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STEAMBOAT SPRINGS

Fifteen years ago, Jennifer and Adam Fernley came across an abandoned hilltop cabin for sale in the northwestern Colorado community of Stagecoach. 

Overrun with mice and other rodents, the house had been flooded by frozen pipes.

But the couple knew immediately they’d found their slice of paradise.

A house painter by trade, Adam took on the work of repair.

With sweeping mountain views across the rural corner of southern Routt County, the cabin sits on a 1-acre lot surrounded by scrub oak trees.

The only sound that can be heard from the back deck is the chirping of birds.

The Fernleys have raised their daughters in the house and don’t plan to ever leave.

The girls, now 12 and 16, say they also want to stay in the house forever. 

But right now the whole family is worried about their future as an Arizona-based operator with 35 private resorts worldwide moves ahead with a proposal to turn a large portion of their community into Stagecoach Mountain Ranch, a lavish members-only ski and golf resort similar to the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana.

“The whole thing is so overwhelming it keeps me up at night,” Adam said.

The Fernleys live across the road from the deserted Stagecoach ski area, about 15 miles south of Steamboat Ski Resort. With a vertical drop of 2,400 feet, it operated with three lifts from 1972 to 1974, when the owners, the Woodmoor Corporation, declared bankruptcy before completing a plan to build 16 subdivisions, a golf course, equestrian center and marina on Stagecoach Reservoir.  The new developer, Discovery Land Company, plans to build 700 luxury homes with exclusive access to skiing, golfing and fly fishing on the Yampa River.

Environmental concerns

Retired ecology professor Bob Woodmansee lives just down the road from the Fernleys. He recently wrote a methodical “manifesto” in opposition to the proposed development in the community where he and his wife have lived for 19 years. 

Woodmansee, a professor emeritus at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, has nearly 60 years of teaching and research in ecosystem science and sustainability.

He also served as a Routt County planning commissioner and on the board of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District, which manages the Stagecoach Reservoir, the large lake to the north of Discovery’s planned resort.

“Biologically and ecologically it could be a disaster,” he said.

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Woodmansee’s ire is focused on the plan for a lakefront golf course. 

“Stagecoach Reservoir is already listed as an ‘imperiled’ waterbody for water quality by state and federal agencies,” Woodmansee writes in his paper, which is being circulated around the neighborhood and being used to bolster opposition. 

Before the developer even begins its plan to use nutrient-rich treated wastewater to irrigate the golf course, Woodmansee said the ripping out and organic decomposition of the sagebrush ecosystem during construction will release large amounts of nutrients into the lake, which could lead to toxic algal blooms.

Woodmansee is 82 and recently diagnosed with heart problems. He doubts he will live to see the resort built if it is approved by Routt County. But that won’t stop him from fighting it now. 

“I look at this battle as my last swan song,” he said. 

Room enough for the rich

Stagecoach has been growing and attracting more wealth — a trend only accelerated by the pandemic. It is a “targeted growth area” in the 2022 Routt County Master Plan. Two other new subdivisions, northwest of where Discovery hopes to build, are currently in the planning process.

But the exclusivity around the Discovery proposal feels to many Stagecoach residents like they are confronting an entirely different degree of development. 

Stagecoach Mountain Ranch will be similar to the Discovery-managed Yellowstone Club, where members include Tom Brady, Bill Gates and Justin Timberlake. 

The whole thing is so overwhelming it keeps me up at night.

— Adam Fernley, Stagecoach resident

The Yellowstone Club is a self-contained haven where 864 members and their guests never carry their skis or wait in lift lines, always have fresh powder (the club trademarked the phrase “private powder” at the 2,700-acre ski area in 2006) and pay a $400,000 initiation fee to move into the neighborhood and $60,000 in annual dues. That’s after they purchase a home — the low end being $6 million for a one-bedroom condo. 

In his 2020 book “Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West,” Yale professor Justin Farrell writes that “the Yellowstone Club represents the pinnacle, or inevitable telos, of the trajectory of extreme wealth concentration in the United States.”

Farrell focuses his book on the staggering collective wealth — and wealth gap — in the Wyoming county that includes Jackson Hole ski area, a 175-mile drive south of the Yellowstone Club, where 90% of income is made by 8% of households.

