The sun shines brightly on two of the eight trails open at Ragged Ski area on Dec. 4, 2017. (Photo by Geoff Forester, Concord Monitor)
It’s an interesting time for Ragged Mountain Resort in Danbury, which held its 60th birthday party last weekend after enjoying a record ski season – because it’s also for sale.
The ski resort and its surrounding 1,900 acres, including more than 800 potential residential lots, are being marketed by CBRE Group, a major commercial real estate firm. The ski mountain covers about 250 acres, while the development land spans another 443 acres, according to the listing.
“A potential buyer could purchase the resort or the real estate development land or buy the two together,” CBRE says in a brochure. No sale price is included.
This uncertain future won’t dampen the ski area’s birthday party, however. Ragged Mountain held a bunch of events over the weekend, from a Bump ‘n Jump free-style contest on Saturday to a “party ski from the summit” on Sunday including people “that have significant history” with Ragged over the years.
There is reason to celebrate, said marketing manager Kyle Matzke.
“We breached over 100,000 skier visits for the first time. It’s been a banner year in revenue and skier visitation,” he said, looking back on months of snowfall and good snowmaking conditions. “It’s nice to finally get a real winter here.”
Matzke said off-season business, such as weddings, school prom celebrations and corporate events, have also grown. Like many ski mountains, Ragged has seen its share of financial turmoil over the years as a series of owners have struggled with the cost of lifts, snow-making and labor.
The resort opened in 1965 — with one story suggesting the name came from comments about its ragged conditions — but it went bankrupt in 1974. It was bought by the state, which promptly sold it to private investors who operated Ragged for a decade before they went under and shut down the mountain.
Then, Ragged was bought by developers Al and Walter Endriunas, who reopened it in 1988 and grew it over the following years by expanding to adjacent Spear Mountain and installing the first six-person chairlift in New Hampshire. But the Endriunases couldn’t handle the resulting debt, and in 2007, they sold Ragged to Pacific Group Resorts, which owns or runs a number of ski areas and golf courses across the country, including Jay Peak in Vermont.
As late as the 2019-2020 season, Ragged Mountain planned a “future expansion” to a third mountain, Pinnacle Peak. It never went through and is no longer shown on their trail maps. (Courtesy of New England Ski History)
Pacific Group has made a number of upgrades over the years, including a high-speed detachable quad chairlift on Spear Mountain. Various plans have been floated including improving a golf course that is no longer operating and expanding snow sports to adjacent Pinnacle Peak. Some trails were cut on that peak, but no access was built, and it is no longer shown as a “future expansion” site on trail maps. The real estate listing for the resort mentions plans for a “phased expansion” of up to 604 more acres of skiable terrain on the third peak.
Ragged is now owned individually by Doug Anderson, a co-founder of Pacific Group Resorts, said Matzke.
The mountain plans to wrap up this ski season on April 6.
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