Matthew Prince, the Old Town resident who recently acquired the holdings at the base of the Town Lift, has publicly signaled his interest in acquiring Park City Mountain from Vail Resorts.

The publicly traded Colorado-based owner, though, has said it is not interested in a transaction.

“We are proud to be a part of this community and are committed to supporting the people, businesses and spirit that make it so special,” said John Kanaly, senior manager of communications for Park City Mountain. “With that said, (CEO) Rob Katz made it very clear that Park City Mountain is not for sale in his remarks during our fiscal 2025 third quarter results in June. That remains true today and will continue to be the case.” 

Prince, the multibillionaire co-founder and CEO of tech firm Cloudflare, in an interview described the publicly traded Vail Resorts as having “some real, just fundamental problems.” Prince sees one being “their model of owning the underlying assets … and then selling passes against it” as compared to another major player in the ski industry with a presence in Park City, Alterra Mountain Company.

He elaborated later: “There are two models in the ski industry, the Alterra/Ikon Pass model and the Vail/Epic Pass model. Alterra allows local ownership of the underlying resorts where the Ikon Pass works, like Snowbasin, Alta and Snowbird. Vail almost exclusively owns the underlying resorts and manages them remotely. The Alterra model is better than the Vail model both in terms of the experience at resorts and as a business.”

Prince’s statements were made in the context of his public comments about his interest in acquiring Park City Mountain.

“Vail is about a between $5 (billion) and $6 billion company. The underlying assets that Vail has, if they just turned around and sold them, would be worth way more than what Vail’s market cap is. And so that inherently means that something in terms of asset allocation has gone way off the rails,” Prince said.

That sort of scenario, he said, has attracted interest from investors who may have different ideas about how the firm could be managed. Prince holds zero shares of Vail Resorts.

“I think that when you have a public company … where their underlying assets are worth more than the (market capitalization of the company), that creates a lot of incentive for activist investors to come in and say, we’ll take a position to do that. Now, I’m not … in that business, but I’ve certainly talked to a lot of activist investors who are circling around Vail,” he said.

Should an opportunity arise via a move by an activist investor regarding Vail Resorts, Prince said, he is prepared to acquire Park City Mountain. He said he is confident he could finance an acquisition of Park City Mountain in a short time.

“I’ve said, here’s the deal: If (an activist investor) were to take a position in Vail, I can, we can, very quickly find a way (for them) to get cash out of that by I’ll buy the mountain,” he said.

He likened the situation at Vail Resorts to a firm with holdings in gold.

“If you had a company and it had, you know, a safe full of gold bars that were worth $20 billion, but the company was being back valued at $5 billion, at some point, someone comes in and says, ‘Well, we’re going to shut down everything else, and we’re just going to sell the gold bars,’ … and it’s a better business,” he said.

Prince added in regard to Vail Resorts: “The underlying assets are worth more than … it’s trading for. And so again, you can, you just … imagine a world in which they said, OK, we’re going to go out and we’re going to sell Park City to me, or whoever the highest bidder is. You could sell Whistler/Blackcomb. You could sell Vail itself. You could sell, you know, all of their different pieces. They would have more than $5 billion in assets from that, and they could still have an Epic Pass.”

If Prince were to someday acquire Park City Mountain, he would “operate the mountain in a way that, again, is very much focused on how do we serve the local community and make this the world-class mountain that it should be, as opposed to, you know, what we have now, where you got a lift like Silverlode. It was installed the same year that I was a ski instructor here, which was a long time ago. It is way past its useful life. If Silverlode breaks down, the entire mountain breaks down. … The mountain needs investment. It’s really tough to do that if you’re a big public company.”

Park City Mountain in 2022 sought to upgrade the Silverlode Express lift, and had acquired the equipment, before the approval process was overturned by the Park City Planning Commission, sending the case to court. The lift has not been upgraded to date.

Vail Resorts acquired Park City Mountain in 2014 from Powdr Corp. in a $182.5 million deal that ended a bitterly contested lawsuit centered on a lease of the terrain underlying much of the Park City side of the resort. Vail Resorts shortly afterward linked Park City Mountain with what was at the time a separate property called Canyons Resort, creating the sprawling resort that now exists. The relationship between Vail Resorts and the Park City community has been strained at times in the 11 years since the acquisition, with issues including a trademark controversy, crowd management on the slopes, parking and a strike last holiday season by the resort’s ski patrol.

In the quarterly earnings call in June, CEO Rob Katz said the company didn’t believe selling Park City Mountain was in the long-term interests of Vail Resorts.

