KILLINGTON — Killington Resort, on hiatus from hosting World Cup ski racing as it completes $60 million in improvements, is aiming to welcome back the circuit’s Thanksgiving weekend competition in 2026.
The one caveat: The state’s largest ski area and its new independent owners are talking about limiting their future participation to every other year due to the international event’s $2 million annual cost.
“It’s an expensive operation,” Phill Gross, a lead Killington investor and private capital manager, said at a recent community meeting. “It takes cash flow away from the development of the mountain, as good as it is for the brand.”
Since its Vermont debut in 2016, the World Cup annually draws up to 20,000 spectators and a national television audience of 2 million viewers for Alpine women’s races on the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving.
When local investors formed the Killington Independence Group to buy the ski area last year, they announced $38 million in upgrades — starting with a new $12 million Superstar trail chairlift whose construction required this month’s competition to relocate to Copper Mountain in Colorado.
Killington leaders now are floating the idea of taking turns hosting the World Cup with the western ski area.
“We’re hoping that we can do an every-other-year contract,” Gross said, “but that’s to be determined.”
As for other plans, the new owners just announced an additional $22 million in infrastructure work as they raise the capacity and reduce the energy consumption of the resort’s 9-million-gallon-a-day snowmaking system.
“Part of being independent that’s really been great for us is just being nimble and quick,” Killington CEO Mike Solimano said at the community meeting. “Say we have savings in one capital project, we can quickly decide to implement another one.”
The development comes seven decades after a 20-something visiting honeymooner named Preston Smith raised $30,000 for a simple shelter and parking lot and opened Killington’s first trails in 1958.
Smith, now 95, went on to create the biggest snow-sport resort in eastern North America. It was sold to the Maine-based American Skiing Company in 1996 (the same year neighboring Pico Mountain joined its portfolio), then to the Utah-based Powdr Corp. in 2007 and finally to the Killington Independence Group last year.
The latest plans call for upgrading the resort’s more than 20 chairlifts over multiple years to ensure access to all 92 miles of terrain, even during snowstorms.
In a related but separate action, Canada’s Great Gulf real estate group — another lead Killington investor — is continuing to seek permits for a 450-acre retail and residential slopeside village. Developers unveiled plans two years ago with hopes of starting construction as soon as 2026, but design changes and ongoing study by local and state review boards have sparked delays.
“I would say there’s a ton going on, but not a ton I can really report on,” Solimano said of the status of the village development process.
Killington was the first eastern U.S. resort to open this ski season, launching Nov. 12 with a record amount of snow-covered terrain. The new owners anticipate a busy Thanksgiving week, even without international racing.
“I think as much as everyone loves the World Cup, others are going to be thinking, ‘I really like having all these trails open,’” Solimano said.
