As Routt County awaits the first public hearing on a proposal to develop a private ski resort and elite enclave 20 miles south of Steamboat Springs, there is widespread anxiety and divisions across the community are deepening.
Reanna Sullivan, whose hillside home faces the prospective ski area, ticks off concerns associated with many new high-end developments in resort areas in the Mountain West: impacts to water quality and supply, environmental degradation and impacts to wildlife, pressure on infrastructure and public services, interrupted views and light pollution, increased traffic and construction noise, and an exacerbation of the existing housing crisis and labor shortage.
But her deepest fears are more “primal,” Sullivan said on a recent cool fall morning while sitting on her deck. They are more existential and harder to quantify, she added.
Sullivan fears the loss of the future she imagined and worked hard to build for her children, ages 1 and 2.
She also fears a ripping apart of the fabric and character of the neighborhood and an intensification of the socioeconomic divide across the entire region.
Because with the 6,100-acre Stagecoach Mountain Ranch proposal by global luxury resort developer Discovery Land Co. comes a level of wealth and exclusivity unparalleled in Colorado.
Discovery operates approximately 40 gated “worlds” across a dozen countries, with the closest comparison being the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Montana, billed by the company as “the world’s only private ski and golf community.”
According to a 2024 Forbes article titled “Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Club,” the 900 Yellowstone Club homeowners are worth more than a combined $290 billion and pay a $500,000 initial deposit and annual dues of $78,000.
In 2005, the club trademarked the phrase “Private Powder.”
An anonymous Yellowstone Club member told The San Francisco Standard in 2022, “If you are seen carrying your skis, somebody runs up to you, grabs them for you, carries them for you and puts them in the snow for you.”
There are also deep concerns about the size and scope of the Stagecoach Mountain Ranch proposal, which adds 613 residential units, including condos, duplexes, cabins and single-family homes that would approximately double the existing number of households in the area.
The development calls for 483 full-time-equivalent employee positions required to service those club members, as well as run two gondolas and four lifts, two large ski mountain lodges (16,000 square feet and 44,000 square feet), three “day lodges” and two smaller “comfort stations.”
At the base of the mountain, the design calls for an equestrian center; indoor recreation center; clubhouse and an outdoor recreation complex; 12,000-square foot spa and wellness building; and retail and food venues.
Outside the members’ portion of the project, the Stagecoach Mountain Ranch proposal calls for 137 units of affordable housing, a commercial center anchored by a small grocery store, and a 14-acre public park and public trails.
The haves versus the have-nots
At a September open house hosted by Discovery in the nearby town of Yampa — primarily home to retired coal miners and railroad workers; ranchers; teachers; and other working-class people who commute to Steamboat — one resident commented that with “the economic disparity that’s happening in the U.S. right now, … the last thing we need is a resort for the super-rich.”
Another attendee expressed great sadness at “rich people coming in and destroying our agricultural way of life that we are struggling so hard to preserve.”
Another lamented the lost hope of the long-defunct Stagecoach ski area becoming a mom-and-pop type of resort open to the public and more affordable than nearby Steamboat Ski Resort.
“The surrounding valley will become very pricey,” said Noreen Moore, who lives outside Yampa. “It will engender the ripple effect of wealth.”
These sentiments and fears about the excessive nature of the new development come against the backdrop of the nation’s unprecedented and rapidly increasing wealth gap.
On Nov. 3, OxFam America released a new report showing that the wealth of the 10 richest U.S. billionaires surged by $698 billion over the past year, while the assets of the top 0.1% reached their highest share on record (12.6%).
“The data confirms what people across our nation already know instinctively: the new American oligarchy is here,” Oxfam America President and CEO Abby Maxman said in a statement accompanying the report. “Billionaires and mega-corporations are booming while working families struggle to afford housing, health care and groceries,”
But there is also a contingent of Routt County residents who see opportunity in the prospect of a major new luxury development.
Some people are enticed by the deep-pocketed developer’s promise of community benefits — which include improved infrastructure and added amenities, jobs and a significant increase in property tax revenue.
