By Habib Sabet/VTDigger
A federal judge has signed off on the sale of Burke Mountain Resort for $11.5 million, releasing the Northeast Kingdom ski mountain from nearly a decade of federal receivership.
Judge Darrin P. Gayles issued the order in U.S. District Court in Miami formally approving the sale of Burke Mountain to Bear Den Partners LLC, a consortium of entities with longstanding ties to the ski resort.
“A private sale to the Buyer is the only current viable alternative for preserving and capturing the value of the Assets for the benefit of the receivership estate,” Gayles wrote in the court order.
The ski area’s buyer is a group that includes Burke Mountain Academy, a world-class ski racing school in Burke, and the Graham family, who briefly owned the resort in the early 2000s. The group has pledged to put around $30 million into the resort to fund significant upgrades to its lift infrastructure and the hotel at the base of the mountain.
Melissa Gullotti, a spokesperson for Bear Den Partners, said that pending a few administrative details being resolved, the group expected to formally close the deal in early May.
The decision comes just days after Michael Goldberg, the lawyer overseeing the resort’s receivership, asked Gayles to approve the deal, writing at the time that the agreement was “in the best interest of the investors, the employees and the Burke ski community.”
Gayles appointed Goldberg receiver of Burke Mountain Resort and Jay Peak, another Northeast Kingdom ski area, in 2016, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought a civil suit against Ariel Quiros, the former owner of both properties, and Bill Stenger, former CEO of Jay Peak. The two men were accused of defrauding investors participating in the federal EB-5 visa program in what has since become the largest fraud case in Vermont history.
In 2022, Jay Peak sold to Pacific Group Resorts Inc., a Utah-based management company, for $76 million. About $60 million of that went to defrauded investors, though it only covered an average of 22% of their losses.
In court filings, Goldberg has suggested that much of the proceeds from the sale of Burke Mountain Resort would similarly go toward making the investors whole, although it’s unclear how much they would receive.
