The Montage Big Sky hotel, opened in 2021 and owned by CrossHarbor Capital Partners' Montana arm.
Tucked behind one of the many doors to the main lodge at the exclusive Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana is a spacious lounge with comfy chairs, an array of snacks and cold drinks—and a 15 by 15 foot scale model of the club. It shows the club’s private ski mountain, its lush golf course and hundreds of numbered properties parceled throughout its 15,000 acres–all helpful in selling memberships.
Sam Byrne, managing partner at Boston real estate investment firm CrossHarbor Capital, the club’s principal owner, proudly ticks through the amenities that his team has added to the uncrowded skiing and popular golf options at the club since purchasing it out of bankruptcy in 2009: a performance arts barn that hosts intimate concerts from global rock stars like Sting and the Doobie Brothers; high end restaurants like BaBa, run by Boston celebrity chef Ming Tsai; a night club; a fancy spa and more. “There’s nobody doing what we’re doing,” boasts Byrne.
No other big ski resort town in the country has as dominant an investor as Big Sky does. In addition to buying the Yellowstone Club with partners 15 years ago for $115 million, CrossHarbor made two acquisitions in 2013, with the aim of developing more luxury homes in the area. It spent $26 million to buy Spanish Peaks Mountain Club, a ski and golf community on 5,700 acres that had also declared bankruptcy; and $32 million for Moonlight Basin, a ski resort and residential development that had also gone bankrupt and was owned by its creditor, Lehman Brothers Holdings. After the deals closed, CrossHarbor sold the ski terrains of both Spanish Peaks and Moonlight Basin to Boyne Resorts, the company that owns and operates the Big Sky ski mountain. It merged them into Big Sky Resort, turning it into one of the largest ski resorts in the country, with some 5,800 skiable acres.
Altogether, CrossHarbor has spent at least $4 billion in Big Sky over the past 15 years via a mix of debt and equity. That includes acquiring 43,000 acres through the purchases of Yellowstone Club, Spanish Peaks, Moonlight Basin and land in the Big Sky’s town center, plus building homes, restaurants, two hotels and other amenities on them and buying and building workforce housing.
After purchasing 500 acres from Bozeman’s Simpkins family in 2022, CrossHarbor owns more than half of Big Sky’s town center, according to Matt Kidd, a CrossHarbor partner who runs the firm’s Montana subsidiary, Lone Mountain Land Company. That makes its Big Sky bets the biggest overall project for the 31-year-old firm, which has also invested nationwide in apartment complexes, office towers and retail centers. “CrossHarbor represents the [southwest Montana] region’s most significant private ownership and 75% of the local tax base,” the company said in its 2023 ESG report.
CrossHarbor Capital's Matt Kidd (left) and Sam Byrne introduce the Doobie Brothers at a 2024 Labor Day weekend concert at the Yellowstone Club.
All this money has poured into a town of about 3,300 full time residents that is........