Selling the Dream
Blixseths to Sell Yellowstone Club
By David Nolt, 1-05-08
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| Caption: The road to the Yellowstone Club. Photo by David Nolt. | |
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Yellowstone Club, the controversial pinnacle of luxury vacation home communities located near Big Sky, Montana, is up for sale—the result of an increasingly bitter divorce between the club’s CEO Tim Blixseth and his wife Edra.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports the Blixseths are in negotiations to sell with real-estate and private-equity firm Crossharbor Capital, run by longtime Yellowstone Club member Samuel Byrne. Sources in the WSJ story say initial discussions are valuing the club at somewhere between $400 and $600 million.
As Tim and Edra Blixseth divvy up $2 billion worth of assets including private jets, cars and property (slightly higher stakes than sorting traditional relationship spoils like T-shirts, TVs and albums), the embattled husband eloquently described himself in an email to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle as “the dreamer who was fortunate enough to see his dream come to life, and to also see it continued and fully fulfilled in the original way it was dreamed.”
The Yellowstone Club has been a formidable economic force leading the construction boom in Big Sky and southwestern Montana; “The world’s only private ski and golf community” includes 13,400 acres replete with a $155 million home, a Tom Weiskopf-designed golf course and a private ski resort plush with open bowls of “Private Powder™.” Membership in the club is invitation only, with a $250,000 membership fee and homesites starting at just over $2 million.
Controversy has surrounded the Yellowstone Club ever since timber baron Blixseth purchased 165,000 acres of checkerboard Gallatin National Forest property (dashing the hopes of conservationists working to secure the property), then arranged several shrewd swaps with the Forest Service to secure 13,500 acres adjacent to the Big Sky Resort. In 2004 Blixseth paid the Environmental Protection Agency $1.8 million to settle a water pollution case in the environmentally sensitive land near Yellowstone National Park.
According to the WSJ story, Tim and Edra will remain “advisers and promoters of the club.” Tim Blixseth says he looks forward to skiing more on the club’s “Private Powder™.” There is no word on Edra’s skiing plans, nor is there word yet on how the sale of the Yellowstone Club will affect Yellowstone Club World, “the only club in the world where the destinations themselves, whether an island, a mountain, or a private swath of a country—are reserved for the exclusive pleasure of its members.”
[End of article]Very interesting. The WSJ story does an elegant job of climbing down from the story it ran a year or so ago about the Blixseth divorce being a rare model of amicability. That story didn't ring true at the time, and obviously it wasn't, despite the spin that things were amicable until they got bitter recently.
Also, the WSJ piece employs what seems to be a classic journalistic misdirection: "According to people familiar with the negotiations, the Blixseths are in talks to sell Yellowstone Club for an estimated $400 million to $600 million." (emphasis mine). So who do you think these "people familiar with the negotiations" might be? Seems clear in reading through, and knowing that the writer knows Blixseth well and wrote the aforementioned puff piece about the divorce, that the source is actually Blixseth. Trying to smoke out any possible higher offers, surely.
The thing I have wanted to know for a while, and we did some digging on this without success, is whether the lots at the YC have actually been selling over the past 18 months. You can't tell from the county property records; Blixseth is famous for shuffling things around among various entities, and all the records refer to transfers among unindentifiable entities (and prices don't have to be reported in Montana) so there is now way to know what are real sales.
If anyone has any insight on this we'd be very curious.
This is an excellent point. My guess is that the sales are not real, I, as a Real Estate Broker owner in Montana know that people do fake sales and sell to friend and pay them back under the table. Most of the time this is to create a comparable SOLD in the local MLS so that an appraisal will put a higher value on the remain lots and / or homes in the subdivision. Real Estate is all about emotions and what you think something is worth. And warped media certainly creates a higher purchase price.
Comment By bearbait, 1-06-08Timmy gets to play SPLIT-THE-ASSETS, the fun board game of lawyers. Oh, would I hope he gets the blue collar version, where the judge divides them right down the middle: 85% for the woman, 15% for the man, and then the man gets stuck with the legal fees. That would be proof positive of karma.
A billion here and a billion there, and it becomes some serious money. The acrimony will build. That is how you get hours on the law firm time sheet.
In a just world, all the people Timmy has stiffed in his life by multiple bankruptcies of shell companies, or his just having enough dough to say to a vendor, "so just sue me", and the little guys slinking away without pay for services rendered because they don't have the money to play the legal game, would get to be a part of the asset realignment game. But it ain't a just world, and one can only hope, at the least, his soon to be be ex-wife gets enough to make him feel the pain.
