Just before Killington’s annual Stifel Audi FIS World Cup weekend, Mike Solimano, President and Chief Executive Officer of Killington and Pico Resorts, won the fourth annual U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy Trailblazer Legacy Award from the Vermont Outdoor Business Alliance (VOBA). The award honors an individual’s lifetime of service in Vermont’s outdoor recreation economy with special recognition for advancing sustainability and equity, investing in local communities, and growing the Vermont economy. Solimano quickly credits his team’s focus on doing the right thing. SnowBrains met with Solimano to discuss the sale to local investors and what running the largest ski resort in the East is like.
Solimano has spent the past 23 years at Killington and Pico. He started as Vice-President of Finance, was promoted to President and General Manager, and with the sale of the resort to the Killington Independence Group in the Fall of 2024, he remained President and was promoted to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Lisa Lynn, a VOBA board member, said the industry has few leaders who are as “visionary and effective, collaborative and community-minded as Mike.” Solimano created the Beast 365 pass, providing access to Killington’s four-season offerings, including the downhill mountain bike trails, Adventure Center, and golf course. He helped oversee the construction of the new K-1 Lodge. Killington became a regular host of big events such as the Audi FIS Alpine Women’s World Cup and the Fox U.S. Open of Mountain Biking along with local popular events like the Bear Mountain Mogul Challenge, the Subaru Winterfest, and the Slash & Berm Banked Slalom. Solimano worked closely with the community to build workforce housing and to provide hands-on training for students at Vermont State University’s Bachelor of Science in Resort and Hospitality Management. Graduates of the program can be found working at the resort. He has served on numerous Boards including the Vermont Ski Areas Association, the Vermont Futures Project, and the Vermont Business Roundtable. Killington’s new owners will rely on Solimano to continue leading collaboratively and responsively.
In August 2024, Powdr announced it would sell Killington and Pico, Eldora Mountain, Mt. Bachelor, and Silver Star Resort as it continued to diversify its business. When asked what he heard from his fellow General Managers after the Killington sale closed, Solimano responded, “They said, ‘You hit the jackpot!’ I think most people running a resort would like the option that we just got; it’s not the norm. I don’t think there have been any groups that have been built from local ownership. I think you’ll see this as Powdr sells its other resorts. I’d be surprised if any of them can be truly a local deal like we have.” Powdr continues to hold a minority ownership stake in the Resort and has a seat on the new Board of Directors.
At the annual Passholders meeting last October, Solimano discussed the sale, including the fact that Alterra tried buying the resort. “I think it’s probably not a surprise that all the resort companies would want Killington because we’re big and we have a lot of visits.” Killington does not release annual visitor numbers for its pass products and Ikon. “Alterra was already a partner with them (Powdr) and they saw the volume we were doing within their networks,” Solimano said. “We worked with them for a while. My sense is one side wanted the other side to pay more and the other didn’t want to. Powdr and John Cumming could have gone out to bid like they are with their other resorts. They chose to call Phil Gross to see if he could work it.” Phil Gross and Michal Ferri took the lead to create the Killington Independence Group which purchased the resort with a small group of private investors.
Working with the local group changed the dynamic of the sale. “I would say that they gave the local investors a better deal than they could have gotten if they had gone out to the open market,” according to Solimano. “They wanted to close quickly and there are always antitrust issues with these bigger groups. I’m pretty sure that if they only cared about the number, they could have gotten more money.” Powdr realized working with the local group was better for the company given the significant investments it made in both Killington and Pico over its 20 years of ownership including new lodges at Killington, a new bubble chair, upgrading snowmaking, and purchasing snow cats.
Under new ownership, Solimano will work with a Board of Directors. “My bosses are really Phil Gross and Michael Ferri,” he said. “Right now, we’re meeting every two weeks because we’re still working through business formation issues. We haven’t spent any time on operational issues. I think that’s the best part of the whole thing; they don’t want to be in the weeds. These guys know what it’s like to run a business. Our biggest goal going forward is to generate enough cash to reinvest in the mountain.” Over the next 10 years, all profits from the year will be reinvested in the resort. Before the sale, Gross and Ferri hired the SE GROUP to evaluate the management team. “They’re a ski resort and land planning consulting company,” Solimano said. “I believe they designed the Stowe Village and they helped us design our tunnel and bridge system around the resort.” Gross and Ferri must have liked what they heard as they are letting the professionals run the mountain with no interference.
The sale closed with no debt and 100% equity which can be somewhat misleading. “It doesn’t mean we will have no debt,” according to Solimano. “Many people buy a house with 20% down and then they borrow 80% to cover the rest of the purchase. However, if you need to reinvest because it’s a fixer-upper, you also need to have extra cash around. What this means for us is we didn’t have to borrow any money to pay the full purchase price of the resort.”