Where Sullivan sees never-ending construction traffic and the loss of community character and appeal, others see a robust source of building and maintenance contracts, plus money for roads and schools, stretching out in perpetuity.
There’s also the argument for private property rights alongside established zoning allowances and Stagecoach community planning documents dating to the 1970s that foresaw multiple large subdivisions, a golf course and a ski area.
“We aim to address community needs and concerns, ensuring that our project enhances the local environment and contributes positively to the community’s well being and growth, helping it thrive for generations to come,” according to Discovery’s Stagecoach Mountain Ranch website.
With a present-day vertical drop of 2,400 feet, Stagecoach Ski Area operated with three lifts from 1972 to 1974, before the owners, the Woodmoor Corp., declared bankruptcy.
The Steamboat-based Wittemyer family of real estate agents — who Discovery representatives have said are partners in the development proposal — bought the property out of bankruptcy court and have owned the land since, gradually adding acreage over the years.
Several attempts to reopen the ski area to the public failed to come to fruition, leaving the mountain as largely undisturbed wilderness for more than a half-century.
Discovery’s initial design for Stagecoach Mountain Ranch also included a lakeside golf course, but that was pulled out of the application after concerns raised about water-quality impacts to Stagecoach Reservoir, said Kyle Collins, vice president of architecture and planning with Discovery
A portion of the reservoir was closed to recreators in 2024 due to toxic algae blooms — not the first time that signs have been posted warning people not to swim in, and not allow pets to swim in, the reservoir due to the toxic algae blooms. The toxic algae was first detected by a state monitoring program in 2019.
Collins said Discovery is still exploring alternate locations for the golf course (and still considering the lakefront), and would ideally like to include a golf course for their members, but that it is not a “deal-breaker” for the development.
“The focus here is skiing,” he said.
Discovery has made it clear that the ski area won’t be open to the general public. Collins said employees at Yellowstone Club are permitted one ski day per month.
Fear of being pushed out
For ski towns across the Western United States, the usurping of land, housing and recreational amenities in locations with pristine natural resources by increasingly wealthier transplants is a tale as old as time.
It is also a trend significantly accelerated in recent years by the COVID-19 pandemic’s ensuing exodus to the mountains and increased concentration of wealth at the top.
Real estate and rental costs skyrocket and demographics shift older and richer.
Cost-of-living increases while wages remain relatively stagnant.
Commute distances for laborers who fuel the tourist-based economies lengthen as the elusive search for affordable housing pushes them farther away from the towns where they work.
Increasingly across Western ski towns, the dream of homeownership has become unattainable where once ski bums, artists, nature-lovers and other working-class people could establish roots and raise a family.
Although Discovery’s plan includes building 137 new workforce housing units — 95 of which will be available to the general public and 42 units in which Discovery plans to house 135 to 180 of their employees — the housing proposal has been called woefully inadequate in the face of the county’s current housing crisis.
“This provision falls dramatically short of the demand it will create,” Steamboat Springs City Council President Gail Garey warned in a letter sent on behalf of the Council to the Routt County Board of Commissioners.
“Routt County’s current workforce and affordable housing supply cannot meet the demand created by this proposal,” the letter says. “The gap will intensify the crisis and displace more local workers and families, threatening the very stability of our community. … This gap will only intensify the pressure on our community’s housing market, pushing workers and families [farther] out and worsening the affordability crisis.”
Looking across the valley at the thick, green forests on the abandoned Stagecoach ski area, Sullivan dreads two potential outcomes if the development is approved: being displaced or, given the 20-year buildout plan, decades of living in a construction zone and the loss of everything she loves about Stagecoach.
The fear of “push out” is widespread among her neighbors, she said, whether through increased property taxes and cost of living, or the fear that the developers will try to buy up existing properties to suit their needs.
Many people choose to live in Stagecoach and commute to work precisely because it is more affordable than Steamboat, and provides a quieter, more low-key rural lifestyle than the resort town.
