum of challenges, both professionally and personally. It represents a lifestyle change (he’s moving his wife and three young kids to Las Vegas) and a chance to build something lasting. “It’s like planting a garden. You hope for growth and you start to see it, little by little,” he says. “We’re going to build something real that 30 years from now, my grandkids will tell their family and friends how grandpa had a vision.”