Connect

Find us on...

Dashboard

New Search X

Robert Redford Sells Sundance Mountain Resort

Posted by Negar Chevre on Saturday, December 12th, 2020 at 8:21am.

Robert Redford Sells Sundance Mountain Resort

Robert Redford is selling the Sundance Mountain Resort, the Provo Canyon ski destination the actor, filmmaker and environmental activist opened in 1969. Redford reached an agreement to sell the 2.600 acre resort to Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners.  Redford announced the sale to employees on Friday.  Though the resort has been Redford’s Utah home for more than a half-century, it also “created a lot of weight for me to be carrying around,” he told The Salt Lake Tribune this week, ahead of Friday’s announcement. “I had been searching for years for the right people to take it to the next level, so that I could take that weight off my shoulders and enjoy my life.”

Philip “Flip” Maritz, managing director at Broadreach Capital Partners, said that in negotiating with Redford for several years, the sale price (which neither side is disclosing) wasn’t the most important part of the deal.

“He was more concerned about legacy, stewardship, fit, philosophy,” Maritz said in an interview Friday.

The word people kept using when talking about Sundance, said Benjamin Leahy at Cedar Capital Partners, was “magic.”

“We obviously think there are ways to improve upon it, but we don’t want to lose the essence of it,” Leahy said. “It’s a haven, and it’s not like any other resort we could think of in the United States.”

Redford said of Maritz: “The thing that impressed me was the amount of time he spent at Sundance over the summer and winter. I spent a lot of time with him, to see if he was really the right person. … I gave it some time, and kept questioning him and pushing him. … His answers held up. So I said, ‘OK, this is the time and I think this is the right guy.’”

Leahy said that above what the two companies paid Redford for Sundance, they aim to spend half as much again to upgrade the resort.

In the first year or two, they plan to improve the infrastructure of the mountain, adding some ski runs and a high-speed lift, Leahy said. They also will expand the guest and skier facilities, such as the addition of a day lodge. A couple of years further out, there are plans for an “inn,” with 50 to 75 rooms, in the Sundance Village area, he said.

All the additions, Maritz stressed, would follow Redford’s model of sustainable and locally sourced building materials, to match the surroundings as much as possible.

Maritz said part of Sundance’s appeal is how it showcases nature, with only a light overlay of the human-made. “What’s amazing to the place isn’t just what Bob did to it, but what he didn’t do to it,” Maritz said.

Broadreach Capital Partners, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., is a real estate development company that owns such luxury hotels and resorts as The Carlyle in New York; the Biltmore Santa Barbara on the California coast; The Park Hyatt in Sydney, Australia; and the Rosewood hotel chain globally.

Cedar Capital Partners, based in London and New York, has a portfolio that includes such luxury destinations as The Savoy in London, the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam, the Monte Carlo Grand in Monaco, and The Shelborne in Miami.

Though both companies are involved with high-end luxury locations, Maritz and Leahy said they intend to keep Sundance’s “democratic” feel, rather than turning it into a haven for the superrich.

Read more here: Salt Lake Tribune

Leave a Comment