Jay Peak & Burke...

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Up date on Jay Peak and Burke http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/apri...imburse-jay-peak-and-burke-mountain-creditors

The unpaid contractors at Burke had been given a choice when the fraud indictments had been issued, either work for free to get the facility completed in hopes of getting paid eventually when the resorts were sold or take a chance that they would be paid far less if the resort was liquidated with an unfinished base lodge complex. Looks like they got paid a bit early. It is interesting to note the comment by the administrator with respect to selling the resorts with a potential price of 100 million. I am curious how many firms will be on the bid list?.

I saw in a news report that the EB-5 investors who got paid off are going to be encouraged into investing in other EB5 opportunities. EB5 had been set up to help economically disadvantaged communities but unfortunately high end real estate investors have figured out a way of accessing the funds for high end building projects in definitely not economically disadvantaged areas like NYC.
 
The auction is today, 3 bidders including the stalking horse so someone will get it.
 
Looks like the big city folks are looking for excuses to go skiing in VT.

The New Yorker has a long article on the fraud. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/the-rural-ski-slope-caught-up-in-an-international-scam

The New York Times has an article about the operation after the sale to new owners. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/travel/jay-peak-vermont.html

Burke Mountains only hope is somehow link it up with Kingdom Trails (a non profit) mountain bike trail network. The short winter season to date probably have not made the court receiver's job any easier selling it. It probably does not help that Lyndon State College is now just a campus of Northern Vt University.
 
At one point Burke was part of Kingdom Trails offering lift served downhill biking. Hopefully Kingdom holds it together. they already lost a big chunk of their trails a few years back due to abuse of private lands by riders.
 
Both the New Yorker and the Times pieces let Bill Stenger off the hook. He had a long history of breaking the law over the course of his tenure at Jay, and his claims of "“I’m outraged at what [Quiros] did and I feel abused,” are a load of b.s. Under Stenger's leadership, Jay Peak repeatedly ignored and violated environmental regulations and was subject to some of the largest fines in Vermont history for violation of environmental regulations. These weren't questionable or minor violations, they were flagrant, including: damming the Jay Branch of the Missisquoi River and building two dozen condos without permits and failing to mitigate runoff during contruction (e.g. no silt fencing). Stenger was also responsible for the illegal cutting of the trail out to Big Jay from the ski area, with the intent to run wintertime guided ski descents of Big Jay. Without the illegal trail to Big Jay, a strong case can be made that Jailhouse Chute would never have been cut, yet Stenger had the temerity to vilify and call for the prosecution of the two men who cut Jailhouse Chute. Stenger fully deserved the jail time that he served and more.
 
TEO said:
Both the New Yorker and the Times pieces let Bill Stenger off the hook. He had a long history of breaking the law over the course of his tenure at Jay, and his claims of "“I’m outraged at what [Quiros] did and I feel abused,” are a load of b.s. Under Stenger's leadership, Jay Peak repeatedly ignored and violated environmental regulations and was subject to some of the largest fines in Vermont history for violation of environmental regulations. These weren't questionable or minor violations, they were flagrant, including: damming the Jay Branch of the Missisquoi River and building two dozen condos without permits and failing to mitigate runoff during contruction (e.g. no silt fencing). Stenger was also responsible for the illegal cutting of the trail out to Big Jay from the ski area, with the intent to run wintertime guided ski descents of Big Jay. Without the illegal trail to Big Jay, a strong case can be made that Jailhouse Chute would never have been cut, yet Stenger had the temerity to vilify and call for the prosecution of the two men who cut Jailhouse Chute. Stenger fully deserved the jail time that he served and more.
Click to expand...
"Both the New Yorker and the Times pieces let Bill Stenger off the hook. He had a long history of breaking the law over the course of his tenure at Jay, and his claims of "“I’m outraged at what [Quiros] did and I feel abused,” are a load of b.s. Under Stenger's leadership, Jay Peak repeatedly ignored and violated environmental regulations and was subject to some of the largest fines in Vermont history for violation of environmental regulations. These weren't questionable or minor violations, they were flagrant, "

A good piece of reporting, I wonder if the greater Newport area will ever recover.
 
Various news organizations in Vermont let Stenger off the hook to a much lesser extent and really tore into the state oversight.
It was pretty well known in investor circles that things were very suspect in that area. The one hope is the same one Les Otten is betting on, the storm track means that Jay is probably going to hold onto snow just a little bit longer than ski resorts to the south.

The article left out another major player in the region, Casella Waste Systems that run a very large commercial landfill just south of Newport. Much of the drainage from the landfill runs into a large wetland complex and eventually into Lake Memphremagog. Newport pays the bills of their local wastewater treatment system by processing leachate from the landfill. The lake is mostly in Canada and is populated by very expensive summer places and the owners are very unhappy by a plume of various chemicals either leaking out of the landfill or making it through the treatment process into the lake. The entire state is depending on the landfill (as its the only one left with capacity. Like much of the area is out of sight and out of mind to most people in Vermont so the state conveniently ignores it and hopes the next administration deals with it.

Its pretty standard in VT that the Northeast Kingdom is best ignored and Newport is just another town in the Kingdom.
 
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