Alterra Mountain Co. has laid off an undisclosed number of employees this week, less than a month after receiving nearly $11 million in local and state tax incentives designed to facilitate a headquarters relocation to Upper Downtown and a workforce expansion.
“This week Alterra Mountain Company made changes across a number of departments, mostly in corporate services, that impacted some full-time, year-round team members,” said Kristin Rust, vice president of communications, in an emailed statement.
Rust said that Alterra, as a private company, would not be releasing further information about “employee matters.” That includes how many positions were cut.
“The changes included open roles which we chose not to fill and were spread across Denver, remote employees, and some of our resorts,” she said.
Alterra, which is owned by KSL Capital Partners, maintains its headquarters at Zeppelin Station in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood.
Alterra, however, had been actively scouting a new headquarters in Denver, as well as a move to Salt Lake City. Although it has received approval for various incentives, Alterra has not announced if it will move or where.
The Downtown Denver Development Authority extended a $7 million loan to help Alterra with renovation and relocation costs if it placed its headquarters in Upper Downtown, a dense concentration of half-empty high-rise towers.
The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, in an emergency meeting on July 27, stepped forward with a $1 million grant and a $1 million loan to ensure the company didn’t relocate to Utah.
It also awarded up to $1.9 million in Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits to the company, which applied under the codename Project Odysseus. Those are linked to it creating an additional 106 net new jobs paying an average annual wage of $131,071 over the next 8 years.
The baseline headcount was locked in at the time the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved the award, said OEDIT spokeswoman Alissa Johnson.
“Because the JGITC is performance-based and paid in arrears, a company that fails to create net new jobs over the established baseline will not earn its incentive and no tax credits would be issued,” she said in an email.
That means Alterra Mountain would need to restore any jobs it cut this week before it could start claiming tax credits, assuming it moves forward with a headquarters relocation.
Alterra Mountain Co. employed nearly 4,500 workers in March, with the bulk of those workers concentrated at the company’s ski resort operations, according .
That contrasts with around 43,000 season peak employees at Broomfield-based Vail Resorts.
As of Friday morning, no federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification has been published by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
A notice requirement is triggered when a company with 100 or more full-time workers cuts a third or more of its workforce at a given location or if more than 50 employees are impacted by the full closure of a single worksite or facility.
Alterra owns or manages 19 mountain destinations in North America, including the Steamboat Springs, Winter Park and Arapahoe Basin resorts in Colorado, and the Deer Valley and Solitude Mountain resorts in Utah.
The company leases about 40,000 square feet at Zeppelin Station, which would suggest a corporate headcount of somewhere between 200 to 300 people, depending on what share of workers are hybrid, meaning they work at home and in the office.
“These decisions were not made lightly, and it is incredibly difficult to part with even a single member of our talented and passionate team,” Rust said in her statement.