Yeah, bearbait, this world's just geared to keep men down. Please.
Comment By Craig Moore, 1-06-08Come on David where's your sense of humor?
As Yogi said, "A nickel isn't worth a dime today." So the split of a whole lot of nothing is something to watch. Bearbait's 85-15 even split sounds about right. Yogi also said, "You can observe a lot just by watching." Get your popcorn ready as the the loving couple engage in a little legal MMA.
Have you noticed how your comment, "this world's just geared to keep men down" sounds like a Hillary campaign promise? Perhaps both the loving couple and Hillary should have listened to the great Yogi when he said, "It ain't the heat; it's the humility."
Craig, here's my sense of humor: you're funny, just not funny "ha ha." Still afraid of Hillary, huh? That's funny too.
Comment By bearbait, 1-06-08David: People can be afraid of Hillary. There is certainly a stated fear of Romney. Or McClain. Or anyone embracing religous faith.
Hilary has a long, long, very public record of not responding to questions about details in her career that might smudge it more than the no-answer or lost files already do. Obama is young enough, inexperienced enough, to not have an extensive record that can be minutely examined, or have extensive debts to persons and money sources over a long political career. If her husband's pursuit of financial benefit from his career in office is any indication of the family interests, I would have a degree of fear of Hillary. She is for sale. Bill has been for the last 7 years.
Perhaps at the level of participation in "Free Speach" in this country at this time, it is impossible to be elected without being bought before hand. We might be better served to go to some country school board with a history of balanced books, good success in educating kids, with a record of retaining teachers, and pluck the longstanding chairman or woman from the job and run them for President. You would get a person who can work with lots of different people and beliefs, with humility and financial prudence. And if there were once closet ghosts, they would have been known to all for along time, and accepted by the electorate.
My dad, early in his law practice, was the legal counsel to many one room school districts during the great consolidations of the '50s. I was the keep-him-awake kid, for the late night and long ride home. I have shot hoops in some of the smallest, oldests gyms in the country while the meeting went on in the classroom in another building. Me and local kids. And I have gone out on weekends to take papers for signing or just to visit with board members. I remember one place where a white horse would stick his head in the kitchen window and get an apple for his reward. At another, the kids of the family were taking turns riding a pony across a flooding creek in mid winter, full bore, just to see how wet they could get. And did we ever! Brrrrr. Those people who chaired those school boards were bright, caring, rough, cheap, and fiercely loyal to their schools. And decades later, with far fewer school boards, it always appears that the farmer from the outlying parts of the district always bring the most common sense and justice to the board.
What you fear in Hillary is not her gender, but her track record and aspirations, and the company she keeps, and has kept. And mostly, who owns her, and who she has to pay off in public policy and administrative rule when elected.
The only thing I'm afraid of is the derailing of pertinent comment discussions on NW stories.
Comment By Craig Moore, 1-06-08Dead on bearbait as you wrote, "fear in Hillary is not her gender, but her track record and aspirations, and the company she keeps, and has kept. And mostly, who owns her, and who she has to pay off in public policy and administrative rule when elected."
Dave, do you really want to venture down the road of personal remarks as to who is funny oddest? I think it would lead to NewWest comment police stepping in. By the way, are you ever going to disclose your bias affiliations to your readers as other writers do?
You're the reporter digging up dirt on me, Craig. Go ahead, disclose all that you Googled. I'm still not sure it would enhance any discussion on the Yellowstone Club, though.
Comment By Craig Moore, 1-06-08David, what affilations you choose to disclose is your choice, not mine. I merely ask the question. By the way, I am not aware of any dirt.
Regarding your objection to digressing from the column topic, wasn't you who chastised bearbait over gender with your quip, "Yeah, bearbait, this world's just geared to keep men down. Please."
Regarding the Blixeths and the YC, there seems to be some stark parallels to the Clintons and Whitewater. It seems that unlike the Blixeths the Clintons had politics as the relational glue to keep them married.
Crystal Cox points out some troubling aspects of the YC that don't seem that far from the Whitewater issues.
I just want to clarify what I said. I am not familiar with the SOLD prices on the YC. I do know that "some" developers have been known to sell to friends for a high purchase price and than pay them back under table, to create a Comparable Sold Data for appraisals. There is a lot of room for error in appraisals and the local MLS does not check the Realtor's records to Prove that the property actually Sold for the price they entered into the MLS. To follow the validity of every real estate transaction does not seem to be the job of the Association of Realtors yet I believe it is the cornerstone of mortgage fraud. So I wanted to point out that what Jonathan said is possible, and that media and inaccurate SOLD prices in a development often times create false value that the unsuspecting buyer is stuck with.
