No buyer for Taos Valley Ranch, legal troubles continue
Former Blackstone Ranch director recalls group’s lofty mission
This is the fifth story in a series that explores the history of the Taos Valley Ranch in the context of current events that will determine the property’s future.
The auction ended two weeks ago, on Feb. 22.
But there’s no indication that the Taos Valley Ranch attracted any viable or attractive offers sufficient to motivate the property owner — investor and one-time real estate mogul Dan Burrell — to sell. What’s more, those familiar with the property say it’s uncertain what a new owner would even do with the once-humble ranch, which was valued at around $50 million several years ago.
According to Misha Haghani, founder and CEO of Paramount Realty USA, the luxury real estate company that handled the recent auction, a “10-day period after [the] bid deadline where seller considers options and makes decisions” typically follows such auctions. The auction deadline was extended by a month in January “to provide bidders with additional time to review” the property, according to the company.
Burrell is attempting to sell the ranch on his own terms at the same time Century Bank is suing him in 8th Judicial District Court over roughly $15 million he owes on a series of loans he took out against the property in rapid succession in 2022 and 2023. He is also the subject of separate foreclosure actions involving his default on $50 million worth of loans secured by properties he owns near Aspen, Colorado. In another New Mexico civil case, Equilibrium Multi Strategy Fund is attempting to recover an $8 million judgement against Burrell, Burrell Diversified Investments and Cristal Medical, Inc.
Burrell has not responded to messages seeking comments for this series of stories.
The amount sought by the Century Bank is roughly equivalent to the reserve bid that was set for the ranch, which Burrell and his company acquired in 2019. He borrowed heavily against the property, while making a few minor improvements. Normally populated with horses, at least one caretaker and his dogs, llamas, cattle and other livestock, the ranch has been virtually deserted since the bank filed its civil suit late last summer.
The case is slowly making its way through the court. As of January, attorneys were still sharing evidence.
Long known to locals as part of the McCarthy Ranch, the 190-acre property is one of the Taos Valley’s choicest agricultural properties. Abutting the Rio Pueblo de Taos on one side, the land contains abundant water from shallow wells, a naturally shallow water table, springs and rights on three acequias.
The property is the subject of great community interest, but because it has been developed substantially, the cost to maintain it is in a different ballpark than its original ranch house-and-barn configuration.
After he purchased it from the McCarthy family in the early 2000s, Pat Black, the previous owner, erected a dozen or so new structures, including a 27-room luxury hotel, a conference center and a commercial kitchen. He also installed a geothermal heating system on the property.
With the Blackstone Ranch Institute gaining momentum in 2006, Black and others envisioned the property as a place where wealthy philanthropists and innovative environmental solutions could meet amid luxury dude ranch accommodations, a wellness center and an ecological educational center. But the multifaceted vision failed to coalesce.
“I think it became a real drain on Pat,” John Richardson, former executive director of the Institute, told the Taos News. “I mean, Pat’s a wealthy man, but even wealthy people have a limit. I think it did get very expensive, you know, the building of it, and then the maintenance of it. It was a very complex property.
“It could have been a really wonderful facility,” he said. “Partly for what it could offer the Taos community, as a place to teach kids how to ride horses, for example, have nonprofit retreats there and that kind of thing — but also, I think, in the larger sense for humanity. The original vision was a place where real, challenging environmental issues were dealt with by people who were in a position to deal with them.”
The Blackstone Ranch Institute still exists, but serves as a catalytic philanthropic organization that seeks to engage funders with the people in the communities they’re supporting — in a less detached way than traditional philanthropy has done in the past.
For about 15 years leading up to the pandemic, “We were providing modestly-sized seed grants to new networks and campaigns in whatever the leading edge environmental and sustainability work was,” Richardson said. “Pat, the funder, was very comfortable doing almost the philanthropic equivalent of angel investing.”
Black provided seed money to a long list of organizations that are thriving today, such as the urban sustainability directors network, which promotes collaboration between sustainable cities directors across the country, from San Francisco, California to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Richardson said that because the ranch is purpose-built according to Black’s vision, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone else will use it without losing their shirt due to maintenance and staffing costs. When Burrell bought it, for example, he claimed his company was going to launch a therapy center where internet-addicted youth could put down their screens and recover at a working ranch. It never materialized.
A few ideas surfaced during the Blackstone period, however, including “fractional ownerships,” by which “you get really wealthy people that are essentially buying shares and then would come up and use it periodically.”
“Every few years, I’d get a call from somebody who saw the potential in the ranch to become some multi-use facility, but they wouldn’t have the money and it never came to fruition,” he continued. “A few years ago I got one of the most interesting calls from a national tribal chiefs association. They thought it made for a great place for a national headquarters. I thought that would be good.
“But then again, you’ve still got the money part of it,” Richardson added. “The ideal would be to have a really good nonprofit there — but it could be really expensive if they couldn’t pull off getting some kind of revenue stream.”