Asked specifically about two modest condo complexes located right next to the old ski area, and about the fears people are expressing about being bought out or their homes being demolished, Collins said, “That’s not our intention.”
“From a security point of view,” Collins said, “there won’t be a wall around” the resort community, but rather “gated access ways.” He said he didn’t envision any issues with the aging condo complexes — nor with one particular unit located at the edge of a ski run.
But at the Yellowstone Club, “Perhaps the club’s biggest draw is exclusivity,” according to the Forbes article, which details what is known about the identities of club’s many billionaire members.
Around the Yellowstone Club and a number of other luxury resorts in Big Sky, Bozeman resident Nathan Gracey said that “raising a family is now not possible” for working-class people.
In addition to a few tourism-based side gigs, Gracey is deputy director of the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, which is suing the Yellowstone Club over allegations of polluting a tributary to the Gallatin River with treated wastewater.
Cottonwood alleges that the Yellowstone Club has been overirrigating their golf course with a quality of treated wastewater harmful to humans and the environment. The lawsuit also alleges that some of the water hazards on the golf course are allowing effluent to flow into a tributary of the Gallatin River, which is designated as an impaired waterway and does not allow for the direct discharge of effluent.
A jury trial is scheduled for Feb. 4.
Asked about the lawsuit, Collins was dismissive, deeming it without merit.
With a more intimate knowledge of the notoriously private club’s inner workings than most, Gracey said most of the employees who work at the Yellowstone Club commute from Bozeman, driving at least an hour each way on a two-lane highway through a narrow canyon that can be especially treacherous in the winter.
As the growth continues, “the construction traffic is insane,” Gracey said.
Gracey said the idea of workers “driving three hours a day to build a rich person a house they stay at three weeks a year represents ultimate inequality and the consuming of and unnecessary exploitation of the workforce and natural resources.”
Sullivan, who works as a dentist at the community health clinic in Oak Creek, said she is not against development in Stagecoach — an area targeted by the county for growth.
“I think Stagecoach needs development in a way that is responsible for the environment and done in a way that benefits people who live in our community,” she said. “I don’t think this is growth that is in line with our environment. Why would we do this with our dwindling natural resources for people living here 25 days a year?”
A populace divided
During the public comment session at an Oct. 21 meeting of the Steamboat Springs City Council, Phippsburg resident Jane Sindell was in tears as she pleaded with the Council to use their influence to protect the region’s water supply.
“Experts are telling us the Colorado Rivers will reach a new critical low — not in the next two decades, but in the next two years,” she said. “The proposed billionaire playground at Stagecoach will do nothing to help the water crisis in the West.”
Snidell said she had particular concerns about the water and energy required for snowmaking.
The Yampa River, on which Stagecoach Reservoir sits, provides 33% of Colorado’s contribution to the Colorado River.
In July 2025, senior water-rights holders placed a call on the main stem of the Yampa, meaning they were not receiving the amount of water to which they are legally entitled. It was the fourth time the river went on call in history. (The other times came in 2018, 2020 and 2021.)
According to Collins and studies presented as part of Discovery’s application, the aquifer beneath the Stagecoach Mountain Ranch site is more than sufficient for providing domestic water needs, although tapping it to serve the development will require at least four new wells, two storage tanks, and other water- and sewer-infrastructure upgrades and expansions.
Collins also points to plans to use treated wastewater for snowmaking, a usage of effluent not yet permitted but currently being considered by a rulemaking committee under the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
At a Nov. 19 meeting of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which is the manager of Stagecoach Reservoir, Discovery representatives told the district’s board members that they approached CDHPE with the proposal to allow effluent for snowmaking, but that at this time, Discovery’s application is only requesting to use reservoir water for snowmaking. They also noted effluent, even if it becomes an allowable use, would not be enough to cover the entire demand required for snowmaking.
Discovery’s original plan called for using effluent to irrigate the golf course that has since been removed from the application.