“We think … especially a resort like Park City, of course, is critical to our overall company and our network,” he said. “And yes, we think it’s incumbent upon us to continue to listen to the feedback from our guests, from our community partners, and continue to drive improvement, both in the way that we deliver an experience for our guests, the way that we deliver for our employees and the way that we deliver for our community members.”

Prince co-owns The Park Record with his wife, Tatiana Prince.

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Matthew Prince sees the development patterns in the Park City area resembling a place many Parkites left when they moved to Utah: Southern California.

Prince, who recently acquired the key holdings at the Town Lift base through a limited liability company under his control, became an influential figure in the Main Street core via the transaction and has broad visions for the future of the shopping, dining and entertainment strip. Prince, who lives in Old Town and grew up in Park City, is the co-founder and CEO of internet security firm Cloudflare. He co-owns The Park Record with his wife, Tatiana Prince.

Prince in an interview mentioned Los Angeles as he spoke about growth in Park City and the surrounding area. Utah has long wanted to manage growth differently than Southern California in an effort to curb sprawl, and that thinking has also influenced officials in Park City and surrounding Summit County.

“What I worry is happening to Park City, is Park City is building L.A., where we’re going to have mediocrity spread far and wide,” he said.

Prince said Los Angeles is “so spread out in every direction, and as a result … you can’t solve transit problems because cars are … the only way to get around. … If you actually have great cities, you look at great European cities where they say, here’s the town square. That’s the amazing thing.”

He described the Park City area as having a series of resort bases, such as Canyons Village at Park City Mountain, Deer Valley East Village, Snow Park and the Park City-side base of Park City Mountain.

“What you need is a center and a reason for people to come into town. And that means there should be great shopping. There should be great hotels. There should be great dining. There should be just vibrancy, which is there,” he said. “That is in our vision and the reason we live in Old Town is because we really believe that Main Street, Park City, should be the center.”

He also spoke about the commercial core of Main Street, including Swede Alley. He said the road one block east of Main Street “should have been developed a million years ago” as he also noted the history of Swede Alley, where Chinese immigrants settled during the silver mining era. He described that part of what became Old Town as being “a really vibrant community” during that period.

The acquisition of the Sweeney family holdings at the Town Lift base included the commercial space where the Bridge Cafe and Grill is located, retail spaces fronting Main Street, the Park City Mountain ticket plaza, a significant percentage of the parking spots in the garage underneath the building and the Town Lift Plaza deck.

The deal was among the most notable ownership changes along Main Street in recent years and was finalized at a time when there are discussions underway at City Hall regarding the future of public spaces on or close to Main Street.

Leaders want to ensure Main Street remains competitive with outlying commercial districts. There are numerous possibilities, including developing lodging and residences in an effort to increase the number of people frequenting Main Street and pursuing transportation upgrades that would be designed to increase the accessibility of the commercial district. A timeline for any major improvements is not clear.

“I would be totally supportive of really rethinking what that whole Swede Alley place looks (like). It is crazy to me that City Hall is City Hall, like 20% of China Bridge is taken up with city and county vehicles. That’s just crowding out the ability for people to come and shop at and eat at and experience Main Street. That should be a really cool boutique hotel. You should build other hotels. There should be a grocery store somewhere on Main Street,” he said, identifying some of the ideas that have been mentioned in the municipal government’s talks about Main Street.

He added that the street’s history can be honored at the same time as needing “to get incentives to get actual density and and energy back onto Main Street, and that will make the businesses better. It’ll make everyone more more successful. And it will be a reason that you want to gather.” Prince said the Marsac Building “should, for sure, be a hotel” someday, which is one of the ideas that has been publicized as part of the Main Street discussions.

Prince talked about the downtown cores of some of Park City’s mountain resort competitors as he discussed a vision for the Main Street area. He mentioned Aspen, Colorado, as one of the examples, a place that for decades has been seen as being ahead of many other skiing communities in its vision.

“You can dislike a lot of the people who go to Aspen, but Aspen is, I mean, one of the things is amazing about Aspen is, if you live in Aspen, you come downtown to eat. There are incredible people who are here, but they don’t come downtown to eat. They go off to other places. We should be trying to create a district that looks like what a downtown Aspen looks like, looks like what a downtown Sun Valley looks like, look like what a downtown Jackson looks like,” he said. “And the energy of that, that supports both tourists and locals, is really positive. … Everyone is afraid of creating Disneyland. We already have Disneyland. What we’ve got to get back to is actually creating something where there’s real value and a reason for both tourists and locals to end up there.”

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