Winter Park's $2 Billion Gamble: A Town Gondola, a Mountain Overhaul, and the End of Gemini Express

This is Part 3 of our 10-part Construction Season series -- a daily deep dive into the biggest resort infrastructure projects shaping the 2026-27 ski season and beyond.

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Every Colorado ski resort has a "masterplan." Most of them are PDFs that collect dust on a Forest Service server. Winter Park's is not that.

What Winter Park Resort and Alterra Mountain Company have put together is a seven-year, $2 billion transformation that would change not just the resort, but the entire town around it. We're talking about a 10-passenger gondola replacing the aging Gemini Express. A nearly two-mile aerial transit system connecting downtown Winter Park to the mountain. Terrain expanding onto Vasquez Mountain. Snowmaking nearly doubling. Skier capacity up 41%. Three new hotels. Almost 3,000 new residential units. The town's hotel room inventory growing by 400-500%.

And as of this spring, the pieces are actually falling into place.

The Big Picture: Winter Park Unlocked

The plan goes by "Winter Park Unlocked," and it's really two interlocking projects running in parallel -- one on the mountain through the U.S. Forest Service, and one in town through the Winter Park Town Council.

On the mountain side, Winter Park submitted its Mountain Master Development Plan to the Forest Service back in spring 2022. The highlights are staggering:

• Terrain expansion onto Vasquez Mountain -- adding 344 acres to bring total skiable terrain from 3,095 to 3,439 acres, making Winter Park the third-largest ski area in Colorado (behind only Vail and Steamboat)
• Skier capacity jumping 41% -- from 15,830 to 22,375
• Snowmaking expanding from 280 to 605 acres -- more than doubling current coverage
• Gemini Express replaced with a 10-passenger gondola capable of moving 3,600 people per hour
• Multiple lift upgrades -- Looking Glass, Pony, and Iron Horse replaced with modern six-pack chairs; a new six-person chair at Cooper Creek summit; a T-bar accessing the Cirque from the new Vasquez area
• New dining on Vasquez Ridge -- a 10,000-square-foot facility with a 3,000-square-foot deck replacing the Sundance Chili Hut
• New beginner and intermediate terrain via the Cooper Creek summit chair

On the town side, the Winter Park Town Council unanimously approved a rezoning ordinance in June 2025 that covers 165 acres of the resort base area, creating a new Destination Center district. That opened the door for up to 2,950 residential and lodging units, 250,000 square feet of commercial space, and the public infrastructure to support all of it.

Together, it's arguably the most comprehensive resort-plus-town overhaul happening anywhere in North American skiing right now.

The Town Gondola: Connect Winter Park

The gondola connecting downtown Winter Park to the resort -- officially called "Connect Winter Park" -- is the anchor of the entire vision. And it's also the part that has generated the most skepticism. A town-to-resort aerial transit system in a small Colorado mountain community? It sounds like something that gets proposed, debated for a decade, and then quietly abandoned.

But Winter Park Town Manager Jon Peacock, who came to the job from Pitkin County (home of Aspen and Snowmass), has been remarkably direct about the project's role. "What this gondola is going to do is form a new axis to create a pedestrian downtown entertainment corridor that will add depth and connect to the resort," Peacock told Sky-Hi News in April.

Here's how it works:

The gondola would run nearly two miles from Cooper Creek Square (near the town hall at 50 Vasquez Road) to the resort base area, with a capacity of up to 3,500 passengers. The idea is to fundamentally change how visitors move once they arrive. Those driving to Winter Park would be encouraged to park downtown, stay in lodging near the gondola terminal, and ride up to the mountain instead of fighting for base area parking. Those arriving via the Winter Park Express train or a future mountain rail service from Denver would step off at the resort end and have direct gondola access to downtown.

The first phase is the replacement of the Gemini Express chairlift with a gondola on the mountain side. That's the piece that connects the base area to Discovery Park. Eventually, it links up with the town-side gondola to create a continuous aerial connection from downtown all the way to Cooper Creek Summit.

There's also a new ski-back trail planned that would let you ski from the mountain directly into town. So the connectivity works in both directions -- ride up via gondola, ski back down on a dedicated trail.

Show Me the Money

A $2 billion plan needs $2 billion in funding, and this is where it gets interesting.

Alterra Mountain Company is providing the major private investment -- the on-mountain upgrades, the gondola infrastructure, the resort-side development. But the town infrastructure (roads, utilities, the gondola landing zones, public spaces) will be funded through tax increment financing (TIF), a Colorado mechanism that redirects the increased property tax revenue generated by redevelopment back into the public infrastructure that enabled it.

In plain English: the town builds the infrastructure, the new development drives up property values, and the higher tax revenue pays off the infrastructure investment. It's a common tool in Colorado, but the scale here is unusual for a mountain community.

The town also established a Regional Infrastructure Cooperation Agreement (RICA) in June 2025, bringing together the town, Alterra, and local metropolitan districts to coordinate funding and construction of new public transit infrastructure. The gondola is the first major project under RICA.

Town council also secured a commitment from Alterra to dedicate three parcels of land for workforce housing -- a critical piece given that affordable housing is already a crisis in most Colorado mountain towns.

