Receiver Advances $11.5 M Offer for Burke, Berkshire East Owner Jon Schaefer Would Operate Resort
Receiver asks court to waive auction process followed for Jay Peak; sale could close “in early May”; $20 million in long-term improvements to include snowmaking upgrades, terrain expansion, new lifts
Burke Mountain, the 2,011-vertical-foot Vermont ski area mired in receivership since a 2016 EB-5 scandal, could secure a new long-term owner as soon as early May, according to court documents reviewed by The Storm.
The bidding ownership group, Bear Den Partners, includes a local Burke family “with strong ties to the mountain”; Burke Mountain Academy; and, crucially, the Schaefer family, who over nearly five decades transformed Berkshire East ski area in Massachusetts from a rusty backwater into one of the state’s most modern and successful operations and, more recently, led gut renovations and revivals of the tired Catamount and Bousquet ski areas.
The group’s bid is $11.5 million. Bear Den “intends to” invest “as much as” an additional $10 million short-term and $20 million long-term on snowmaking, new lifts, and terrain expansion, “among other things,” according to a motion filed in the Southern U.S. District of Florida by receiver Michael Goldberg requesting approval of Burke’s sale.
The receiver, who in 2022 sold onetime Burke sister resort Jay Peak to Utah-based multi-resort operator Pacific Group Resorts (PGRI) for $76 million via a multiparty auction, is asking the district court to waive that process this time, citing the already- lengthy sales process, a spring sales window that would provide ample time for snowmaking upgrades ahead of next winter, and a handful of legacy covenants that could block a third-party sale and prolong an already nearly decade-long saga.
The sale will include the 116-room grand hotel, a fraught legacy investment that could act as a long-term differentiator for a chronically overlooked ski area slotted awkwardly between the Vermont 100 mainline to its west and New Hampshire’s Ski 93 corridor to the east.
Should the sale close, Burke will be the first New England ski area to join a multi-mountain operator since Jay’s 2022 spin-off to PGRI, and the second U.S. ski area to do so in 2025, after long-independent Swiss Valley, Michigan announced an alliance with the Indiana-based operators of Perfect North, Indiana and Timberline, West Virginia. While Utah-based Powdr’s 2024 spinoff of Killington and Pico flung a ripple into American skiing’s inevitable-consolidation storyline, Burke’s sale would continue the long-term march toward fewer U.S. operators - Burke would be the 27th mountain to roll into a larger operating group since 2021, and the 96th to do so in the past decade.
A sale to Bear Den would likely stabilize a mountain and a community upended by the slapdash ownership tenure of now-imprisoned Aerial Quiros, whose cartoonish EB-5 visa scandal involving tens of millions in investor funds and a fake biomedical research center flung Burke and Jay Peak into receivership. This particular ownership group – a wealthy local family (led by investor Ken Graham), a renowned racing institution existentially tied to the mountain, and a respected and established New England ski area operator – is probably the best-case scenario for an isolated and marginalized mountain in desperate need of new ideas and better snowmaking to compete in a region and an industry increasingly defined by national multi-mountain passes, consistent conditions and operating schedules, and an evolve-or-die marketplace squeezed by exploding infrastructure, labor, utilities, and insurance costs.
The opportunity for Bear Den and for Burke is tremendous. As the Epic and Ikon passes have evolved from novelty to New England mainstay, they have delivered investment but also, often, alienation among many long-time passholders, who perceive growing crowds and costs that more than offset the money they’re saving on formerly pricey season passes. Burke, an existing Indy Pass partner with a large bed base, high-speed lifts, 2,000 vertical feet, killer terrain, and an address that is not as remote as it appears thanks to nearby Interstate 91, is ripe to be positioned as an alternative to its better-known Epic and Ikon competitors. That the Schaefers have already built a popular and affordable unlimited-access multi-mountain pass to Berkshire East, Catamount, and Bousquet sets the foundation for a potential hub-and-spoke pipeline that could nudge lower New England and New York skiers north for longer trips.
Here's a deeper look at Burke, the potential ownership group, and what the sale could mean for a rabid New England skier community that is open to and eager for change: