One of Rob Katz’s first moves as the new CEO of Vail Resorts is to move the company’s corporate headquarters, perhaps as close to his Boulder home as he can reasonably get it.
“I would like you to know that we have narrowed our search for our new corporate home to the area between Denver and Boulder known as the U.S. 36 corridor,” the 39-year-old CEO wrote employees in an e-mail this week.
“I completely understand that for those moving from Avon … this is still a time of adjustment,” Katz wrote.
Roughly 100 Vail employees will make this move more than 100 miles east – or they can quit if they don’t want to live the lives of lowly flatlanders.
“It’s great turmoil for a lot of families,” said Jerry Jones, a retired former executive of Vail Associates. “It will be interesting to see how many employees refuse to go. A lot of people came to work for Vail Resorts because it is in Vail.”
Some Vail-area civic leaders are miffed.
“We’re all very surprised and disappointed,” said Ron Wolfe, mayor of Avon, where Vail Resorts is currently based. “We’re losing some of the best- paying career jobs in the community.”
Vail Mayor Rod Slifer said he is not as perturbed.
“They have not been ‘Vail’ for some time,” he said. “I was disappointed when they moved to Avon years ago.”
Don Cohen, executive director of the Economic Council of Eagle County, put it this way: “There’s an emotional hit in the community. We’ve lost a little bit of our souls. But maybe it’s an inevitability of life in public-company/corporate world.”
In Aspen, they’re just laughing. “Even Vail doesn’t want to be in Vail,” read a headline in the Aspen Times.
Nell Minow of the Corporate Library, a group that tracks corporate-governance issues, says it’s always alarming when a CEO announces plans to “move the mountain to Mohammed,” instead of the other way around. “It’s never a good sign,” she said. “It sends a strong signal of an imperial CEO.”
Katz moved to Boulder from New York City with his wife and two young boys after 9/11. He’s long worked with New York-based Apollo Management, the former majority stockholder of Vail Resorts. As CEO, he’ll earn as much as $1.5 million in his first year, including salary and bonus. And he’ll soon have a much shorter commute.
Katz has enumerated several reasons for the move – all of which make some business sense, and none of which include his own lifestyle:
1) The company’s current headquarters could be put to more productive use as retail space. 2) The company can get cheaper real estate down the mountain. 3) The company will have lower administrative costs in the Denver area. 4) It will be easier to recruit new employees. 5) Corporate-headquarters employees will be closer to Denver International Airport and more centrally located among Vail Resorts’ many other properties.
“We’ve grown into a $1.2 billion resort company,” said Vail Resorts spokeswoman Kelly Ladyga, “and it has become difficult to operate an expanding company from a suite of offices in Avon.”
Yet if it’s such a good idea, why didn’t somebody think of it before Katz?
“There are lots of reasons being given here, but at the end of the day it’s because of Katz and where he wants to be,” said Kaye Ferry of the Vail Chamber Association.
Ferry, however, looks at the bright side: “Maybe it’s a good thing to get the corporate guys out of here so we can go back to being a ski town.”
George Gillett, the former owner of Vail Resorts, warned me not to be too critical of Katz. Gillett said Katz is a brilliant young executive with great appreciation for “human capital.” The company is simply growing and needs to be closer to capital markets, Gillett said.
Gillett is chairman of a ski-resort company himself, Booth Creek Holdings. He also owns the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. Yet he manages to run his empire from Vail.
“In my case, it’s real simple,” Gillett explained. “Mrs. Gillett loves Vail. Where Mrs. Gillett is happy, I’m happy.”
Now there’s an idea. Maybe somebody should have a talk with Katz’s wife.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