As to why extreme wealth has a rapidly increasing presence in the Mountain West, Farrell writes, “Burdened by social stigmas, status anxiety and feelings of inauthenticity or guilt, the ultra-wealthy use nature and rural people as a vehicle for personal transformation, creating versions of themselves they view as more authentic, virtuous and community-minded.”

Selling a “family-friendly and outdoor-forward lifestyle in a beautiful natural setting,” the Yellowstone Club maintains a high demand for membership, according to Ed Divita, a founding member of The Discovery Land Co.

“People are our highest focus,” Divita said in a July 19 phone interview, and that includes club members, employees and the surrounding community. He also touted philanthropic contributions to surrounding communities from Discovery club members across the globe.

And, it is a “top priority” for Discovery to not only be environmentally sensitive but environmentally beneficial, he said.

“A Faustian bargain”

The Stagecoach Mountain Ranch plan calls for close to 700 luxury homes on about 6,600 acres, which includes the ski mountain and golf course. Discovery has also acquired a slice of property with prime fishing on the Yampa River.

Divita said in the interview that 700 homes will have far less of an impact than the plans dating back to the early 1970s envisioning a maximum build out of 4,500 dwelling units.

According to the Stagecoach Community Plan, created by Routt County in 2017, there are currently over 2,388 platted single and multifamily lots within Stagecoach, of which 1,802 remain vacant.

Discovery owns the fly-fishing parcel of land and the golf course site, and Divita said the plan is to acquire the ski mountain parcel “in stages,” adding four new lifts, a gondola and high-end ski lodges and dining amenities. 

Membership fees for Stagecoach have not yet been determined, Divita said, when asked at a July 8 introductory meeting with community members at the Oak Creek Fire Protection District’s Stagecoach Station. “But it is going to be expensive,” he said.  

Divita insisted Discovery is not planning to build another Yellowstone Club, and that Stagecoach Mountain Ranch would reflect the area’s unique character.

Eli Nycamp is president of the Stagecoach Property Owners Association, which represents 2,400 lot-owners and about 1,200 residents living on close to 600 developed lots. Some are second-home owners.

“There are a lot of mixed feelings,” he said. “Some love it, some don’t and some are in-between.” 

Nycamp said it is disappointing the mountain wouldn’t be public, but notes the private land has long been zoned as a ski area, with plans for a golf course.

Benefits of the new resort could include much-needed upgrades to roads and other infrastructure, including increasing the capacity of the Morrison Creek Water and Sanitation District, Nycamp said. Those upgrades would need to happen on the front end, he said.

The “failed development” of the 1970s that Nycamp described left many owners with stranded lots, with no roads to reach their property and no access to water, sewer and electric service.

In 1978, the abandoned ski area was purchased out of bankruptcy court by the Wittemyers, a multigenerational Steamboat family well-established in the real estate brokerage business. 

They are taking something that is established and completely changing it. They are going to change the very fabric of what Stagecoach is.

— Jennifer Fernley, Stagecoach resident

There were a number of attempts by the Wittemyers over the past 50 years to revive the ski mountain — and keep it public — but nothing came to fruition.  

In the fall of 2022, the Wittemyers approached the Discovery Land Co. about a possible partnership, Divita told the crowd of nearly 300 people packed into the firehouse July 8, with some attendees listening through the windows from outside.

“We want to be members of the community just like you,” Divita said.  “We want to be a contributing member. We want to make the place better.”

The company wants to preserve for its members the same things the current residents love about their neighborhood, he said. 

“We love the fact there are authentic rodeos here,” Divita said. “We love that authenticity.”

Divita listed the economic benefits and amenities the developers hope to bring to the community: a large increase in property tax revenue, better schools, improved roads and infrastructure, good jobs and the construction of housing that is affordable to the estimated 300 full-time and 600 part-time employees needed to run the luxury resort (once fully developed), as well as to local teachers and firefighters.

“We want to do even more,” Divita said.

He described a 12-acre parcel dedicated as a “community gathering place,” with a sledding hill, trailhead, grocery store, gas station and 140 workforce housing units. Currently, the nearest store is 7 miles away in Oak Creek.

But 16-year-old Hazel Fernley said she was suspicious of all the promises. “They think we need help having a better life here and we don’t.”