At the October Steamboat City Council meeting, Marie Gasau — a Stagecoach resident, educator, pastor and self-described advocate for social justice — called her opposition “a moral and spiritual issue.” She talked about researching negative impacts from Discovery Land Co. and partner properties around the world, urging the Council to do the same.
“This is going to impact your workforce,” Gasau told the Council. “It’s going to affect all the people who get on the roads early in the morning and drive to Steamboat to serve your community. They are your people, too.”
To better understand potential impacts to areas outside the development, Steamboat resident Diane Brower urged the Council to read Justin Farrell’s 2020 book, “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.”
The book “addresses impacts to the social fabric that result from this kind of outlandishly expensive development being dropped down into normal people’s worlds,” Brower said.
An academic study focused on Jackson, Wyoming, Farrell’s book was mentioned during the meeting as a relevant reference by at least five people, including two Council members.
Of the 19 people who spoke during the public comment session, three spoke in support of the project, two of whom live in Steamboat and work as real estate brokers with The Agency Steamboat, which specializes in luxury real estate.
“It’s rare for an applicant seeking a development approval to say, ‘Here’s also millions of dollars of public benefit that we want to provide for the community,’” said Noah Zedeck, one of the real estate agents. “I’ve heard a lot of strong support for this project, particularly among young people in this community.”
Nick Belz, who lives in between Stagecoach and Steamboat, said despite promises of public benefit, Discovery is still a for-profit business that will “further the socioeconomic divide our community already faces.”
Stagecoach resident Gilbert Connett spoke with passion and frustration, calling the opposition “stupid.”
“I am just so excited about this project to come in,” Connett said, identifying himself as the owner of three rental properties in Steamboat in addition to being a local business owner.
“It can do so much for our community, our schools, our children, our grandchildren and all the benefits that they are going to create for our community — it’s astounding. I don’t see how anybody could vote against this,” he said.
Ultimately, it will be three Routt County commissioners who vote on the project, following a process anticipated to last at least into next summer.
The Steamboat City Council heard public comment related to Council President Garey’s letter, which was requested by the commissioners, regarding potential impacts to the town of Steamboat.
Steamboat Council member Amy Dickson has been the loudest voice of concern about the project and helped to draft the letter asking questions about impacts to water, highway traffic, emergency services, affordable housing, airport traffic and workforce shortages.
At the Oct. 21 meeting, Dickson responded to a 14-page letter from Discovery sent back to the Council countering the concerns.
“Frankly, this is what gaslighting looks like,” Dickson said. “The response was eye-opening. It reflected exactly what I’ve been reading about who they are and how they operate. … Rather than listening and responding directly to our concerns, they inundated us with marketing material about how great their project will be, while disregarding the issues we raised and, in several cases, actually misrepresenting our discussion altogether.”
Although the majority of the seven-member Council expressed support for raising the concerns, Council member Bryan Swintek suggested the Council was acting outside of its jurisdiction and wasting time on a letter that won’t make any difference.
At one point, Council member Michael Buccino suggested that the Council’s claims about potential future impacts were too far reaching, but said he generally supported the letter.
In 2024, The Yampa Valley Bugle reported that Buccino was being paid by Discovery as a “community liaison.” Buccino quit the role once confronted by fellow Council members, and he said at the October meeting that he hadn’t been in contact with the company since.
Discovery submitted its application to Routt County last December, and it was deemed complete in September. On Nov. 18, the commissioners unanimously voted to table consideration of one of Discovery’s 11 Stagecoach Mountain Ranch applications related to the project’s 1041 permit — part of a local oversight process provided for by state law when projects have statewide implications. The 1041 review for the Stagecoach application relates to the project’s significant improvements to water and sewer infrastructure.
Although state law requires a hearing on the 1041 permit within 60 days of the application being deemed complete, county planning officials said the timeline was insufficient to review all materials.
Although no public comment was taken, the commissioners encouraged the meeting’s numerous attendees to stay engaged, emphasizing that the upcoming public hearings — anticipated to begin in early 2026 — do matter.
