Board rejects land sale for gondola for Taos Ski Valley
Resort may now request easement instead of purchase
TAOS —The village of Taos Ski Valley’s Planning and Zoning Commission has rejected a request by the nearby ski resort to purchase 4.4 acres for a planned gondola project that aims to connect the resort’s main base to the Kachina base on the upper mountain.
Mayor Pro-Tem Tom Wittman, who is a member of the planning commission, told the Village Council at a recent meeting Taos Ski Valley Inc. now plans to request an easement to the property rather than a purchase.
Village Administrator John Avila said the parcel was donated to the village in 2019 by the Kachina Home Owners Association for use as open space. Disposing of it may have left a hole in the village’s Open Space and Trails Program, for which planning documents identify the parcel “as a key linkage for trail development and permanent open space.”
Retired master appraiser Michael Fitzpatrick said the existing appraisal of the property should be thrown out — even if the village is to consider selling only a right of way to the ski corporation.
Taos Ski Valley Inc. had offered the village $90,000 for the property. One real estate appraisal prepared by Whitney Appraisal Associates of Taos found the market value of the property to be $77,000. Fitzpatrick believes the value could be much higher.
“As a resident and taxpayer, I would expect our elected officials would function as fiduciaries with responsibility to the taxpayer in mind, and to explore all the options to ensure the village achieves the best possible price for anything it sells,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview.
The planned electric gondola, which would operate yearround, was a major component of the Taos Region Transportation and Recreation Corridor proposal prepared by Taos Ski Valley CEO David Norden at the start of the year. Norden compiled the list of projects at the request of state legislators in an effort to attract state and federal infrastructure funding for a variety of transportation and watershed management projects in Taos and Taos Ski Valley.
Village residents aren’t necessarily opposed to the gondola, but Public Safety Committee Chair Trudy DiLeo asked councilors and town staff to be sure not to violate the terms of the original land donation.
“I’m not sure the exact wording on it,” DiLeo said. “But do we still need to make sure of that so we don’t lose that land back to the Pattison Trust because we didn’t use it the way they wanted us to use it?”
Wittman assured DiLeo “we’re gonna have to exercise due diligence once we get the application. And we’ll do that with a legal review.”
A version of this story first appeared in The Taos News,a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.