Small town near Vail ends long legal battle with developer through $48 million settlement

Minturn, a village of about 1,100 people along a defunct railroad near Vail, has bested a $25 billion real estate company, securing a transformative $48 million settlement that ends a long legal battle. 

“I don’t think they ever thought that a small town like Minturn would be strong enough to stand up to them. But we did,” said Lynn Feiger, a Minturn councilwoman and nationally acclaimed lawyer who helped the former railroad town win the settlement from real estate giant Lubert Adler. “I always thought Minturn could win if we stayed the course.”

It’s been a long course for Minturn, where a Florida golf resort developer named Bobby Ginn dreamed big on the slopes of Battle Mountain above the town. With visions of a private ski hill, golf course, village and as many as 1,700 homes on 5,300 acres above the Eagle River, Ginn in 2007 promised Minturn about $160 million in perks if residents annexed most of his mountaintop property. 

The Great Recession crushed Ginn and his dream died. But he was still on the hook for all the promises made when 90% of Minturn’s voters approved the annexation of his property in 2008. The promises included $22 million in cash, a new community center, a water treatment plant, a new park and new sidewalks. 

Since the collapse of Ginn, the former railroad town has wrangled with the developer’s lender, Philadelphia-based Lubert Adler, which has $25 billion in office, residential and hotel space across the country, to make good on the pledge.    

The town and the new owner — Lubert Adler’s Battle North — have worked since 2012 to renegotiate a deal that would reshuffle the agreement made by Ginn and allow some development. Battle North sold most of Ginn’s holdings atop Battle Mountain in 2020 to a local Vail family. The Battle North development group has spent four years working on a deal for homes and some commercial development on about 540 acres south of Minturn. 

The crux of the negotiations has involved promises made by Ginn in 2008 and a 2012 agreement forged by Lubert Adler that would have given the town about $4 million — part of an $11 million escrow deposit made by Ginn when the annexation vote went through — plus monthly payments to cover the cost of reviewing the developer’s plans. The promises made by Ginn were not based on development but annexation. A vocal group of Minturn residents — led by former councilman Tom Sullivan and Feiger — urged the council to not settle with Lubert Adler and hold the company to previous agreements.

“We crafted an unbelievable deal with the annexation agreement we did in 2008. Use that leverage and protect our interest,” Sullivan told the council in an April 2019 meeting as the town’s leaders considered a settlement with Lubert Adler that would give the town about $4 million.  

Sullivan and Feiger were appointed to the council when other members left town in 2021 and spearheaded what would become a David-versus-Goliath legal battle. 

In 2022, Minturn sued the developer and Battle North sued Minturn, with both parties arguing the other had broken a contract. 

The Daily Sun-Up podcast | More episodes

“The town agreed to approve a massive project in 2008, with statutory vested rights, and since 2012, the town has been clear it has no intent of allowing such a massive project to proceed,” reads an August 2022 filing by Battle North in Eagle County District Court. “Recently, the town has been unwilling to allow any project to proceed. Yet, the town now demands all the performance agreed to in the context of the original massive project.”

For more than a year, both Minturn and Battle North had stayed the lawsuit in Eagle County as they negotiated a settlement.

“This will be transformative for our town” 

The settlement was signed on Thursday, with Minturn getting 55 acres known as the Highlands parcel, a 13-acre parcel next to the future Bolts Lake Reservoir, land for a recreation center and several smaller parcels around the town. The deal also gives Minturn a parcel known as the Old Tailings Pile, which is part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 235-acre Eagle Mine Superfund site. All told, the value of the land delivered to Minturn is worth $47.6 million. 

Battle North gets to dissolve all the previous agreements and pursue a 30-year plan to develop as many as 250 homes — pending town approval — on roughly 540 acres south of town.  The agreement rezones the land to allow the mix of residential and commercial development. The deal specifically prohibits Minturn from allowing the development of a wellness center on any of its new parcels. The developer has been considering a wellness center among its neighborhood mix of homes, which will include as many as 50 deed-restricted homes for local residents.

“It’s been a very long time coming and it’s been a lot of hard work both from our team and the Town of Minturn’s team,” said Tim McGuire, the head of development for Battle North. “I think at the end of the day both parties have come up with an agreement that works for both sides and gets the agreements of the past behind us and let’s move forward with a project we think will benefit Minturn in the future.”

McGuire said he expects specific plans for home development will land with Minturn’s planning and zoning commission in the next several months. 

“This is going to be a good thing for everyone,” he said. 

Sullivan said the tide began to turn for Minturn when Feiger joined the town council in 2021. 

“When we sued to make these guys perform, Lubert Adler’s response was very clearly to sue us and make us settle,” Sullivan said. “Then we got Lynn on the council.”

Minturn hired attorney Justin Plaskov from Geiger’s former law firm, who joined Feiger and Minturn Town Attorney Mike Sawyer in the legal fight with Battle North. 

“We could not have made it without that legal team,” said Sullivan, who is no longer on the town council. 

Feiger is a nationally heralded civil right attorney who won the nation’s first corporate sexual harassment case in 1978. In her four decades with Denver-based Jester Gibson and Moore she secured some of the largest employee settlements in state history, including a $20.5 million award in 2020 to settle federal claims of racial and sexual discrimination at an insurance company and a $14 million settlement against Matheson Trucking.

“I’ve spent my entire career being a David against a Goliath,” said the now-retired Minturn resident who remains on the town council. “All my career, I’ve sued big corporations. So the Lubert Adler situation was familiar to me. But this was very much a team effort. Tom Sullivan, our town attorney, our town manager, we all really worked together to make this happen. It’s a really good day for Minturn. This will be transformative for our town.”