Hastings, who’s price an estimated $3.5 billion, and his spouse, Patty Quillin, purchased a plot on the mountainside and constructed a modernist picket cylindrical house there eight years in the past. Avid skiers and snowboarders, the couple develop into seasonal neighbors to Martin Sorrell, founding father of the advertising behemoth WPP, and Ken Howery, a cofounder of PayPal. They have been amongst an extended record of outstanding enterprise figures drawn to the imaginative and prescient for an alpine Shangri-la laid out by the younger founders of a glitzy convention collection. 

Now Hastings has purchased out these founders’ stake and can play a central function in deciding what comes subsequent for Powder, in line with a information launch on Monday. He’s “wanting ahead to being part of Powder Mountain’s future” and needs to “safeguard what makes this place particular,” the Netflix cofounder and government chair mentioned within the launch. Reed didn’t reply to requests for additional remark Monday night.

The tip of a dream

Powder Mountain was a fading ski resort in 2013 when it was bought by the 4 twenty-something founders of Summit Sequence, a hedonistic invitation-only convention for entrepreneurs, enterprise capitalists, and celebrities. Summit Sequence occasions are identified for talks by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Invoice Clinton; performances by The Roots and different stars; epic dance events and celebrity-chef ready meals; and immersive seminars on lucid dreaming or psychedelic mushrooms. 

The Summit Sequence founders—Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz—impressed breathless media consideration once they raised $40 million from their high-flying community to purchase Powder Mountain ten years in the past. They shaped a collective with a enterprise capitalist named Greg Mauro and his companion Robb Hutter, and laid out a imaginative and prescient for a year-round house base for the Summit Sequence convention enterprise and a chic city for individuals who shared their ethos: “Make no small plans.” As Fortune reported, Summit “was to be a spot the place large, world-changing, philanthropic concepts can be hatched.”

On the parcel of practically 9,000 acres, the group deliberate for 500 ski-in, ski-out single-family properties and a four-acre village with co-working areas, eating places, and upscale lodges. There was discuss of constructing a Montessori faculty, another college, high-tech greenhouses, and wastewater-recycling methods that may permit the mountain neighborhood to be self-sufficient.

Though the undertaking attracted tons of of buyers and consumers, together with enterprise executives, sports activities stars, and founders, most of what was promised has not materialized. A decade after the mountain buy, fewer than 50 of the promised 500 single-residence properties on the mountain have been constructed and the village exists solely in architects’ renderings: There aren’t any eating places, lodges, or outlets. The roles and financial growth that the out-of-town builders promised county officers when pitching their plan additionally didn’t pan out.

What went fallacious? Constructing a neighborhood at 9,000 toes accessible solely by one of many steepest roads within the nation is not any straightforward feat, and the COVID pandemic and provide chain issues didn’t assist. To make issues worse, the resort builders clashed with some within the native largely Mormon neighborhood in Eden, Utah. However a number of sources instructed Fortune that bitter energy struggles between Bisnow and Mauro defined many of the delays. (Each males denied that there was unhealthy blood, claiming they could have had ups and downs, however no more so than in any such advanced undertaking. Neither responded to requests for remark Monday night.)

An impulse purchase?

Hastings doesn’t appear to share the unique builders’ utopian ambitions for a bustling ski resort for socially acutely aware movers and shakers. In January, he instructed Fortune that he and his spouse love the mountain’s isolation and “pioneer” vibe, and that he sees Powder now as a standard actual property undertaking “with out pretensions to Summit’s ‘We’re going to vary the world with our interactions’” ethos.

“In some unspecified time in the future, it was save-the-world stuff,” Hastings instructed The Salt Lake Tribune in a dialog following his latest splurge. “And I believe now it’s: have an unimaginable ski mountain that’s uncrowded the place you will get multiday powder.”

The Tribune experiences that Bisnow approached Hastings about shopping for the Summit Sequence founders’ stake solely two weeks in the past. “‘You’d be the proper proprietor from our perspective by way of loving the mountain and appreciating it for what it’s,’” Hastings mentioned Bisnow instructed him. 

Hastings will assume one of many 5 seats on the board, the place he’ll assist oversee the mountain’s administration and operations. Mauro stays a co-owner, in line with the information launch. Powder Mountain didn’t disclose how a lot Hastings paid for his piece of the ski hill.  

“Elliott Bisnow and crew had a giant dream that partially got here true,” Hastings mentioned within the information launch. “Greg and I are excited to enhance Powder Mountain additional.”