Purchasing the resort outright lowers the risk of borrowing to support investment. “Whatever we make in a year, we don’t start by paying the first, three, five, ten million dollars back to the bank,” he says. Borrowing money can be risky for a ski area, especially on the East Coast. A resort can model projected revenue, but those models can be impacted by the weather, which then causes a change in plans when it loses money due to a poor winter. “This is what happened with American Ski Company (ASC),” says Solimano. “We got to the point where the interest payments were so high that the cash flow from the business couldn’t support much more than those payments. The only thing you can do is to stop investing because you don’t have any money left over. When I started at Killington, it was Christmas; ASC said they weren’t sure if they could make the payroll that week. They had problems because they kept refinancing and interest rates kept going up. There were times when it was paying 12, 13, 14% interest.” The new ownership group aims to avoid that fate.
All profits made at Killington and Pico will stay at the resorts as opposed to going back to a conglomerate that will decide where to invest the money. Solimano and his team have a 10-year investment plan for both mountains. “We plan to use cash flow from the resort and some short-term borrowing from M&T Bank to support a $30 million investment,” Solimano says. Funding the purchase without borrowing money strengthens Killington’s credit rating, “and the advantage for us now is when we’re borrowing, the banks look at us as low risk, so they give us good interest rates.” in response to that the threat of a bad winter, he adds, “We want to do substantial investment. We’re not going to stop investing, but maybe we’ll push out a lift one year if it’s tough, but maybe not because we’re so strong financially. We can decide if we want to. I think we have a lot of flexibility.”
When asked about what challenges are in the future, Solimano says that the industry is at the mercy of the weather and infrastructure costs. “I think the challenges are probably similar at all the resorts. One is always the climate and how we’re handling that by investing in new technology. We upgraded our snowmaking system and bought a thousand low-energy guns. We sold some of our older stuff to some of the smaller resorts. We’re recycling equipment through the industry and we’re trying to help those groups, he says.” He says the other is the increased cost of capital investments: “We’re planning for the next 10 to 15 years and some of the numbers I get back are just astronomical. The Superstar lift replacement costs $12 million (work is slated to start this April); replacing the current Ramshead lift with a bubble is estimated to cost $15 or $16 million. That’s part of the challenge: how do you keep it affordable for people while upgrading things.” Lift replacement costs are even tougher for a smaller resort like Pico. Solimano explains, “that you might not have detachable lifts, but fixed grips are still expensive. They used to cost a million or two million dollars, and now they’re five, six, or seven.” Balancing infrastructure investments while maintaining costs that won’t chase guests to other resorts is a fine line that Solimano and his team will need to navigate.
While he may not have mentioned it initially, working with Great Gulf and local government on the design and construction of the new Killington Six Peaks Village is a major component of Solimano’s work. SnowBrains wanted to know how Solimano navigates this environment. “It’s complicated. Getting to a place where all the entities could work together on a development project of this magnitude took a long time.” Solimano remembers when he started at Killington in 2002. “There was a lot of negativity,” he said. “When I took over, it was mostly just trying to sit down with everybody going, we’re all trying to do the same thing. Over the years, my team and I have been working at trying to build back the trust with the town and business owners.” Working to mend relationships and establish credibility has been central to Solimano’s work. “We kind of built the trust and now people go, they are a good partner. I would say more people in the local government want to move everything forward,” he says. The population also changed as a result of the pandemic, something that Solimano credits with helping to support the Killington Forward Initiative: “I think COVID has brought new people to the community; some of the longtime residents that would complain about everything sold. I think it changes the dynamic. We had a point in time when we didn’t have any kids in the local school and now Killington Elementary School is full because people figured out how to move here.”
The changes in the relationship did not go unnoticed in the business world. “If Great Gulf came in and saw a dysfunctional relationship between Killington, the town, and the business community, like 10 or 15 years ago, they would never have wanted to invest,” according to Solimano. He has to work cooperatively and collaboratively with multiple entities; there are a lot of informal conversations which he describes as “communication between silos.” Solimano is very involved with Michael Syned, Great Gulf President for the Resort Residential Division. “I probably talk to him a couple times a week and I probably talk to some of the Select Board, Jim Half and Chris Carr, very often as well,” Solimano says. “They see the village and all the other things as a positive as opposed to a negative. There are still people in the community that don’t like it. It’s taking a little longer than we hoped, but I think it’s because the group’s trying to get it right.”
