This story by Chris Mays was published by the Brattleboro Reformer on May 30.
[W]EST DOVER — Peak Resorts, the parent company of Mount Snow, is waiting for legislative tweaks before continuing its EB-5 fundraising campaign.
“In consideration of these potentially significant changes, the company has suspended its recently announced Mount Snow development EB-5 Program fundraising and is undertaking a review of the terms of such offering,” administrators for Peak Resorts wrote in a notice to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The decision has to do with a May 9 announcement from lawmakers who expect final regulatory changes to the immigrant investor program to come in August. The program is run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Peak has recently used EB-5 funding for a $30 million snowmaking system and a new $22 million base lodge under construction at Mount Snow’s Carinthia face. It also has plans to build condominiums at Carinthia.
The company said it “anticipates resuming fundraising efforts in 2018 and into 2019.”
The proposed regulatory change — increasing the minimum investment required for immigrant investors to $1.35 million in rural locations and “targeted employment areas,” or TEAs, and $1.8 million in other areas— will be adopted unless President Donald Trump stops it.
For projects in rural places, such as Mount Snow, investors must currently put up $500,000. The minimum figure is currently $1 million in other areas. TEAs are intended to be areas where jobs are critically needed.
Legislative reforms being discussed include increasing the number of jobs to be created from an EB-5 project. It has been proposed that rural areas and TEAs should only need to yield nine jobs instead of the 10 required now, while other areas should go up from 10.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and two other members of Congress have called for regulations that would reduce fraud and abuse of the program.
“We have watched with growing alarm as the EB-5 program has continued to stray further and further away from what Congress envisioned when we created it as part of the Immigration Act of 1990,” the group wrote to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen in April. “Some of the distortions and abuses that have come to plague this program require statutory changes. Unfortunately, while we have been intently pursuing bipartisan legislative solutions for a number of years, powerful special interest groups have stymied all efforts to reform this scandal-plagued program. Thankfully, there is much that U.S.C.I.S. can do to restore the program to its original vision.”
The lawmakers called for reform to include an “increased use of mandatory audits, site visits, and other measures to ensure securities law compliance in conjunction with the S.E.C.”
Mount Snow and Peak declined to comment.
