Vail Resorts Townhome Sales 'Out-of-the-Park'

They are immediately adjacent to the Vail Mountain Marriott in Vail's LionsHead Village. Gore Creek Place was designed and is being developed by Vail Resorts Development Co. a wholly owned subsidiary of Vail Resorts. Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate, whose partner is Vail Resorts, acted as the listing broker.

All eight townhomes in phase I of Gore Creek Place were sold at the full list price without discount. The price of the eight sold homes exceeded $1,000 per sf on average. Vail Resorts Development Co. received more contracts for these homes than it had available units. In light of the response, the development company plans in the near future to sell all eight remaining townhomes of Gore Creek Place. Construction is expected to begin after Labor Day presuming the last remaining approvals are received from the town of Vail.

Gore Creek Place is the third redevelopment project for Vail Village and LionsHead Village, part of the Vail's "New Dawn" marketing effort. The other two projects include a new underground 114-space parking structure in Vail Village and new single-family home sites in LionsHead.

The price of parking spaces in the new Vail Village garage ranged from $100,000 to $138,000, and all have been sold. The single-family home sites were sold for $10.5 million plus potential added future consideration. Construction on these two projects began in May. Closings for these two projects are expected during fiscal 2005. In addition, Vail Resorts started construction on a $3.5-million skier bridge immediately adjacent to Vail's Eagle Bahn Gondola.

"We are thrilled by our blowout success in the sale of Gore Creek Place townhomes in Vail's LionsHead," says Vail Resorts chairman and chief executive officer Adam Aron. "Not only does this represent some $32 million of real estate revenue at average square-foot prices exceeding $1,000, but more importantly this strengthens our commitment and enthusiasm for Vail's New Dawn. Clearly, there is significant pent-up demand for new high-quality luxury accommodations in Vail Village and Vail's LionsHead Village."

He adds that the company's "out-of-the park" success at Gore Creek Place "makes us buoyant with optimism not only about the remainder of Gore Creek Place, but it also fills us with confidence about the proposed new luxury residential offerings on the so-called LionsHead "core site."

The core site is steps away from Vail's Eagle Bahn Gondola in LionsHead, "giving a whole new meaning to the phrase 'ski-in/ski-out' luxury accommodations," Aron says. He notes Vail Resorts is in the final stages of seeking regulatory approval from the town of Vail to build a new luxury hotel and condominium complex on the core site. The site also will include new restaurants and retail.

Vail Resorts, rumored to be for sale, operates the mountain resorts of Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone in Colorado, Heavenly in California and Nevada, and the Grand Teton Lodge Company in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The Company also operates its subsidiary, RockResorts, a luxury resort hotel company with 10 distinctive properties across the U.S. Vail Resorts Development Company is the real estate planning, development, construction, retail leasing and management subsidiary of Vail Resorts, Inc.