October 15, 2026
It sounded good for a minute, a tiny town banding together to buy the local ski resort, thereby securing control of its future in this righteous fight against corporate skiing. The idea was extremely popular; hundreds of headlines across the country essentially declared it a done deal, with the town then leveraging the cash flow to solve its many challenges.
As it turns out, there was never a realistic plan nor the resources and expertise for Nederland to purchase Eldora Mountain Resort for the hefty price tag of $120 million.
The owner, Powdr, offered the town every opportunity in what has devolved into an almost two-year process. Now Powdr needs to end this drama, return to operating a ski area and focus on its core stakeholders: The tens of thousands of visitors who support this use of public land, and the resort’s 750 employees who depend on it.
Nederland wanted to set a national precedent for other municipalities to follow and instead gave this nascent movement a black eye. The town seems unlikely to bow out gracefully, though sharp criticism from residents is finally mounting.
Mayor Nichole Sterling has been the main architect and proponent of this unprecedented purchase from the onset while she was Nederland Mayor Pro Tem; in April, she won the mayor’s office by just three votes (261-258), largely because residents thought she would get the deal done. The mayor broke several months of silence on Sept. 30 with an update and pep talk, urging weary residents to “hang in there.”
You can’t help but admire her moxie, but Sterling’s plan is both troublesome and naïve. She says Nederland will move forward with a restructured strategy that will somehow find bond buyers willing to back the risky purchase. The dream next relies on unrealistic donations to fund capital improvements that are needed soon but would come much later.
This puts Powdr in a predicament, albeit one of its own making. The mistake is understandable, and it’s high time to leave it behind.
Why Not Ned?
Operating a substantial-sized ski area, where owners must invest two bucks just to make one, is risky, complex, and typically better left to the private sector. One could write a book on how ill-suited Ned is for the ownership of a medium-large ski resort. It could start with a lack of money and collateral, coupled with a rising 8.5 percent interest rate for the town’s preferred funding method of selling municipal revenue “junk bonds” to fund the purchase.
Small-town problems. This small town (pop. 1,500) has an annual general fund budget of just more than $3 million, about 1 percent of the city of Aspen’s similar annual spending (and 2 percent of Vail’s). It has a checkered track record, having shuttered its police department and fumbled away its signature event. It has a town staff of about 25, which is smaller than Eldora’s ski patrol and just 3 percent of the resort’s workforce. The town already faces major challenges in fixing its infrastructure and brokering a redevelopment of its downtown; it also tragically witnessed 17 of its tax-paying businesses destroyed by an October 2025 fire. It is full of many good businesses and people that complement Eldora, but in municipal oversight it receives a middling grade at best.
Nederland is important to the ski area, but the two are hardly synonymous: the resort lies outside town limits, under Boulder County jurisdiction. Nederland supplies only a small fraction of Eldora’s guests and employees and is not a destination ski town. Eldora has always been Boulder County’s ski area, not Nederland’s. Thanks to the Ikon Pass, many guests now come from the Denver area to the south and Fort Collins to the north.
But in summer 2025, Nederland signed a purchase agreement with Powdr, and later authorized municipal revenue bonding authority of up to $220 million, almost 100 times its annual budget. The town’s sales pitch: the bonds would be paid for by resort revenue, not resident taxpayers. The town never revealed a plan, but this appeared to leave roughly $100 million for a “rainy day” fund and, more importantly, capital improvements, starting with summer operations.
Change of plans. The mayor’s update was disturbing on several fronts. After a long learning process, she admitted that raising the $220 million is not feasible, and now it hopes to somehow come up with just the $120 million to buy the resort. She also implied that if Ned could somehow sell the bonds to cover the ski area purchase, it could raise money for improvements from the state of Colorado, which faces a $1.6 billion deficit for 2027, and from philanthropic donations. Operations might be tight for 10 years as it pays back the bonds, she admitted.
And, by the way, the town wouldn’t own the ski area, but would lease it back from the bond holders, which could use it as security along with the ski area revenues.
Critically, Mayor Sterling also revealed the town has spent a stunning $2.5 million in due diligence, money it doesn’t have and won’t get back if the sale doesn’t happen. The money would likely come from what is essentially the town’s 401k; in 2023, Nederland put away $1.5 million into the state’s Core and Cash Fund, which is part of the Colorado Surplus Asset Fund Trust.
Behind closed doors. The town chose to conduct its risky business entirely in private, claiming that the confidentiality of the negotiations and parties involved dictated so. BusinessDen, a Front Range online news site, strongly disagreed. When its request seeking open records was rebuffed, it sued the town.
“Nederland structured this in a specific way so as to never share anything,” said BusinessDen founder Aaron Kemer. “There are more and more red flags, and the town has shared absolutely nothing month after month. The devil is in the details, but who knows what they are signing away?”
Ski area owners, or any business steward, will rightfully say the public shouldn’t know the details of a private purchase negotiation. But this a municipal undertaking, an entirely different kettle of fish. The taxpayers have a right to know the general outlines of a plan, especially when the borrowing amounts to $80,000 per resident. The town could have smartly shared its many issues and challenges and not violated NDA confidentiality, but it chose to be secretive and silent. This was a bad move.
So in the town’s best-case scenario, it convinces someone to buy its junk bonds at 8.5 percent, limps through the next decade making excessive debt payments, and generally tries to hold its own with no improvements in the country’s most competitive ski market.
Town Residents Awaken
While town residents haven’t yet protested in the streets over this misuse of public funds, locals are waking up to the guise.
