Same Job, Better Life: Vermont ‘Beast’ Beckons Work From Home Crowd Amid Economic Shift

Great Gulf Group hopes to open a new resort village in Killington by 2027. Many businesses around the U. S.

are still scrambling for ways to get staff back to the office after the popularity of working from home exploded during the pandemic. Great Gulf Group, one of North American’s largest home builders, hopes you’re more inclined to stay with what you like and consider a move even further away to better enjoy life. Great Gulf in May paid $43 million for land at the foot of Killington Ski Report, the biggest ski resort in the eastern U.

S. , and intends to develop the nearly 1,100 acres into condos, townhomes, and single-family homes, along with a new retail village and lift lodge. The long-delayed project is one of the largest in environmentally restrictive Vermont in recent years.

The business rationale: work from home is here to stay after the pandemic, making it more attractive than ever to live and work in a ski area or other resort community. The way Great Gulf sees it, that appeal is so strong that even existing second homes will increasingly become first homes in today’s stressed-out world. “A lot of people are saying, ‘I’m going to keep a small pied a terre in the city and have my primary residence where it’s beautiful,’” says Great Gulf’s Resort Residential Division President Michael Sneyd, speaking in a VIP tent at World Cup ski race held Killington on Sunday.

The combination of mature Zoom and internet service make the technology easy to manage, too. “Last night I met a New York lawyer whose clients all think she’s in New York. She lives in Killington,” he added.

There’s some data to back strong demand for homes in Killington, known among its fans as the “Beast of the East. ” The number of condos on the market is less than half of 2019. Meanwhile, the number of dwellers in the area has doubled in the past decade, according to local reports.

“The pandemic really revolutionized a couple of things,” notably a preference among many to avoid time-consuming commutes and in favor of working from home, Sneyd said. “I think that trend has accelerated, and two other trends have come out of that. One is people are spending more time at their second homes then they would normally.

It used to be that you had to fight the traffic on Friday night to get up to your vacation home, and then fight the traffic again on the way home on Sunday night. Now you can go Wednesday through Tuesday, or Wednesday through Monday, and it’s much more effective. It’s more environmentally sensitive because you don’t have cars all sitting on the highway at the same time.

It also allows people a much better way of life. You can work on Friday but now also ski all day on Saturday and Sunday, or during the summer take advantage of summer activities. That process is the first major shift in the economy,” he said.

“The second major shift” is interest in making resort communities a primary rather than second home, Sneyd said. Ski areas can be attractive as a residence because lines are shorter during weekdays year-round, allowing for more convenient fun. Killington, opened in 1958, boasts many regional superlatives.

This season, for instance, it was the first to open for skiing in Vermont on Nov. 3. Still, it currently lacks a notable village common at other big resorts worldwide.

Largely free-standing shops, hotels, bars and restaurants wind along the curvy Killington Access Road that leads to the main basin. Envisioned since the 1980’s, development of a resort village has been thwarted by the lack of municipal infrastructure. Great Gulf, a development company founded by Toronto businessmen Elly and Norman Reisman, builds homes throughout the U.

S. and Canada, and employs 1,500. Killington’s ski operation was purchased in 2007 by Utah-based, privately held Powdr, which operates nearly a dozen ski resorts in North America including Copper Mountain and Snowbird.

Great Gulf bought the Killington site this year from SP Land Co. , an affiliate of investment fund E2M Partners. American Mikaela Shiffrin celebrated her win in a women’s World Cup slalom skiing race at Killington Killington last year received state approval for $53 million in public infrastructure improvements to bring clean water to the town and facilitate private development of Great Gulf’s long awaited Killington project currently known as “Six Peaks,” the first phase of which will include 193 condo units, more than 35,000 square feet of retail space, a 85,000 square foot new base lodge to replace two existing ones and 32 new single family homes.

The improvements are expected to add more than $285 million of new taxable value to Killington’s Grand List, yielding over $115 million in new property tax revenues over the 20 years, government officials have said. The new village’s architect and landscape architect, Safdie Architects and PWP Landscape Architecture, collaborated on Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands hotel highlighted in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians. ” Killington’s commercial potential and convenience for regional skiers was apparent at the World Cup ski competition there last weekend, an event that attracted 28,000 fans and 99 women athletes from 20 countries including American Mikaela Shiffrin, who notched a historic 90th World Cup win.

If all goes well, Great Gulf expects to get a final go-ahead in six to nine months and begin selling units next fall. The developer declined to comment on the pricing. Construction would start the following spring, and the village would open two years later in 2027.

“So it’s a long process,” says Sneyd. The 65-year-old says he expects to be on the job four years from now for the opening. “I can’t imagine retiring.

This is too much fun. ” See related posts: @rflannerychina.