Comment By goof houlihan, 1-06-08posted by bearbait: "In a just world, all the people Timmy has stiffed in his life by multiple bankruptcies of shell companies, or his just having enough dough to say to a vendor, "so just sue me", and the little guys slinking away without pay for services rendered because they don't have the money to play the legal game, would get to be a part of the asset realignment game."
Unfortunately, not all of them survived that kind of treatment. Keep it up bearbait, as far as I'm concerned, whatever you have to say is "pertinent", even when it ticks me off.
Has anyone considered the fact that climate change may be a factor in the decision to bail out of Big Sky's luxury resorts (Moonlight Basin is also on the auction block)? Who wants to pay millions to live in a resort community with two months of forest fire smoke in the summer and an ever shrinking ski season? Warming in the Northern Rockies is occurring at two and a half to three times the pace in the rest of the world according to researchers at MSU. At some point in the not-too-distant future it could all go up in smoke. Divorce may be smoke screen for protecting the Blixseths' fortune.
Comment By bearbait, 1-07-08Seasonal variations in climate, and climate cycles, are not going to make something as fragile as a living human being, no longer in his or her prime, make decisions to buy or sell property based on chicken little climate pronostications. Those people are way smarter than that, albeit well aware of their mortality. They pretty much figure they will be on the mantle in an urn long before the Rockies don't have adequate snow.
Moonlight needs capital at a time when capital is becoming hard to get, and Yellowstone is for sale just because there is a need for cash to facilitate the principal's divorce.
A whole lot of really wealthy real estate types made their fortunes buzzard picking the assets of the Resolution Trust Corp after the savings and loans debacle. One would assume that there is that possibility down the road in the current mortgage fallout from idiotic second home loans. Developments that have yet to crack the nut might be on the block on the cheap in the not too distant future. Smart people are going to try and get a substantial cash hoard in order to benefit from being able to cherry pick down the road. Others just might be taking the profits while profits are available. And others could just be addressing their mortality, and deciding that now is the time to enjoy the fruits of their labors. I seriously doubt if global warming fears by some play any part in the big picture.
Perhaps Mr. Dokken might seize the opportunity to realize Ameya here rather than where he is unloved and unwanted.
Comment By jwscotch, 1-07-08Bearbait for President...has a nice ring. I was beginning to think common sense could only be found in a dictionary!
Nothing wrong with not taking life and predictions (guesses) so seriously. Trying to get my own affairs in order...can't decide if my tomstone should just say "Deleted" or "Forwarded?" Also, just paid my attorney $5000 for a "Living Will"...hell, all it says is, "Do not Reboot," (he got to charge me more for making it longer by not using "don't). Had I not gone through a divorce 34 years ago, I would have had more to spend!
In response to Beckley 1-07-08, Comments about Moonlight Basin, and Montana Resort Communities. This is an Excellent Comment. I did not realize that Moonlight Basin was on the auction block, they are still marketing online as if all is well. And your exactly right about Montana Resort Property, it seems like even Glacier Park has been shut down in the summer more than once in recent years due to fires. Climate change has definitely effected skiing and the last few summers have been awful with fires, dangerous fires that did not end until the snow fell. It makes perfect sense as to the fact that someone like Blixseth would say the divorce was friendly but than later the story changes to make it look like he does not want to sell but has to sell. This is what Real Estate is all about, who twists the facts, creates the best smokescreen and who comes in with the money to take the project over. Great Points here Folks. Keep them Coming.
Comment By BozemanBob, 1-09-08So YC goes to the highest bidder: a Wall Street firm that probably has no "green" experience but, rather, "resort" experience. They'll manage the place the way they do any other luxury paradise, incurring crowds and pollution. There goes the neighborhood.
Comment By bozemaneer, 1-10-08There went the neighborhood. Here's another conspiracy theory for the list: perhaps Blixeth is getting out to avoid a potential storm of lawsuits in the future resulting from a long pattern of unethical building practices... just something from the grapevine.
Comment By bearbait, 1-10-08Are YC golfers still asking Big Sky folks to flush their toilets more often in summer so the golf course has irrigation water?
Comment By Hal Herring, 1-10-08I second Bozeman Bob. Blixseth's shortcomings may be obvious, and it is too bad that gazillionaires want to develop and have third or fourth homes in the Montana high country. But we could all do alot worse than Blixseth- and now, it looks like we will.
Comment By SHAWN MONTEE, 2-27-08Blixseth achieved the ultimate dream.Give credit where credit is due. Only a COWARD would act behind another mans back !!!!!!!!
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