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A couple of big companies dominate America's ski resort industry. So after a Colorado mountain resort went up for sale, a neighboring town began deciding how to keep corporate owners away. Rachel Cohen of Mountain West News Bureau takes us there.
RACHEL COHEN, BYLINE: It snowed about seven inches overnight at Eldora Mountain Resort, about an hour west of Denver. In the morning, the flakes are still falling.
REBECCA BURNS: So, yeah, should be a good day.
COHEN: Getting ready to ski, Rebecca Burns says the small resort feels like a locals' mountain with families and college kids but not so many out-of-state vacationers. But the future of the hill is up in the air. The company that owns it, POWDR, is putting it up for sale. Burns has one demand...
BURNS: As long as it's not bought by Vail, that's all I really care about.
COHEN: Vail Resorts is also based in Colorado and owns more than 40 ski resorts. Not everyone loves their flagship mountain here.
BURNS: Like a posh, like, pinkies-out kind of mountain (laughter). That's not really what the locals want around here.
COHEN: Vail and their big rival, Alterra, won't say whether they're interested in Eldora. There's no list of potential buyers, but the little town closest to the resort is trying to put together a bid for it. There's a coffee shop inside of train cars, an indoor carousel, a crystal shop, the old wooded town hall.
JONATHAN CAIN: This building was built in 1874, and it's a very quirky building.
COHEN: Jonathan Cain is the administrator for Nederland - population 1,500. It was a former mining town revived by musicians and artists.
CAIN: This was a center of, kind of the counterculture, hippie movement in the '60s and '70s, and it's always been a place that's been just a little bit different.
COHEN: Now, Nederland serves as a gateway to outdoor recreation. And it's not intimidated by the price tag for Eldora, which the town estimates is between 100 to $200 million.
CAIN: It is really important to the people of Nederland that this remains a real community where real people live, and they raise their kids and they can work and play in the same places. And I think it ultimately will help us keep Nederland Nederland.
COHEN: There are definitely skeptics. Steve Trujillo works behind the bar at a Nederland pizza shop.
STEVE TRUJILLO: I don't see them having the money to improve it. We don't have the money to have a police station. We don't have the money to have a bank. We don't have money for good sidewalks, for good roads. How do we have the money to buy a ski area?
COHEN: Town Administrator Jonathan Cain says the town can swing the purchase, despite its tiny tax base. It can sell municipal bonds, he says, and resort revenue will pay them off. He says there could even be a surplus that would subsidize things like sidewalks and water pipes.
Michael Childers grew up skiing small resorts and sees the romantic appeal of a small town owning the neighboring ski hill.
MICHAEL CHILDERS: Just going up to the mountain every afternoon, taking the kids out for PE classes.
COHEN: Now a professor at Colorado State University, Childers wrote a book about the changing ski industry.
CHILDERS: The ski area really controls a lot of the industry, a lot of the culture of these places. And so I see this as a reaction against that kind of corporate mega resort ownership.
COHEN: Last summer, local investors in Vermont bought Killington Resort, and people in Bend, Oregon, are pooling resources to try to buy Mt. Bachelor. Nederland officials say the company that owns Eldora has invited town leaders to submit a bid. They say they're working toward finalizing a plan. The company that owns the resort declined to comment for this story.
For NPR News, I'm Rachel Cohen.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRISTEZA'S "GOLDEN HILL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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