Public benefit
Discovery touts a new marketplace and community center with a 14-acre park as a primary public benefit to the area just outside what will become the gated entrance — an area currently without any existing commercial development. Discovery will retain ownership of the marketplace as landlord, Collins said.
Discovery’s public benefit plan also offers new public trails, road improvements and a new cellphone tower.
Asked whether the development would exacerbate the existing housing crisis, Collins pointed to the 137 planned units. “We will be meeting that existing demand,” he said, referring to the 42 employee housing units, and will be “adding additional housing stock on the supply side,” referring to the 95 units to be made available to the public and required under Routt County’s recently updated land-use code.
Collins said he “agreed with the premise” of the current labor shortage and plight of local businesses struggling to find employees, but he offered a solution: “We will prioritize hiring locally and will increase demand.”
Collins said bringing in foreign employees on seasonal visas is also an option, as he noted is common practice at ski resorts.
“We may have to bring in additional population, but that will also generate an economic impact to repopulate Oak Creek,” he said, pointing to the small town’s empty storefronts. He also talked about conversations with officials in Oak Creek and Yampa about potentially partnering on employee-housing projects located in those towns.
There is also the oft-repeated promise of $29 million in annual property tax revenue, although that would be the estimated revenue generated at full build-out, at least 15 to 20 years down the road, based on current mill rates, and only if all 613 lots are sold and built upon.
The property tax generated could also drop “dramatically” if Discovery seeks agricultural status on eligible lots and land parcels, according to Routt County Assessor Gary Peterson.
Although Collins said the county needs the new revenue to replace declining coal-mine revenue, Peterson said the property-tax revenue generated by the coal mine near Oak Creek has been gradually declining for years, and it no longer represents a significant portion of the county’s tax revenue. Although it used to account for more than half of total assessed value of South Routt County (the geographic and taxing region that includes Stagecoach), Peterson said the coal mine now represents less than 7% of the total assessed value, and increasing property values have more than made up for the hole left by coal.
Collins responded that increased dependence on rising property taxes only makes the affordable-housing crisis worse.
Peterson pointed out that most taxing districts in Routt County have elected to accept large windfalls in recent years instead of lowering millage rates, an issue that state law will soon begin to address.
Overall, “The county is in excellent health financially and always has been,” Peterson said, and it carries no debt.
Peterson acknowledges that the resort would probably “change the look and feel and culture of Stagecoach.”
But he sees positive change, such as the commercial amenities and community gathering spaces, better roads, and jobs from people “paying top dollar for services — I would think the working-class residents of Stagecoach can take advantage of that.”
Farrell, the “Billionaire WIlderness” author who is a Yale University professor and Wyoming native, told Aspen Journalism that historically, “it’s an age-old tale in the West. … Companies move in and take what they need, offer benefits that appear to be in good faith — and appear to benefit the community — but often only do so in the short run. It can hide the negative impacts of larger developments.”
Farrell compared ultrawealthy developments to oil and gas extraction in the American West.
“They come in with the expectation they deserve to be there and deserve to impact the community, and can alleviate impacts by throwing money at an issue they same way oil and gas extraction companies have,” he said.
Companies might build a recreation center or make other improvements around town, Farrell said, but that often ends up being “only window dressing, and doesn’t negate the impacts to the structural foundations and culture of a community.”
Farrell focuses on characteristics of what makes a community a true community, and “who should be included and what gives communities character, and who makes the decision on what role wealth should play.”
It isn’t just increasing housing costs or wealth disparity that follow projects such as the Yellowstone Club or Stagecoach Mountain Ranch, he said. They can “disrupt the balance in a real way” when it comes to things such as “the ability to participate in civic engagement” and “what it is that holds a community together, and how people come together face-to-face to solve problems.”
Disrupting the “cultural factors under the surface that bind a community tighter, that, to me, is the biggest impact. That, to me, is wealth disparity — it’s one in the same,” Farrell said, describing a “winnowing away of social cohesion and political power.”