There are plenty of skiers and riders who probably think that Solimano has a dream job. It comes with many responsibilities and potential daily problems, but at the very worst, he can always sneak out to catch a run or two during the day. SnowBrains wanted to know what a typical day is like. “I think it’s a little bit like every job; some days are amazing; some days are not,” he says. “When things are good, I think it is the greatest job ever. On other days it’s like any other job; you’re dealing with financial problems, staffing issues, upset customers, and then a transformer blows and the lift doesn’t run. It’s a humbling job.”
It might surprise people to learn that the busier the day, the more Solimano enjoys the job. “For me, the most fun time is being out of the office, like I was on Saturday; most of my team probably like Saturdays. It’s busy, it’s a little crazy, but I feel like you have the most impact; you get to see a lot of people and see if the things you’ve worked on are getting better or not. I think the people on our team who have been the most successful are the ones that enjoy that. It’s not a group that wants to sit in the office and go, ‘I hope someone’s figuring that out up there when things go wrong.’ We like to spend the day working hard trying to make it a better experience. That’s a cultural thing.” Ski areas in Vermont on Saturdays are under siege so it speaks volumes about how Solimano views his work. He is not afraid to bus a tray or fit someone’s rentals.
Solimano’s management approach can also be seen in how Killington cultivates and grows its leadership. Just recently, the resort announced several promotions of current staff to new roles in the organization. Continuing its tradition of promoting from within, these employees exemplify the traits that Solimano is looking for from his team. This is a service industry and leadership needs to model that.
Solimano collects feedback from both customers and employees, formally and informally, to identify areas for improvement. “Every day there’s somebody happy and somebody that is not,” he says. “We’ve been working as a team to be able to take constructive feedback and not take it personally. There’s some truth in everything and we should always be striving to improve. I know people who are going to tell me something positive and people who will tell me something negative every time I see them. I talk to both groups because I think it’s useful.” Solimano and his team also spend time during the summer reviewing surveys. He expects his managers to craft action plans to implement so returning customers and staff can see they have been listened to.
Solimano realizes the importance of clear communication. “People feel like we’re trying to make it better and they cut us slack when something happens, like the transformer issue we had recently.” On November 24, 2024, a Green Mountain Power (GMP) transformer shorted out high on the North Ridge. This resulted in power outages and lift closures throughout the resort and required GMP to do on-site emergency repairs. “In the old days, we probably would have just said the lift went down and not explain what happened. Amy Laramie, Vice-President of Brand Marketing and Events, and her team have done a great job communicating. Okay, the transformer blew. It’s not because we didn’t maintain the lift. If we didn’t say anything, you know what happens with conspiracy theories online.” Running a business in the social media era requires effective communication to earn customer’s trust.
After 22 years of working and skiing at Killington, it is safe to assume that Solimano knows the mountain. SnowBrains asked him to recommend his favorite trails by difficulty level. “If they’ve never skied before, I would recommend Snowshed, but if they can handle a green trail, it’s hard not to recommend Great Eastern down to the base of the Sky Ship Gondola. It’s just kind of a fun thing to do. I think that’s probably one of our best trails.” For the solid intermediate skier (blue), Solimano recommends Bunny Buster, “especially the top of Bunny. I always feel like that’s such a great trail.” For a single black, it comes as no surprise that Solimano recommends the famous Superstar, Killington’s World Cup race trail. Moving to the double black category, Solimano’s favorite is Cascade which runs under the K-1 Gondola. He recommends all the glades on Snowdon Mountain. “I think anywhere in there is pretty awesome,” he says. This includes Low Rider, Patsy’s, Tin Man, Scarecrow, The Throne, and Chop Chop.
Killington has dramatically changed its trajectory as it embarks upon a new era of independence and expansion. It could be argued that the foundation for these developments lies in the long-standing policy of opening early and closing late. How many Eastern Resorts make snow as early as possible and deep into March? How many sell a stand-alone spring pass? Killington does. As areas start to close in early to mid-April, Killington is just ramping up its spring skiing season. Skiing seamlessly segues into mountain biking and golf; in the fall, those shut down just as skiing starts again on the North Ridge. The dedication to that policy, with the investment in the infrastructure to support it, has helped to create its mythology. The mountain routinely stays open deep into the spring trying to reach the coveted June 1 date each year. Check out the YouTube videos of spring skiing on the Superstar to get a sense of the culture. Over Memorial Day Weekend, it challenges Beast 365 Pass holders to ski, bike, and golf: the reward is a special Killington t-shirt commemorating the achievement and a lot of fun earning it. The next decade promises new changes, developments, and investments as Solimano, his team, and the Board of Directors guide the resort into the future.
