The New Hampshire Executive Council pushed off a vote on key amendments to a takeover of Mount Sunapee ski area by Vail Resorts, listing lingering concerns over a controversial expansion zone and calling for more time to evaluate.
In a 5-0 vote, councilors stopped — for now — the approval of the amendments. But the holdup will not affect the underlying lease approved by the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which allows Vail to take over operations this winter.
One of the amendments would add to the lease land comprising the “West Bowl Expansion,” a currently undeveloped tract of forest that some local residents say should be put to conservation.
The use of that land for ski area development was approved by the Executive Council in 2015 over the objections of those residents, who gathered a 2,500-signature petition at the time in opposition. But the owners of the lease for the ski area, Tim and Diane Mueller, have never followed through with development.
Now, whether Vail Resorts — a company known as much for real estate development as ski area management — gets the development option in its new lease is up to the Executive Council.
The council is also taking up an amendment that would tighten state oversight for any future transfers of the lease. That change comes in response to a move in 2017 to transfer the lease to a private hedge fund, Och-Ziff, which took place without public notice.
Councilor Andru Volinsky, a Concord Democrat whose district straddles the mountain, said that the council and public needed time to look through the amendments, which were first released on Oct. 12.
“We knew they were coming, but none of us got the actual amendments until last Friday,” Volinsky said. “You really have to read the amendments in the context of the underlying lease, which is voluminous, and the closing documents on the last sale.”
The question over the future of the expansion has hovered since June, when Vail announced it had secured a deal to take over three ski areas the Muellers operated for $82 million, plus an additional $155 million to buy out the underlying land leases.
The deal would give the resort behemoth control over Sunapee, Okemo in Vermont and Crested Butte in Colorado. But because Mount Sunapee sits on state land, any changes to the language in the lease must get Executive Council approval.
Wednesday’s delay comes after months of presentations and scrutiny, including an audit by the Attorney General’s Office that resulted in a recommendation for the deal to pass.
Representation in the Executive Council over the mountain is split between Councilor Joseph Kenney, R-Union, whose district includes the town of Sunapee, and Volinsky, whose district includes the town of Newbury, the site of the ski area itself.
Volinsky said he remains undecided on the amendment but is not completely against expansion. Yet he added that any promise made by Vail not to develop — or agreements with environmental groups on where they could — should be put into the contract itself, not vested in trust. It doesn’t help, he added, that the ski company has not been explicit on its plans.
“Vail has fudged a little bit,” Volinsky said. “It says that it’s currently not interested but wants to assess. So if Vail were willing to swear off the West Bowl Expansion, then we’d all be on the same issue and this would be easy. But they’re not willing. They’re being less clear.”
Volinsky said he would weigh the economic benefits as well as any feedback from voters in coming weeks.