Mountain Village condemns land owned by Telluride ski resort’s erratic owner, revealing decades of frustration

The Mountain Village Town Council on Thursday night voted to begin condemnation of a parcel owned by Chuck Horning, the erratic owner of the Telluride ski area, over his refusal to grant access for the town’s 25-year-old summer concert series. 

The vote marked a very rare public excoriation of Horning, whose 21-year ownership of Telluride Ski and Golf has been marred by consistent temper tantrums, nearly annual firings of resort managers and unpredictable management. 

Launching the condemnation — not for ownership of the parcel but for seasonal access to allow the weekly summer concerts that have drawn as many as 1,600 locals and visitors to the resort village every Wednesday evening for the past 25 summers — follows Horning’s “acts of obstruction and failures” in permitting the weekly event, said Mountain Village Town Manager Paul Wisor in an interview.

The challenge of working with Horning has spilled beyond the summer concerts. Over the weekend the Mountain Village council crafted an ordinance that would impose a lift tax on all the Telluride ski area’s lift-riding visitors, which followed Horning’s delays in reaching an agreement with the regional transportation authority on how to fund the gondola that connects Telluride and Mountain Village.

“Chuck is failing us all,” Wisor said.

Horning has granted a license to the Town of Mountain Village Owner’s Association since 2004, but every year that permission has grown increasingly difficult to obtain, Wisor said of the 81-year-old California real estate mogul who bought Telluride ski resort in 2004 and has fired several resort managers in that time. 

Last year Horning did not approve the concert series on his land — known as Sunset Plaza at the base of the ski area — until a week before the first event and when he did, his permission demanded that the town of Mountain Village not market or promote the concert series. He also required that no sponsors — like Telluride Brewing Co., local real estate brokers and local banks — be allowed to support the event. 

Those requirements cost the town and owner’s association more to host the concerts and challenged producers in recruiting bands to play on the slopeside stage, Wisor said. Producers had to pay bands as if they were playing a private concert, he said. 

The vitality of the event has withered under Horning’s unexplained demands, Wisor said, with attendance falling from 1,200 to 1,600 each Wednesday to less than 1,000.

“If someone wanted to end the concert series without actually saying they want to end the concert series, this is exactly how you would do it,” Wisor said. 

Horning, who splits his time between Telluride and his properties in California, has not directly addressed the town’s concerns. 

Wisor said he heard from Horning’s staff that the owner has issues with crowding on the public gondola that connects Mountain Village with the town of Telluride and that restaurants in the village were too crowded on Wednesday nights. The gondola between the European-style Mountain Village and the historic mining Town of Telluride opened in 1996 with a plan to connect the two slopeside communities with something other than a 15-minute mountain drive.

“Chuck’s concerns have no basis in fact,” said Wisor, whose statistics show wait times for the publicly funded gondola of around 10-15 minutes before and after the concerts, “which anyone leaving a public concert on public transportation should expect, especially the most iconic public transportation system in the country.”

Wisor said “it’s baffling” that Horning would be troubled by too many people filling businesses in a village that has long labored to draw crowds. 

“The restaurants being full are the very purpose of the Sunset Concert Series,” said Wisor, adding that business owners have expressed that without the Wednesday concerts “some of them would not survive. So what Chuck is essentially saying is that he’s OK with those businesses failing.”

Mountain Village reported taxable spending of $49.7 million for June, July and August last year, down about 4% from the same summer months in 2023. That compares to $85.5 million taxable spending down the gondola in Telluride for June, July and August 2024, which is up more than 12% from the same months in 2023. 

Horning sent an email to Mountain Village Mayor Marti Prohaska on March 11 saying the issue boiled down to “growing the Wednesday night concerts versus supporting the vitality in other ways.”

“There is no clear path, but the challenge is far more complex than most realize,” Horning wrote in the email that did not mention a permit for the concerts, but focused on the challenges of operating a remote ski resort. 

Wisor said emails from Horning in recent weeks “do not offer a rational narrative” for why he does not want marketing or sponsorship for the concerts. 

“Chuck has failed in every respect to meet his responsibilities in a meaningful way”

On Thursday, the council approved a resolution authorizing the town attorney to craft “a good faith offer” to buy a 10-year easement that allows access to the parcel from June through September for the Wednesday night concerts. If Horning refuses the offer, the resolution authorizes the town attorney to “institute and prosecute eminent domain proceedings” to acquire the land. 

