DENVER—Powderhorn CEO and President Steve Bailey spent about 30 years in the Air Force before he and Dean Skalla bought the ski area in 1998.
Thirteen seasons later, the 1,600-acre resort is going up for auction Aug. 4 with no minimum bid.
Bailey, 70, said the western Colorado resort east of Grand Junction is profitable. It’s just time for him to retire, and Skalla is leaving the ski business too.
“We looked in the mirror awhile back and said, ‘You’re getting kind of old,'” Bailey quipped Friday. He said he is willing to stay with the resort during the transition to a new owner, but his next plan is using his motor home to see more of the country with his wife of 46 years.
Though the resort has talked to potential buyers, Bailey said an auction seemed the fastest way to sell Powderhorn for cash and have it in new owners’ hands before next ski season. Bidders can buy the whole resort with four ski lifts, a lodge, 16-room inn, mountain operations building, equipment maintenance facility, dry storage building and an administrative building, or they can buy pieces.
J.P. King Auction Co. is handling the auction.
Bailey wouldn’t disclose how much he and Skalla paid for the resort in 1998, but property records for the resort’s address listed a sales price in 1995 of $1.1 million, according to the Mesa County assessor’s office.
In the last 13 years, managers made improvements to its parking lot, ticketing and water system, among other changes. Powderhorn, in Mesa, gets around 75,000 to 85,000 skier visits each year.
Nationwide, skier visits have risen from an annual average of around 50.2 million during the 1980s to about 60.1 million this past season, according to preliminary numbers from the National Ski Areas Association. However industry officials have been preparing for what could happen if baby boomers leave the sport and their kids and grandkids don’t replace them.
It’s unclear what will happen to the resort’s roughly one dozen full-time employees under a new owner. Bailey said customers and staff have both been loyal.
“I’ve been told, ‘Mr. Bailey, your staff is happier and better at 4 o’clock in afternoon than X-Y-Z’s staff at 9 in the morning.’ That gives me great comfort. That’s what we’ve been focusing on. This is a place where you felt comfortable, not intimidated, not overwhelmed. It’s your place. I think we succeeded with that.”
Bailey grew up in northern Utah and became an Air Force pilot after college, then got in the investment business and eventually bought Powderhorn with Skalla.
“We decided this was an opportunity we’d like to take a chance on,” he said. “We never looked back, and we’ve never been sorry.”
Though travel is likely ahead, Bailey said he has no intention of moving from Colorado.
“If heaven’s no better than Colorado I’m not going,” he joked.
