Some say critic is buyer trying to reduce ski conglomerate’s purchase cost, but others agree about safety concerns

By Ted Cohen

A tech billionaire is taking a Vermont ski conglomerate to task for allegedly scrimping on upkeep and even skier safety.

Matthew Prince is looking to buy one of the Utah mountains owned by Vail Resorts, but he’s wondering what actually he’d be getting for his money.

Prince by some accounts is talking trash about publicly-traded Vail Resorts to tank its stock value so he doesn’t have to write as big a check, a suggestion he denies.

But he has a constituency that seems to agree with his premise – that Vail Resorts does things on the cheap.

Prince grew up in Park City, Utah, and has garnered plenty of headlines recently for his aggressive media campaign to buy the ski area from Vail Resorts, 

Vail Resorts owns and operates three premier ski destinations in Vermont: Stowe Mountain Resort, Okemo Mountain Resort and Mount Snow. 

Vail entered the Vermont market nine years ago buying the venerated Stowe operation for $50 million, marking its first east coast entry.

“You can’t discuss the history of U.S. skiing without discussing Stowe,” Greg Ditrinco of SkiMag.com wrote when Vail bought it. “Using axes and cross-cut saws, a number of Stowe’s early trails were cleared by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which President Franklin Roosevelt created to provide jobs during the Great Depression.”

After investing in Stowe, the resort company’s Vermont interest expanded when it bought Okemo and then Mount Snow.

Vail’s entry into Vermont resulted in cheaper lift tickets, the tradeoff being some skiers thinking the company’s foray into the tiny Green Mountain State has overly-commercialized the mountains.

So Vermonters have a stake in the company’s finances nationwide, i.e., whether an investor such as Prince can improve the way it runs its mountains, not only in the west but here in the heartland of ski history.

Prince argues that Vail Resorts needs to increase spending on lift replacement, maintenance and lift mechanics.

He claims that Vail Resorts is not allocating capital in a way that’s keeping its 42 ski mountains across the U.S. safe and running smoothly for the guests.

“I absolutely think that their infrastructure is underinvested in, and that these are complicated machines,” Prince told SummitDaily.com. “When they don’t get invested in, unfortunately, people can die.

He’s offered to pump a half a billion dollars into Park City if Vail Resorts will sell it to him.

Vail Resorts responded that ahead of the last ski season Park City Mountain Resort replaced about 1,400 feet of old snowmaking pipe and added about 700 feet of new pipe.

Overall, Vail Resorts officials say they have invested $121 million in upgrades to lifts, terrain, snowmaking, and restaurants at Park City Mountain Resorts in the last ten years.

In Vail, the ski town that once headquartered Vail Resorts, there are residents who have been watching Prince’s public campaign with a great deal of interest,

“I know several of the people working for Vail Resorts in maintenance, and the concern is real,” former Vail town councilor Merc Lapin said. 

“There’s a lot of deferred maintenance,” Lapin suggests, “and some of the key people who knew how to do it right have left the company, so I don’t disagree with that concern.”

Prince, who cofounded and heads up the web infrastructure and cybersecurity company Cloudflare, denied he is working with activist shareholder groups circling Vail Resorts stock in recent weeks.

Vail Resorts has engaged bankers specializing in defending against activist shareholder takeovers.

But Vail CEO Rob Katz said he’s “focused on operational excellence, having the best people.”