Neighbors being asked to trade the laid-back, rural character of their community for tax revenue and improved infrastructure, Woodmansee said, “feels like a Faustian bargain.”

Private skiing with slopeside neighbors

Divita estimated the new resort would take a minimum of 15 years to complete, and could take 30 years to “get to the final finish line. … We are not looking at coming in and selling a few homes and leaving. We are here forever.” 

He said Discovery plans to submit its application to the county in August. 

In contrast to when the Yellowstone Club was built in 1997 by lumber baron Tim Blixseth, Stagecoach has existing subdivisions and condominium complexes at the edge of the ski area, as well as in between the proposed lakeside golf resort and ski mountain. 

“They are taking something that is established and completely changing it,” Jennifer Fernley said. “They are going to change the very fabric of what Stagecoach is.”

Hundreds of residents will find themselves sandwiched in by a ski area they will never be allowed to ski and a golf course on which they will never be able to golf.

Josh Cook has lived in the Stagecoach Townhouses for the past decade, previously serving as HOA president. The 15 mismatched buildings in his complex — each with six units — are tucked into a dense grove of Aspen trees on the mountainside overlooking the lake.

Cook, a photographer, lives in a building with a firefighter, a nurse, a sheriff’s deputy and a retired couple. 

The ski resort property surrounds the cluster of condos on three sides.

“We are a little black circle in the middle of their grand plan,” Cook said. Part of the parking lot near Cook’s building is actually on ski resort property.

The townhouses, along with the nearby Eagle’s Nest condos (known locally as the “chicken coops”) were built 50 years ago in anticipation of the ski resort that never was.

One building sits right along a ski run that empties onto the mountain’s base area.

Cook questions the integration of the townhouses and their residents given their proximity. He also hopes the Stagecoach community will not be sacrificed for money for the rest of the county.

“I don’t think millionaires want to ski by our 1970s townhouses and see us on the porch,” he mused. 

Neighbors at the meeting expressed concern about getting priced out of the community, worried their property taxes would rise so high they’d have to move. But Cook thinks the development’s impact on the market is unpredictable. “Not everyone wants to live in the shadow of billionaires,” he said.

Divita said “good planning” will provide appropriate landscape buffers and setbacks between existing homes and resort properties. 

Other concerns expressed at the meeting included public access to the ski area, fire risk, water, wildlife, the viability of finding and housing 600 employees, traffic, and noise and light pollution. 

Cook debates whether a private ski area is perhaps the “lesser of two evils” when compared to the crowds a public ski area could bring. He also worries the people pleading to Divita for access to the ski area are barking up the wrong tree. What Discovery sells is exclusivity, Cook said.

“An unavoidable impact upon the culture of a community”

Routt County Commissioner Tim Corrigan, who has represented the southern part of the county for 12 years, said it is too soon to assess whether Stagecoach Mountain Ranch would bring overall benefit to the community. 

“I would need to see the application before I could render a judgment,” Corrigan said in an interview this month. “It’s going to be a really subjective thing for most people in the community to determine whether the direct public benefits in total result in an overall net benefit to the community. For any similar community that sees this kind of real estate development, there is an unavoidable impact upon the culture of the community. And land use regulations are not very well equipped to address the cultural impact.” 

Jennifer Fernley said she accepts the ski mountain is private property and the owners have their rights to develop, but she hoped a future use would be more in tune with the values of the existing community.

“It’s going to ruin the character of Stagecoach,” she said.

Adam Fernley always hoped for a “mom-and-pop operation.”

Frances Fernley, 12, said she was most concerned about wildlife. “They don’t have as much room as they used to,” she said. “And we have to speak for them since they can’t speak for themselves.” 

The Fernleys described elk, deer, moose, bears, mountain lions, eagles and other wildlife roaming on and around the densely forested mountain.

“There are very real concerns around wildlife,” Corrigan said, including the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, a state species of special concern because of its shrinking sagebrush habitat. “It’s unclear to me how the developers will mitigate those impacts.”

On water supply, Corrigan said he defers to the water providers and their claim there is sufficient supply. 

After increasing capacity, the local water district has said it may be able to supply water for domestic use, and the Upper Yampa Conservancy District has said it is possible the reservoir could be used for irrigation and snowmaking.

All those details will have to be worked out during the application process, said Andy Rossi, general manager of the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District. 

