Vail Resorts

History

Vail Resorts was founded as Vail Associates Ltd. by Pete Seibert (former WWII 10th Mountain Division ski trooper) and Earl Eaton in the early 1960s. Earl and Peter were both ski patrol guides at Aspen when they shared their dream of finding the "next great ski mountain". Earl, a life long resident and son of pioneer families in the area lead Peter to the area in March 1957. Peter set off to secure financing and Earl engineered the early lifts. On a string and a prayer, the ski resort was founded and it opened in 1962. George N. Gillett, Jr. purchased Vail Associates in 1985. Vail Associates changed its name to Vail Resorts and went public in 1997 after Gillett Holdings (owned by George N. Gillett, Jr.) went bankrupt. Apollo Management, headed by Leon Black, bought the company out of bankruptcy and took Vail Resorts public, controlling Vail Resorts through its growth until around 2003, when Apollo divested themselves of the controlling interest. Former Apollo executive, Rob Katz, currently runs the company. The skating rink at Beaver Creek was named the Black Family Skating Rink after Leon Black.

RockResorts

In 2001, Vail Resorts acquired the renowned luxury hotel chain Rockresorts, which contributed substantially to their brand recognition. RockResorts (with the second "R" now capitalized) was named for its original owners, the Rockefeller Family. As of January 2017, the properties include:

Subsidiaries and affiliates

All of the company's retail operations are run by a smaller company, [Specialty Sports Venture, aka SSV], of which Vail owns 70%. The owners of the other 30% are the Gart Brothers, specifically Tom Gart, Ken Gart and John Gart. The Gart family have been in the sporting goods business for 3 generations and were the former owners of Gart Sports, the large chain of sporting goods stores in the western US. Gart Sports was sold by the Gart family in the 1990s and then recently sold again to Sports Authority, which discontinued the use of the Gart Sports name in 2006. In 2010, Vail completed the buyout of the Specialty Sports Venture brand and is now the 100% owner of all SSV operations. In addition to all of the ski shops in the Vail Resorts portfolio of ski areas, the SSV chain of stores includes Bicycle Village in Denver, Colorado Ski & Golf, Boulder Ski Deals, Aspen Sports, Telluride Sports and Mountain Sports Outlet in Summit County and Glenwood Springs and many others. SSV is reportedly the largest Trek bicycles dealer in the world.

Vail Resorts also owns just over 50% of Slifer, Smith and Frampton (SSF), the largest real estate brokerage company in the Vail region, controlling over 70% of the real estate transactions in the market. Slifer, Smith and Frampton was called Slifer, Smith and Frampton/Vail Associates Real Estate, but they dropped the "Vail Associates" name in 2003. The founders of SSF are Rod Slifer, a former ski instructor who was recently the mayor of the Town of Vail, Mark Smith, a real estate broker/turned developer who currently also runs East West Partners with Harry Frampton, who was the former President of Vail Associates and currently owns East West Partners. East West Partners has built most of the large building that make up the Beaver Creek Village, including the Marketplace Building, Village Hall and One Beaver Creek. Not to be confused with East West Resorts, a separate property Management Group.

Vail Resorts Development Company (VRDC) is the wholly owned real estate development company that Vail Resorts uses to develop all of its company-owned real estate, other than the projects that East West Partners develops. VRDC developed Bachelor's Gulch, one of the most upscale, ski-in/ski-out resorts in the business with its own Ritz Carlton and just over 100 slopeside mansions. President Gerald Ford kept his ski house in the Strawberry Park section of Beaver Creek, which is between Beaver Creek and Bachelor's Gulch. Arrowhead is the third "peak" in the heavily promoted "village to village ski experience" in which you can ski from Beaver Creek to Bachelor's Gulch to Arrowhead and back again. Arrowhead was a separate ski area unrelated to Beaver Creek for years before they were finally bought by Vail Associates in the early 1990s. VRDC also developed "club" division of Vail Resorts, including the Beaver Creek Club, the Arrowhead Alpine Club, and Game Creek Club (in Vail). VRDC also developed Red Sky Ranch in Wolcott (approximate 10 miles (16 km) west of Beaver Creek), which includes two golf courses and many million dollar golf course homes. All of these clubs are now operated by the "Mountain Division" of Vail Resorts.

List of resorts

Vail Resorts most notably operates the Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, and Keystone ski areas in Colorado, Northstar at Tahoe, Kirkwood Mountain Resort, and Heavenly Ski Resort on the California-Nevada border. It acquired the Grand Teton Lodge Company within the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in 1999. The GTLC properties include the Jenny Lake Lodge, Jackson Lake Lodge, and Colter Bay Village.