The New Seasons at Keystone A Note From Mike…
I’m not sure why I chose today to write my first blog ever. It may be divine inspiration, or it may this beautiful day unfolding all around me. I’m in Keystone, CO getting ready to start on a big (for me) project: “The New Seasons at Keystone.” My wife, Allison, and I formed Seasons Development Group (SDG) with my brother Dan and his wife Angie along with our friends Nick and Lisa Hoffman to develop The New Seasons at Keystone. My primary company, Buckhead Renovations, will be the General Contractor for the project. I’m writing from The Legends Café at Arapahoe Basin Ski Area and I’ve just found out that the 6” of reported new powder is more like 12”. I love groups that under promise and over deliver.
We have been working on The Seasons project for just over 6 months. We purchased the land from Vail Resorts– they have made a strategic decision to move away from developing Real Estate and focus on acquiring new ski resorts and enhancing the ones they have. It is a beautiful piece of land located directly on the Snake River and in the geographic center of the Keystone Resort. Within a 10 minute walk, bike ride, shuttle or car ride, you have 3 ski resort base areas, 2 golf courses, 2 lakes, the Keystone Conference Center, hundreds of miles of biking and hiking paths, hundreds of restaurants and bars, and countless other activities (outlet stores, fishing, tennis, snowmobiles, ATV’s, tubing, rafting, ziplining, mountain biking, Spas, Nordic skiing, and more.) Of all of the things I have done and will do in the Summit County/Keystone area, I think my favorite thing is getting double digits of powder in May or early June at A Basin. There is a feeling that this doesn’t really happen anywhere else in the country or anywhere else in the northern hemisphere. And it’s happened for me 4 times in the last 3 years.
It’s part of the reason we are doing this development in Keystone. Our family has been blessed to travel all over the world. Allison is an executive with Coca-Cola, and I started out as engineer analyzing global risks for an insurance broker. When we started skiing, it was mostly Deer Valley, Breck, and Beaver Creek. We have been to Lake Tahoe and other areas too, but these were our main ones and were great for us and out 3 children, Lacey, Bailey, and Lauren. In 2007, we came to Keystone for the first time to visit our niece, Jenny Moynihan. We weren’t overwhelmed, but we did like it enough to put an offer on an old ranch house on Soda Ridge Road (a few blocks from The Seasons.) I had been a builder for about 7 years at this point and was ready for a new challenge. This Keystone house became the catalyst for Buckhead Renovations to expand from an Atlanta high-end remodeling company to adding resort and vacation home development as a core practice. We tore down most of the Soda Ridge house and built an 8-bedroom mountain house which operates very successfully as vacation rental home for large groups (25+). We actually used the four existing buildings at the Seasons at Keystone for the architectural inspiration for our Soda Ridge home. It has a timeless Rustic style. We followed this up with similar development successes at Lake Lanier in Georgia, Lake Martin in Alabama, Cashiers, North Carolina, and multiple properties in South Florida and Santa Rosa Beach (30A) Florida over the next decade. We still live in Atlanta (remember, Allison works at Coca-Cola) and operate our primary business there, but Buckhead Renovations has expanded to a Mountain Division, Coastal Division, and a Lake Division. At a time when we could probably do another project anywhere in the country, we have chosen Keystone; or maybe it chose us.
Either way, after 6 months of letters of intent, purchase and sale agreements, HELOC’s, appraisals, engineering studies, and Class 2 development reviews, we are just about to break ground for The New Seasons at Keystone. It will consist of 5 new buildings and 40 condo units weaved into the existing 4 buildings with 32 condo units. If you are reading this blog, you are probably already familiar with our newseasonsatkeystone.com website; but if not, check it out. Also check out the seasonsdevelopmentgroup.com website for a closer look at the Team building the first new condos in Keystone since the original Seasons at Keystone was built 16 years ago.
Keep an eye on this blog space for future project update stories, photos, and videos. We will be pouring foundations for 2 buildings (16 units – 4 one bedroom units, 8 two bedroom units, and 4 three bedroom units) in June and July, framing buildings A and I in August and September, installing roofs, windows and doors in October and November, and getting busy on the interiors once the snow starts. Our first units will be ready late winter/early spring. We are currently signing contracts for Building A (The River Building) and Building I (The Trail Building) and are taking reservations for Buildings F, G, and H (The Ridge Complex.) If you choose to join us, you might just move into a unit and have it decorated and full of family and friends in time for the next double-digit powder day at A Basin in May 2019.
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The New Seasons at Keystone 