In a 5-2 vote, Vail Town Council approves $17.5 million purchase of Booth Heights parcel

VAIL — The Vail Town Council on Tuesday voted to acquire the 23-acre East Vail parcel known as Booth Heights from Vail Resorts for just above $17.5 million. Vail Mayor Kim Langmaid and Council members Kevin Foley, Jen Mason, Pete Seibert and Jonathan Staufer voted in support of the purchase while Mayor Pro Tem Travis Coggin and Council member Barry Davis voted against it.

The vote draws to a close a months-long condemnation battle between the town of Vail and Vail Resorts that started in May 2022 with the Town Council’s vote to condemn the property. Months of fruitless negotiations led to an Eagle County District Court decision in favor of the town, leading to a valuation hearing that resulted in the $17.5 million price for the parcel.

“This town is the best place on the planet to live, work and play. And we need to keep it that way for all of us, including the natural wildlife that was here long before any of us humans mucked it up,” Foley said after making the motion to acquire the parcel.

“We appreciate the work of the court, and the panel of experts, in determining the value of the land in Vail Town Council’s condemnation case.  As we have said previously, we do not believe the Town’s plan to pay us money to condemn this land, and prevent the affordable housing project planned on it, is good for our community,” wrote Vail Resorts spokesman John Plack in a statement provided to the Vail Daily.

For the sheep

For the five Town Council members who voted yes, the bighorn sheep herd that inhabits the area was at the center of their reasoning for voting to acquire the parcel.

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“The size of the herd is in direct proportion to the size of the winter range. We can’t enlarge the winter range by removing homes. The decisions that were made then were made, the homes are there, but we do have what’s left out there in Booth Heights, and I think we’ve got to be able to protect that,” Seibert said.

“As much as I can’t stand giving those bastards in Broomfield one red cent, I’ll be voting in favor because I would rather do that than watch this herd starve to death,” Staufer said. “I want to preserve this herd for future generations and my daughter’s granddaughter.”

However, the council members rejected the idea that the decision was either sheep or housing, taking the opportunity to point to the work the council has done on housing. Langmaid pointed out that “this Town Council has done more for community housing than any council in the past,” adding that it has spent $140 million on the matter in the last two years.

This sentiment was echoed by many community members, including one 11-year-old who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting as well as those who provided public comment. The town had over 805 pages of comments in support of the purchase and 22 pages against it in its packet. While only one community member spoke against the town acquiring the site on Tuesday, Davis did speak on behalf of those in his comments before dissenting.

“There’s a lot of people in our community that feel that this whole process is flawed and that they’ve been disenfranchised and powerless and they’re not here tonight,” Davis said. “So many people that were passionate enough to write letters and be involved in this conversation have given up. They’ve thrown up their hands and they feel like the steamroller is going. And I feel that when that happens, the public process is failing.”

How Vail will pay

The amount of the parcel was determined in a valuation hearing in September by a three-person commission at the Eagle County District Court. The commission determined that the reasonable market value of the property was $17,519,985.

The town will also be responsible for reasonable legal and transactional costs incurred by Vail Resorts. The court will later determine this amount.

The town has already provided a deposit of $12 million in accordance with the June 2023 order, which granted the town immediate possession. This $12 million came from the town’s real estate transfer tax fund.

On Tuesday night, Kathleen Halloran, the deputy town manager, commented that the additional amount in land cost (approximately $5.5 million) and legal fees will come from the general fund “for now.”

“Staff would recommend that we fund that with general fund reserves for now, and really recommending that as a backstop for RETT so that we can maintain adequate reserves in the RETT fund,” Halloran said, adding that this would be a “safety net” to ensure the town could still cover annual operations and annual maintenance expenditures in an average or down revenue year.

Halloran acknowledged that this would make the general fund “a little bit tighter” for the next two to three years, after which time the town would recover.

In addition to town funds, the town has requested $5 million in support from Eagle County. While the Eagle County Open Space Advisory Committee recommended support of this, the Eagle County Board of Commissioners delayed taking action on Tuesday, Oct. 3, with commissioners expressing they wanted to do more homework before committing.

The town also has support from a citizen-organized group, the Vail Bighorn Initiative (and its fiscal partner the Wild Sheep Foundation), which in the 10 days between the valuation determination and Town Council decision raised just under $900,0000 from around 525 individuals.

Katie Santambrogio, speaking on behalf of the initiative, said that with this support in just 10 days, the group feels there’s an opportunity to continue its fundraising.

“We have a really comprehensive plan moving forward … and feel confident that we can hopefully get to about $3 million to demonstrate community support,” she said.

For its part, Vail Resorts said in its statement that “regardless of the Town’s actions, we are fully committed to investing in affordable housing for our employees, including reinvesting the condemnation money, in our resort communities into affordable housing projects where it will have the biggest and most timely impact.”

Rebuilding

Several Council members spoke to the divide that this issue has created in the community; Langmaid called it the “most tragic part of this whole thing.”

However, they all agreed that moving forward, mending would need to be done. Coggin said his hope was to get back to a place where they were “hard on issues, but you’re easy on people.”

As one of the dissenting council members, he added: “We can disagree and still be friends, we’re bigger than this.”

Community members echoed this sentiment as well.

“I just really hope that this new council coming forward and that our community in general and everyone who’s here can just kind of put down the animosity and can just realize that doing this, yes, it’s a win for the sheep, but you know who else does? Vail Resorts does,” said Alison Wadey, the executive director of the Vail Chamber & Business Association.

“They get paid to walk away, and that really stinks. And so I hope that we can be smarter as a team moving forward so that we can outsmart the fox that tends to keep being the bane of our existence and making all the rest of us fight it out and spend all this time doing this when we should be outside and with our families.”