Where Things Stand Right Now

As of spring 2026, the project remains in the planning and approvals phase, but the regulatory progress has been steady:

• The base area Preliminary Development Plan (PDP) was submitted to the Town of Winter Park in July 2024, revised in November 2024 and February 2025, and recommended for Planning Commission hearing
• The first Final Development Plan (FDP) covering Phase 1A was submitted in December 2024 and is being revised based on town comments. This phase includes up to 400 multifamily units, 35,000 square feet of commercial and service space, and nearly four acres of preserved open space
• The 165-acre rezoning was approved by Town Council in June 2025
• The RICA formation was approved in June 2025
• Town staff were preparing to bring gondola landing area design concepts to council meetings as of April 2026
• The USFS Mountain Master Development Plan is progressing through the NEPA process for specific near-term projects

Construction on the gondola and initial base area phases could begin as early as summer 2026, pending final permits.

It's worth noting: actual construction has not started anywhere yet. A corrected report from Sky-Hi News in April confirmed that no excavation or construction work has begun on the gondola landing site or anywhere else on the resort. This is still planning. But it's planning with unanimous council votes, signed agreements, and real money behind it.

The Gemini Express Problem

For anyone who's skied Winter Park, the Gemini Express replacement is maybe the most immediately exciting piece of this puzzle.

Gemini Express is a high-speed quad that runs from the base area up to the top of the Gemini terrain pod. It's one of the first lifts most visitors ride, and on busy days it's a bottleneck. The base area gets congested, the loading area gets chaotic, and the 2,400 people-per-hour capacity starts to feel really inadequate.

The replacement is a 10-passenger gondola with a capacity of 3,600 people per hour -- a 50% increase in throughput. Gondola cabins also handle wind better than exposed chairs, which matters at a resort that regularly sees high-altitude gusts shut down upper lifts. And enclosed cabins are simply more comfortable for beginners, families, and anyone who'd rather not freeze on a 10-minute ride.

This isn't just a lift swap. It's the first physical piece of the Connect Winter Park system -- the on-mountain segment that eventually links to the town gondola.

What It Means for the I-70 Corridor

Winter Park sits in an interesting position in Colorado's ski geography. Unlike the I-70 resorts (Vail, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Breckenridge, Copper, A-Basin, Loveland), Winter Park is accessed via US-40 over Berthoud Pass or through the Moffat Tunnel. That means it sidesteps the infamous I-70 traffic nightmare -- mostly.

But Winter Park's proximity to Denver (about 80 miles) and its status as an Ikon Pass resort mean it draws massive Front Range day-trip traffic. The town-to-resort gondola is partly a traffic solution: if visitors park downtown instead of driving to the base area, that's fewer cars competing for limited resort parking and fewer vehicles on the access road during peak hours.

The plan also envisions enhanced mountain passenger rail service in partnership with CDOT and municipalities from Denver and Arvada, potentially extending to Steamboat and Craig. The Winter Park Express Amtrak service already runs from Denver Union Station, and expanding that service could meaningfully reduce car traffic on the entire I-70/US-40 corridor.

If you zoom out, Winter Park's masterplan is essentially a bet that the future of Colorado skiing is less about parking lots and more about multi-modal transit. Park downtown, take the gondola. Take the train from Denver, ride the gondola. Ski back to town on a dedicated trail. It's an integrated transportation vision that most I-70 resorts can only dream about, because Winter Park actually has the physical space and the town-resort proximity to make it work.

The "Nobody Wants to Be Aspen" Factor

Jon Peacock, the town manager, addressed this directly. He's seen what unchecked development did to Aspen -- where he previously served as Pitkin County manager -- and he's blunt about it: "Nobody here wants to be Aspen."

The difference, he argues, is Winter Park's DNA. Most visitor traffic comes from the Front Range, not destination travelers. The local community in Grand County still has what he calls "a feeling of authenticity that people are trying to keep here that has to do with the fact that this community still serves folks who are working for a living."

That's a nice sentiment. Whether it survives a 400-500% increase in hotel rooms and a near-doubling of housing units is a different question. The deed-restricted housing program and the workforce housing commitments from Alterra are a start, but the pressure is going to be enormous. Doubling the size of a town in seven years is... a lot.

"It's a pace that our community hasn't seen, maybe ever," Peacock acknowledged.

The Scorecard

Here's what Winter Park is trying to pull off by 2033:

The Bottom Line

Winter Park's masterplan is the rare mountain development project that's actually matched its ambition with real regulatory progress. The rezoning is done. The RICA is signed. The funding mechanism is established. The USFS process is moving. And Alterra is writing checks.

The question isn't whether this will happen -- it's how fast and how well it gets executed. The gondola connecting town to mountain is the signature move, and if it works, it'll be a model for every mountain town in the West that's struggling with traffic, parking, and the fundamental disconnect between where visitors sleep and where they ski.

Summer 2026 construction start is still the target. We'll be watching.

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Tomorrow in Construction Season: We head to Park City, where a different kind of upgrade battle is playing out on the Ikon side of the mountain.

Read Part 1: Deer Valley | Read Part 2: Sugar Bowl