Changing tune. Dallas Masters is a former town trustee who understands the potential benefits of a town purchase; owning the ski resort would have been a game changer and likely the biggest step forward in the town’s history. But he has now come around to see the many insurmountable hurdles and has even created a comprehensive website to chronicle Nederland’s flawed process and its unchecked spending in due diligence.
He shared these concerns in a posting on the private Nedheads Facebook page:
“So many red flags have been raised (lack of professional partners, interest rates above expectations, bond holders refusing the deal, town admin leaving just as the deal starts to unravel, due diligence funds coming from the town’s rainy-day investments, and lack of information to the public), it’s hard to see how any sane person could continue.”
“We should cut our losses and run,” commented David Sites. “We have no business running a business like that and bond investors know it.”
Call to action. The sentiment is growing. The Nedheads just shared a post requesting a Call to Action, noting the town leaders’ moves “put the future of our community at serious risk.” It implores residents to attend the next Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 20, to demand that the town “end immediately” its costly adventure to buy the ski area.
How Powdr Got Here
Powdr and its affluent owner, the famously silent John Cumming, have always been different, and being an outlier can be a good thing. Cumming would come off as a hero in a municipal sale to Ned that trumpets independent skiing, and Powdr would benefit from the town paying a high-price tag.
At its height, when it owned some nine resorts, Powdr was tucked just behind the “Big Two” of Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Co. in terms of skier visit volume, sharing this lofty perch as a “mid-major” with Boyne Resorts.
Powdr is widely considered to be the best owner-steward in Eldora’s 60-year history, resolving environmental concerns while investing more than $40 million in capital improvements. This included Eldora’s first detachable chair, a dramatically expanded parking lot, and partnering with Ignite Adaptive Sports on a new beginner lodge—not to mention the widely lauded renovations of the restrooms.
Major growth. The Ikon Pass entered the world at the same time, and the two grew in lock step; Nederland’s eye was no doubt drawn by the resort’s bottom-line success. As an Ikon Pass partner, Eldora’s skier visits almost doubled, and under now-retired general manager Brent Tregaskis it grew to some 400,000 annual skier visits, with about $50 million in annual revenue and a consistent EBITDA of 25 percent. This was the greatest “rags-to-riches” transformation in the tenure of Cumming and Powdr, and they deserve to take a bow for managing the trade-offs and completing the first phase of improvements.
All good things must come to an end, and in 2024 Powdr decided to downsize. Ultimately, Cumming sold Killington (and nearby Pico) to a group of affluent, longtime second-home owners who are more concerned about the health of the skiing experience than liquidity. This was a win-win for the East’s best known and biggest resort, and it kept Killington off the unlimited Ikon Pass.
Next up was the sale of Eldora, where savvy, seasoned ski area operators were unwilling to go much above $105 million or $110 million, still a nice bump from the $40 million Powdr paid less than a decade ago. But the town of Nederland would pay $120 million, and there was even a temporary confidence as the town partnered for advice with a group of industry heavyweights (303 Ski) who would keep an eye on the operational details. That partnership fell apart.
While Killington turned out to be a slam-dunk for Powdr, the Eldora sale is … not so much.
Needs remain. Meanwhile, there is much to be done on the mountain following a warm and snowless season in which Western resorts were down 25 percent in skier visits and operators are tightening their belts. Eldora needs to replace its popular Corona lift serving expert terrain with a high-speed detachable; move forward on a Jolly Jug expansion that would open much-needed green-blue slopes but require new snowmaking (and water); and perhaps build a mountaintop lodge. Out of the public’s eye, but just as important, loom water rights, water storage, a snowmaking infrastructure update, and patrol facilities.
How these are addressed, and in what order, will speak directly to the industry’s challenge of growing ROI in the short term while also providing the novice terrain necessary to jumpstart future participation in the sport.
Tregaskis’ successor is Andrew Gast, who most recently ran Oregon’s Mt. Ashland. He was chosen in no small part for his experience in dealing with nonprofit owners like the town of Nederland. He won’t be able to rely on Powdr COO Tim Brennwald, who died unexpectedly at age 62 in August. A longtime industry veteran, Brennwald was an extremely private person, but his significant role was to serve as the home-office liaison while providing oversight and guidance for Powdr’s roster of mountains. Brennwald’s substantial impact on and support of Eldora and the company’s other ski areas cannot be understated. (Powdr has not yet filled the COO post.)
The Here and Now
Powdr, which has declined to comment publicly on the negotiations, appears to have three options if the town follows its mayor’s lead and continues this ownership pursuit:
It could let the town stumble along on this path, remaining available for updates and advice.
It could renew and extend its purchase agreement with the town and give it more time—and rope.
Or it could end the deal now and go back to running a ski area, which is the only viable choice. It is presumed that Powdr will sell Eldora at some point in the future, but right now its job is to end this uncertainty and get back to operating a ski area.
Andy Bigford ([email protected]) has been an Eldora regular since 1997 and is co-author of a book on Eldora’s 60th anniversary. He is the former editor-in-chief of SKI and is working on a Ski Inc. 2030 book, set for publication…sometime in the future.
Author’s Note:
What We Learned…
*Resort efforts to be “fiercely independent,” a nationwide movement that will only grow, need to be based on realistic financials and business plans, not hopes and dreams.
*Customers and staff always come first, they determine your success—or failure.
*Capital improvements are mandatory; the guest always wants to know how and why the resort is getting better.
