Trailblazers: Rose remembered a time when town of Vail came close to taking over ski area
Courtesy photo
Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a weekly series highlighting the Vail Pubic Library’s Vail Valley Voices Collection of oral histories, particularly those compiled by the Vail Daily’s Tony Mauro, a local radio legend in his own right, and staff writer David O. Williams.
The late Kent Rose was mayor of Vail during a critical transition period in the late 1980s between the sole ownership of Vail ski area by charismatic businessman George Gillett to its takeover by Leon Black and Apollo Ski Partners in the early 1990s — the acquisition that led to the modern-day Vail Resorts conglomerate now helmed by CEO Rob Katz.
Rose, who passed away late last year, sat down at his Eagle home with Mauro and Williams in 2023 and told many stories about his time as town engineer, his transition into the private sector as a builder and developer who put in much of the infrastructure for Eagle Ranch and other areas of the Eagle River Valley, and his time in politics, first as a Vail Town Council member and then as mayor of Vail from 1987 to 1991.
Rose discussed the thinking of a slim majority of Town Council members who considered condemning the Vail Mountain special-use permit with the U.S. Forest Service in order for the town to take over and run the ski area.
“There was a time when my council had talked to some attorneys and those attorneys were convinced that we could condemn the permit that Vail Associates had to operate on the mountain,” Rose remembered in 2023. “Not the mountain itself, just the permit. There were four of us that really wanted to pursue that because we thought that if we could make it a town-owned facility that we could keep it pretty much the way it was. So that was going to be our shot at it.”
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Gillett’s meat-packing and media empire, funded in part by junk bonds, was crashing down around him as interest rates skyrocketed in the late 80s. One of those distressed assets was Vail ski area, which Gillett had purchased in 1985 and pumped significant capital into while expanding the Back Bowls and upgrading to new high-speed detachable quad chairlifts. Vail was booming in the wake of hosting the 1989 World Alpine Ski Championships, but its ownership was in flux when Gillett declared bankruptcy in 1991 and a new Town Council took over in 1992.
“Well, my term was up, and Peggy Osterfoss was the mayor,” Rose recalled. “Peggy, Rob LeVine and Merv Lapin still wanted to pursue condemning the permit to operate on the mountain as a ski area. And then they just let it drop. That was one of my great disappointments, because I think if we had done that, today, we’d still be a locally owned ski area …”
Osterfoss, in a separate Vail Library oral history, said that she and Lapin concluded the town simply didn’t have the expertise to run a resort.
“The thought was that we would create a board that consisted of maybe up to 30 people, 10 from the town, 10 from Vail Associates, and 10 at large,” Rose said. “Those 30 people would manage the mountain. But that didn’t happen. I think we could have held (the ski area) for at least a number of years and it still would have been affordable for a person to go buy a one-day lift ticket and ski. I mean, it wouldn’t be $5 anymore, but it might have been $40 or $50 or whatever.”
Rose lamented the loss of local control and small-town vibe, the overwhelming ski crowds brought by the Katz-conceived Epic Pass, and single-day ticket prices that exceed $350 during peak periods. Like many of the Vail pioneers (Rose answered a newspaper ad for town engineer when he was working at the old Stapleton Airport in Denver in the 1970s), he remembered a simpler era when everyone actually lived in Vail and collectively worked on the success of the ski area in its early days.
He recounted one of those stories from the good old days to Mauro and Williams in this Vail Public Library “History Nugget:”
“When I was town engineer, we did the Bighorn annexation and consolidation of all the water and sanitation districts that were out there. We upgraded our sewage treatment plant to a tertiary treatment plant, so the water was near drinkable when we released it back into Gore Creek.
“I had promised that if we got our tertiary treatment, that I’d take a bath in the effluent. But after the treatment plant got up and going, and it was almost near drinkable water, Ron Phillips, the town manager then, called me in and said, ‘We’ve got a little something for you down at the treatment plant.’
“So, I went down there and here’s this bathtub sitting on the floor with the effluent running into the tub and running back out, and they said, ‘There you go. Hop in your tub.’ So, I hopped in the bathtub and I’m holding a glass of champagne … drinking it.”
For more on Kent Rose or to access more Vail Valley Voices and History Nuggets, visit the digital archives at the Vail Public Library. Rose passed away on Dec. 31, 2025.