They think we need help having a better life here and we don’t.

— Hazel Fernley, age 16

Rancher Peter Flint questions the water-supply wisdom of building such a massive luxury operation. The Yampa River is over-appropriated and states are battling over the Colorado River, he said. 

The Yampa is a tributary of the Green River and a significant part of the Colorado River system. It is one of the few free-flowing rivers in the West. 

“Now they will be telling me — with 150-year-old water rights — that I can sit and watch my hay field burn up while they water a golf course,” said Flint, who was a Routt County planning commissioner when the Stagecoach Community Plan was developed in 2017.

Flint worries that by using treated wastewater to irrigate the golf course rather than returning it to its source will tighten the supply in the Yampa.

On the stretch of the Yampa River spanning from its headwaters in the Flat Tops Wilderness to the Stagecoach Reservoir, Flint said a “call” was placed on the river several weeks ago, meaning there is not enough administered water to satisfy all decreed water users’ rights. He said it goes on call every year, it is just a matter of when.

The main stretch of the Yampa River below the reservoir went on call for the first time in history in 2018, and again in 2020.

In terms of water quality, Corrigan said, “I do think there are big questions. And I do believe Routt County has some oversight and authority to ensure water quality is maintained.”

Environmental impacts from Discovery Land Co. resorts

A number of Discovery-operated resorts across the world are in the crosshairs of concerned environmentalists.

In 2016, a pipe froze and broke, instantly dumping about 30 million gallons of treated sewage from a Yellowstone Club holding pond into the Gallatin River southwest of Big Sky, Montana. 

In 2023, the Yellowstone Club was sued by the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, alleging the company has been “knowingly discharging its treated sewage directly into the South Fork West Fork of the Gallatin River without a permit.”

A trial is scheduled for 2026. 

On Sept. 4, 2023, Yvon Chouinard, a conservationist and founder of the outdoor gear company Patagonia, issued a statement in support of the Cottonwood lawsuit, warning that “mindless consumption is killing our planet.” 

“Patagonia believes that clean water is more important than vacation homes and golfing,” Chouinard wrote.

Asked in an email interview about the 2023 lawsuit, Divita referred to the broken pipe in 2016 and said it had been resolved. “The river system is healthy.”

Cottonwood is also pursuing litigation against the Yellowstone Club over alleged pollution from the use of treated wastewater in snowmaking, concerned in particular about untreated pharmaceuticals and PFAs in the water. 

Thomas Goreau, president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance, published a before and after study in 2020 evaluating coral reef ecosystems and fisheries in the Bahamas next to Discovery Land’s Bakers Bay Club. His work concluded that nitrate flowing through groundwater near the club “destroyed the ecological function of pristine Bahamian coral reefs, mangroves, and sea grasses that were crucial and essential nursery habitat for lobsters, conch, and fishes, devastating the fisheries resources of a community that had lived from them since the 1700s.”

Goreau said he found it “unconscionable” that anyone would be allowed to build a new golf course next to an already impaired body of water like Stagecoach Reservoir in Colorado. 

“I can’t believe they are proposing this in a water catchment area,” he said. “That to me is astonishing. … It’s antithetical to the purpose of a reservoir. I can’t believe they are even considering it.”

Divita insists that environmental stewardship is one of Discovery’s core values. “We are continually evaluating the best practices to reduce environmental impacts to ensure these incredible locations are protected for generations to come,” he wrote in an email.

Discovery must show the development won’t negatively impact the Stagecoach Reservoir, the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District’s Rossi said. The application review process will be a long one, he said, with plenty of opportunity for public engagement. 

Though no application has been submitted, and no decisions have been made, there is a feeling of inevitably hanging over Stagecoach, some residents say. But Corrigan, the county commissioner, said approval of Stagecoach Mountain Ranch is not a sure thing at this point. (Steamboat Springs councilman Michael Buccino earlier this month announced he was resigning from his community relations job at Discovery Land Company after fellow council members expressed concerns about his role with the company could be seen as a conflict of interest.)

“Any approval will be based upon the assessment of whatever the application contains or does not contain,” he said. “We’re going to consider the application on the merits and how it adheres to the master plan and uniform development code.”

“And,” he said, “I totally understand why people are fearful of this development.”