KILLINGTON — Michael Sneyd may work in a tall office tower in Canada’s most populous city of Toronto, but he’d rather talk up the even bigger slopes of this small town in Vermont.
“Killington has long been known as the largest ski mountain in the East,” he began a recent video call, with “the best snowmaking in the East, and now arguably the best lodges in the East.”
Sneyd, head of the Great Gulf real estate group’s resort residential division, believes this community of 1,407 people — who host an eye-popping 1 million tourist visits annually — lacks only one thing: a retail and residential center like those at the state’s No. 2 through 5 ski areas at Stratton, Sugarbush, Smugglers’ Notch and Stowe.
That’s why the businessman who has appeared on television’s “Undercover Boss Canada” is heading an effort to build a 450-acre commercial and condominium village at the base of the Killington Resort — part of a larger proposed $3 billion capital investment in the next 25 years.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind master plan with four-season potential,” said Sneyd, who has spent much time in Vermont in recent months.
The first phase centers on a new lift lodge designed by the international architecture firm of Moshe Safdie — whose work ranges from Montreal’s Habitat 67 World’s Fair housing complex to Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands resort — plus some 32,000 square feet of commercial space, 193 condominiums and 32 single-family homes.
In a plan submitted to the state, subsequent stages of the project could add up to 2,300 housing units over the next two to three decades, along with an estimated 1,000 construction jobs and 1,200 permanent jobs.
Newcomers may be surprised by the proposed size and scope of the project, which Forbes.com notes “is one of the largest in environmentally restrictive Vermont in recent years.”
But longtime locals have heard resort officials wish aloud for a village since the ski area’s founding in 1958.
“The interest shown by Vermonters,” the Rutland Herald reported that year, “promises rapid expansion planning.”
History has proven otherwise, in part because of state permitting hurdles. Yet after decades of unsuccessful attempts by others, Great Gulf unveiled its latest phase-one proposal to residents and resort visitors over the winter and expects to file its plans with the town’s development review board by the end of May.
The Canadian company will then face scrutiny from a state district Act 250 land use commission, which received the ski area’s initial concept for a village in 1998 and went on to approve another developer’s proposal in 2013 and, upon appeal, again in 2017.
Great Gulf hopes to receive its permits for the first phase of construction by the expected return of World Cup ski racing to Killington this November and, “if all goes well and the stars align,” break ground next spring, Sneyd said.
A subsequent opening as early as 2027 would come nearly three-quarters of a century after the resort’s conception, capping a dramatically long series of twists and turns to the finish line.
‘Now we know where we can grow’
The idea for a village dates back 70 years to 1954, when Preston Smith, then a visiting twenty-something honeymooner, decided to develop Killington Peak, Vermont’s second-highest summit, into a ski area.
“Here, in 1763, legend says the Rev. Samuel Peters christened the entire Green Mountain section ‘Verd Mont,’” the Rutland Herald reported in its story on the plan.
Installing trails, lifts and snowmaking, Smith spent his life turning the property into the biggest ski resort in eastern North America. But his hope for a retail and residential center was hampered by the fact the U.S. Forest Service owned the most conducive slopeside acreage.
Turning its attention to trails in the 1980s, Killington aimed to expand into 2,500 wooded acres known as Parker’s Gore. Enter environmentalists, who argued the forest was a prime bear and wildlife habitat.
After more than a decade of inaction, Smith sold Killington to the American Skiing Company in 1996. That spurred business, government and environmental leaders to agree to a land swap in which the ski area exchanged Parker’s Gore and its expansion plans there for a 1,000-acre state parcel near the base that was big enough for a village.
“Now we know where we can grow,” a Killington official told the Wall Street Journal of the deal that then Gov. Howard Dean called a “win-win.”
Unveiling a master plan at the turn of the millennium, Killington soon received Act 250 approval for a village. But various blueprints have sat on the drawing board amid a series of challenges and changes, including the resort’s sale to the Powdr Corp. in 2007 and Great Gulf’s purchase of a previous developer’s holdings last year.
“One of the difficulties is there’s more than $50 million of public infrastructure that has to go in before we can do anything,” said Sneyd, who began working on the project in 2018.
In response, local, regional and state economic leaders have created a tax increment financing (TIF) district that received town voter approval last year. A resulting “Killington Forward” package will fund more than $60 million in public road and water infrastructure improvements through grants, forgivable loans and tax increment financing.
‘Largest ski area development opportunity’
Crews arrived in April to reconstruct the main access Killington Road artery, starting at its intersection with Route 4 and, in future phases, continuing upward, where they’re set to add a roundabout at the village.
Contractors also have begun a multiyear public water project to install two wells, a 750,000-gallon storage tank and pipelines for the village and other businesses along Killington Road that have found PFAS chemicals in their drinking supplies.
As the town builds infrastructure, Great Gulf and the Killington Resort have pledged $700,000 to allow the town to buy a 70-acre plot elsewhere on the mountain for 300 affordable workforce housing units in a cluster of apartment buildings and single and duplex homes.
“We all know the area is in need of this type of development,” Killington President Mike Solimano said in a statement, “which will provide housing for the workers who support the whole community and will be integral to the success of the new ski village.”
Great Gulf has yet to publicize a price tag for its overall retail and residential project or individual housing units, although it paid $43 million for the village land and estimates annual construction there could average $118 million.
“Killington’s major competition has benefitted from development of base area villages in recent years, while land ownership hurdles left Killington without,” the Canadian company wrote in one submission to the state. “The master plan entitlements make Killington the largest ski area development opportunity in North America.”
Great Gulf wants to center its village around “The Crystal,” a glass-sheathed hub that would replace the current Snowshed and Ramshead lodges. Such a structure would echo back to the resort’s first building, which Smith envisioned in 1958 as a “modernistic, glass-enclosed base shelter,” according to the company’s history.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Sneyd said of the overall project.
Great Gulf will need to return to the town and state for approval of expansions past the announced first phase. But the proposal has yet to spark the ferocity of questions that came before all sides agreed to the land swap in 1996.
“I think most of the plans will conform with our zoning bylaws,” Town Manager Michael Ramsey said. “People are overwhelmingly supportive of it, and I can attest there’s no one outside my office with a sign saying ‘No Village.’ In my opinion, this is going to be huge for Killington, the Rutland region and the state.”
The town manager notes the project’s new waterline would solve the local PFAS problem, while everything else would boost local and state tax revenue by adding an estimated $285 million of property value over 10 years.
“It is stretching our capacity,” Ramsey said, “but we’re definitely up for the challenge.”
Clarification: An earlier version of this story contained a quotation that misstated Killington’s vertical drop.