Fairmont Leads in Peaks Bidding, Source Says

Telluride Daily Planet
Published:9/24/07

By Patrick Healy

An offer topping $50 million has catapulted Fairmont Hotels and Resorts into the lead in the bidding for the Peaks Resort — trumping other bids by as much as $15 to $20 million, said an official close to the deal.

As many as a dozen investors, developers and hotel companies have bid on the mountainside Peaks Resort, including the ski resort and a Manhattan builder who already owns one luxury development and is in the middle of building another.

But the official, who insisted on anonymity, said Fairmont was now heading the pack.

Other brokers and attorneys with connections to the Peaks also said Fairmont was emerging as a likely buyer, but they said they did not know the company’s offering price.

And it was unclear yesterday whether Fairmont itself could become the owner of the Peaks Resort, or whether the hotel chain had paired up with an investor to forge an ownership/management deal.

With hotels from Bermuda to New York City, Fairmont is the country’s largest luxury hotel company. It owns some of its own hotels outright and has management and branding agreements with the landlords of many other properties.

And Fairmont is already a major player in the Telluride area. The company manages the Franz Klammer Lodge in Mountain Village, where two-bedroom suites go for $1,200 a night during the ski season.

Through a spokesman, Fairmont has said it could not confirm whether it was even among the bidders for the Peaks Resort. Officials from the Blackstone Group, a private-equity giant that owns the Peaks, did not return phone messages yesterday.

A Blackstone spokeswoman said earlier, “We anticipate having news to share with you soon.” But the company has given no other hint when it will announce the next owner of the Peaks.

With 177 rooms and high-spending guests, the Peaks Resort is not only the biggest hotel around Telluride, it’s also one of the shrouds supporting the regional economy. So it’s not surprising that many government officials, real-estate brokers and local businesses are anxiously waiting for news from the Peaks or Blackstone.

Rube Felicelli, a real-estate agent and former Mountain Village mayor, said that other developers would like to see the sale of the Peaks wrap up quickly, and that a deal on the hotel would mark a strong showing of confidence in Telluride’s economy and the local real-estate market.

“If Fairmont takes this up, I think that would be positive,” Felicelli said. “They don’t want to see this in limbo.”

But limbo is where the Peaks spent much of its summer vacation.

The hotel closed down this spring for a long-awaited $60 million renovation. But after the furniture was hauled away and sold, after bathroom fixtures were yanked out and carpets torn up, Blackstone called off the remodel and announced the hotel was up for sale.