Wisor told the council Thursday that the condemnation process for an easement is “the right thing, with the lightest touch possible.”  

The San Miguel County commissioners Thursday gave their support to the town council, saying in a letter the loss of the concert series “would be deeply felt.”

“We sympathize with you and your frustration at having been unable to reach a friendly and timely agreement with the landowner,” San Miguel County Commissioner Lance Waring told the council, reading a letter from the three-commissioner board. “As parties across the county find themselves in a similar quandary on other issues.”

Horning has not reached a final deal with the San Miguel Authority for Regional Transportation for how much the resort will pay to operate the gondola after the resort owner initially proposed a 4.5% tax on some resort tickets to raise $1.5 million a year to run the gondola. Without the deal, the Mountain Village council on Sunday formalized a plan for a lift tax mirroring the taxes imposed by the towns of Breckenridge and Vail to mitigate the impact of skier traffic. The 4.5% lift tax ordinance — which would require Mountain Village voter approval at an election in June — will be considered by the Mountain Village council this week.

“As early as last May, community leaders made it clear that without collaboration, we would end up at this point,” Wisor wrote to Horning in an email Sunday night, informing the resort owner of the lift tax plan. “Unfortunately, despite repeated efforts to engage in good faith, we are now here as a direct result of the choices you, and you alone, have made.”

A long line of Mountain Village residents spoke Thursday, telling the council that the midweek concerts are critical for both the Mountain Village economy and locals in the entire region. 

Mayor Prohaska said Horning’s contention that the town government is unwilling to work through challenges is “exceptionally unfair,” noting the council and town administrator “have spent hours and hours and hours trying to work through things that truly could have been so simple.”

“I implore Chuck to hear us when we say we care deeply about this community,” Prohaska said before the council’s unanimous vote approving the resolution. “We care deeply about your ski resort and we want all of these things to be successful and that is the reason that this action is being contemplated.”

Horning, in a statement to The Sun forwarded by a spokeswoman, said he was disappointed to see the “rush” toward condemnation “and the lack of interest in communicating and understanding” what his team is trying to do to stir economic vibrancy in Mountain Village. 

“It is complicated and a much bigger discussion than just the concert series,” Horning said. “We need to build vitality in the village that is sustainable in the long term, and this should involve a discussion rather than a battle. With a thoughtful forum, we will not only get a better result, but it is the decent way to approach these matters among good people.”

Wisor said it was “deeply concerning” that Horning was not at the Thursday meeting. 

“He didn’t care to show up,” Wisor said following Thursday’s vote.

Wisor said he has been visiting with Bill Jensen, a widely respected resort industry veteran who ran Telluride ski area for nearly five years before Horning unceremoniously fired him in 2020, shortly before Jensen’s promised ownership share in the resort would have vested. Jensen told Wisor that a good resort CEO balances protection of the resort, the community and the resort’s employees. He said “it’s pretty clear” that Horning is not working to protect anything or anyone around the ski resort.  

“I think this underscores the glaring need for Telluride Ski & Golf and the community to have a competent and engaged CEO running the resort,” Wisor said. “Chuck has had years to demonstrate and fulfill his responsibility to the resort and to this community and to his employees … and we have ample evidence, again, including tonight, that he is either unwilling or unable to fulfill that obligation.”

Wisor’s fiery speech garnered a standing ovation when he said “no one truly owns a ski resort.” 

It is greater than a piece of real estate, he said. 

“It’s a responsibility … that requires leadership, vision and stewardship. It’s about having the privilege to be a caretaker of a mountain that is going to far outlast all of us,” Wisor said.  “Chuck has failed in every respect to meet his responsibilities in a meaningful way and he’s been doing so for quite some time. It affects our town, It affects our community. And it affects our future. This is reality that we can’t just whisper about anymore. I truly believe that this mountain and this community deserve better.”

Dirk de Pagter, who has lived in Telluride since the mid-1970s and has served on both the local tourism and airline alliance boards that promote the town and ski area to destination vacationers, said Horning has no vision for Telluride or his resort. 

“He is a ruthless business person who takes advantage of people and this community,” de Pagter said. “Cost cutting is his only style of management. When it came time for Chuck to actually compensate Bill Jensen, he sidelined yet another competent manager. All he does is slice and dice to keep more money in his pocket.”

De Pagter, who owns a construction company and a real estate company in Telluride, said the Thursday vote by Mountain Village and Wisor’s piercing critique of Horning “was probably the first truly public display of what we have been talking about here for many years.”