After nearly a decade in federal receivership, Burke Mountain Resort finally has new owners.
On Friday, Bear Den Partners LLC, a group with longstanding ties to the Northeast Kingdom ski area, officially closed on the $11.5 million deal to buy the 72-year old resort.
Bear Den Partners includes Burke Mountain Academy — the elite alpine ski racing school located in the area — and the Graham family, who briefly owned the mountain in the early 2000s. Also included in the new ownership group is the Schaefer family, owners of the Berkshire East Mountain Resort in Massachusetts.
The group first announced its bid to acquire Burke Mountain in early April, and a federal judge formally signed off on the deal last week.
At a Tuesday press conference celebrating the sale, representatives from Bear Den Partners outlined their plans to revamp the ski resort, which they have previously said would cost about $30 million in total.
“I think we have an opportunity to really unleash the potential here with the right capital investment to drive important automation and improvements in snowmaking, especially,” Ken Graham, chair and co-founder of Bear Den Partners, said Tuesday. “We’re prepared. We’re coming in swinging, I’d say.”
As a first order of business, the owners intend to triple the resort’s snowmaking capacity at Burke Mountain Resort by this coming winter with the hopes of considerably lengthening the resort’s ski season, Graham said.
The group also plans to expand the skiable terrain on the mountain.
Jon Schaefer, who expects to helm the resort’s operations, said in an interview that the group was beginning the permitting process to begin renovations on the mountain “right away” and that minor lift upgrades could expand access as soon as next season.
Eventually, he said, the owners hope to cut entirely new trails on the mountain, adding new runs for skiers of all levels. “In time there will be some more transformative changes,” Schaefer said.
Prior to the sale, Burke Mountain Resort had been languishing under court-ordered receivership since 2016, when the business was seized by the federal government after regulators accused its former owner, Ariel Quiros, of widespread fraud.
At the time, Quiros, a Miami businessman, was funding upgrades to the resort and other projects in the surrounding area with money gained through the EB-5 visa program — which pairs foreign investors with large-scale development projects in the U.S. in exchange for legal residency status — and was accused by regulators of orchestrating “a ponzi-like scheme.”
Regulators accused Quiros and others of misappropriating $200 million of the more than $350 million they raised from foreign investors. In April 2022, Quiros was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the scheme, while two others — Bill Stenger, former president of Jay Peak Resort, which Quiros also owned, and William Kelly, a longtime friend and adviser to Quiros — received 18 month sentences.
As the court ordered receiver of both Jay Peak and Burke Mountain, Michael Goldberg, a Florida-based lawyer, continued to operate both resorts before selling the former to Pacific Group Resorts in 2022 for $76 million.
But Goldberg struggled to offload Burke Mountain Resort, announcing on multiple occasions that he was on the cusp of reaching deals that subsequently fell through.
Meanwhile, Goldberg has said in court filings, the ski area was operating at a large deficit on a year to year basis while incurring expenses from deferred maintenance.
“The receiver himself and the staff under receivership did the best they could, but there was this huge amount of uncertainty,” said Willy Booker, headmaster of the Burke Mountain academy. “It’s a huge moment to have that chapter closed.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Jon Schaefer’s name.
