Todd Firestone, who owns a home in Stockbridge, and Mark Greenberg, who owns a home in Jamaica, said they’re being stymied in their efforts to buy the Northeast Kingdom resort for $10 million. The two plan to hold a public forum on Friday in Burke to rally support for their plan.
The North Star Monthly newspaper reported last month that the receiver, Florida lawyer Michael Goldberg, said he has a buyer in mind and would make an announcement about Burke within 60 days. Firestone and Greenberg said they know he’s not referring to their company, Green Mountain Ski Partners, because Goldberg hasn’t been responding to their offers since they first sent one last summer. Their event, to be held at the Burke Community Center, is an effort to get Goldberg’s attention.
“I would think he’d have a responsibility to call or write me or Todd and say, ‘Let’s get together.’ Right now I feel like I’m negotiating with a ghost,” Greenberg said.
Goldberg did not respond to requests for comment from Seven Days.
Firestone said garnering support from the community is an important step in the pair’s ownership strategy. His family owns Wisconsin Resorts, Inc., a Michigan-based company that operates six ski areas in the Midwest and in Ontario, Canada. If he succeeds in buying Burke, he said he’ll hire a manager from the family company.
Burke has “never been run very well, so it has a very long history of unprofitability,” he said. “We operate ski areas of this size profitably.”
Burke Mountain has been in limbo for years, since Ariel Quiros, Bill Stenger and William Kelly pleaded guilty to a huge fraud case involving the sale of EB-5 visas to investors. The ski area was one of several properties, including Jay Peak Resort, that the three men used to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign investors. Those investors were offered a path to U.S. residency if their projects created jobs.
Quiros, who is still incarcerated, Stenger and Kelly have all served time in prison.
Burke is also home to Burke Mountain Academy, a ski racing boarding school, and a 116-room hotel and conference center that was built as part of the EB-5 scheme. While the resort has remained open to skiers and bikers, many local residents have been pushing Gayles to encourage a sale, saying investment in the resort’s future is critical to the larger community. More than 900 people have signed a change.org petition, started in January, that calls on Gayles to allow the property to be listed on the open market. Gayles, because he hired Goldberg to manage the properties, could push Goldberg to do so.
The petition was started by Frank Adams, a member of the Burke Mountain Owners Association.
“This mountain is not just an extraordinary piece of the landscape; it represents our livelihood, supporting the jobs of many,” the petition says.
Greenberg and Firestone said they have spent two years researching the resort’s assets and history, and that last summer, they put in an offer of $12 million but received no response. They lowered their bid to $10 million in January because they had hoped to start working on Burke this winter, Greenberg said, adding that the resort loses $2 million per year, including the cost of Goldberg’s fees. He’s not committed to that $10 million price.
“If [Goldberg] were to call me up and say, ‘Mark, want to buy the place for $12 million?’ I’d probably say, ‘OK, let’s do it, but let’s not take so much damned time,'” Greenberg said on Sunday. “The delay is not helping the asset; it’s just getting worse.”
Both men have more sentimental than practical reasons for wanting to buy Burke. Greenberg’s five children all attended Stratton Mountain School or are headed there; Firestone has a child enrolled at Burke Mountain Academy.
The two said they want to invest heavily in snowmaking and lift improvements and redo the layout of the lodge.
Firestone, 50, said he’s ready to step away from his career on Wall Street and spend more time at his home in Vermont.
Greenberg, 71, said four of his five kids have raced at Burke, and he’d like for one of his kids to work at the resort if he can buy it.
“This is mostly a project of love,” he said.
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