There is great appeal to the Mountain West as a lifestyle that is “simple and down to earth,” Farrell said, especially for those who made their millions — or billions — in the cutthroat world of finance.
However, Farrell has found in his research that the ultrawealthy “don’t want to hear about the problems they cause. They are essentially on an extended vacation, and that is why they believe they can throw money at problems, and why they think they can fix the impact they have on a community’s character.”
In his book, Farrell writes of the Yellowstone Club, “Beneath the veneer, the reality of this institution and its use of nature and rural people involves raw economic interest, lasting environmental harm and an intense culture of rural exclusion and militarized privacy.”
From Big Sky to Scotland
Chris Heasman lives in Kenmore, Scotland, next to Taymouth Castle, a Discovery Land Co. golf resort still in the early stages of development. Heasman has researched Discovery-affiliated properties around the world and sees a historical pattern even older than Farrell’s analogy of oil and gas extraction.
“I would characterize this as a 21st century form of colonialism,” he said, especially in terms of Discovery properties in less-wealthy countries.
“Like colonies, it’s driven by wealth at the top for the benefit of wealthier people,” he said, and often “done at the expense of Indigenous communities.”
“The consequences from the resorts,” he said, “tend to be the same,” including environmental destruction and an exacerbated socioeconomic divide.
Heasman said Discovery, using about a dozen different limited liability companies to purchase and manage properties, bought up numerous houses in the village to use for staffers and plots of land, including a section of beach on the shores of the scenic Loch Tay.
Discovery’s interests, he said, include a hotel that was one of the town’s biggest draws for tourists, before it was shut down with promises to renovate and reopen it. A reopening date has yet to be announced.
“They basically gobbled up as much of the village as they could,” Heasman said.
He described a pattern from his research — “most egregious in Big Sky” — of nearby communities “becoming a company town in terms of housing, employment and providing further profit to bolster the company. They seem to really pursue that in a lot of places. … They essentially take over and co-opt towns for their uses until essentially there is no community left.”
He also described the “poaching” of employees from local businesses, giving the example of a garden center that shut down because the owner was hired to manage landscaping at Taymouth Castle.
Gracey refers to unincorporated Big Sky as “a pure company town.” He said Boston-based CrossHarbor Capital — owner of the Yellowstone Club, which Discovery operates — wields control over a significant proportion of the community, whether through direct ownership of assets such as hotels and other commercial properties or indirect influence over things such as utilities, nonprofits and business organizations.
“They control the narrative,” he said. “It’s almost incestuous. … Everything they build and develop and put their paws in, … it’s leading down a road of almost absolute control over everything.”
Gracey did note that building contractors he knows around Big Sky have benefited from work at the Yellowstone Club, but they also balk privately to him about things such as installing a single window pane worth $150,000.
Heasman said although there were local contractors who made good money off the renovation of Taymouth Castle, public support for the resort has shifted, especially beginning about a year ago.
Collins declined to comment specifically on critiques offered by Heasman and Gracey, but he said Discovery has a track record of keeping promises made to the communities where it works around the world.
Collins said he “didn’t want to get into the ethics of wealth,” instead pointing to the “positive economic impacts to communities” of Discovery properties.
He said Routt County “absolutely” has a need for the increased tax revenue for improved and expanded infrastructure and services, especially with the planned 2028 closure of the coal-fire power plant near Hayden. He also pointed to Stagecoach’s own community plan, which envisions added recreational amenities and a small commercial center where one doesn’t exist.
Heasman said the division that the Taymouth Castle resort has caused in his town has been very damaging and will “take a long time to heal for the small community — whether it does at all.”
Reanna Sullivan said she understands the perceived benefits of the Stagecoach Mountain Ranch, but she doesn’t believe the local population will “benefit in the way they think. … I don’t think people realize the level of wealth this brings – the level of exclusivity. I don’t think they realize how much this will change Stagecoach culture and South Routt culture.”