By Daniel Kaufman | March 4, 2026 | danielkaufmanrealestate.com

There’s a ski resort in the northeastern United States that most people have never heard of. It sits on hundreds of acres of titled, developable land. It has an operating ski mountain with existing infrastructure — lifts, trails, base lodge, the works. It’s surrounded by one of the most authentically preserved historic landscapes in the region. And it’s been quietly waiting for the right developer to recognize what it actually is: a generational mixed-use development opportunity hiding in plain sight.

I’m not going to tell you where it is — not yet. Not in a blog post. The location stays confidential until you’ve signed an NDA and we’ve had a real conversation. That’s not me being coy. That’s me protecting a deal that took years of relationship-building to put together, and protecting the interests of everyone at the table.
But I can tell you everything else. So let me do that.

What I’m Building

This isn’t a single-product play. It’s a vertically integrated, mixed-use mountain community built around four distinct asset classes operating on the same land:

1. Ski Operations
   The mountain is real and it’s running. I’m preserving and upgrading existing ski operations — lifts, snowmaking, trail network — while layering in the kind of capital investment that transforms a regional ski area into a destination. I’m in active dialogue with ropeway and lift engineers on chairlift specifications. This isn’t a paper mountain.
2. Workforce Housing (via Oldivai)
   This component is close to my heart. Mountain resort communities across the country are choking on a workforce housing crisis — the people who run the lifts, staff the restaurants, and make hospitality work can’t afford to live within an hour of the job. I’m building thoughtfully designed workforce housing targeting 80–120% AMI using my Oldivai modular platform. This gets people home. It also makes the entire resort ecosystem actually function.
3. Market-Rate Residential
   The residential program captures the appetite for mountain living that hasn’t gone away post-pandemic — it’s just gotten more selective. Buyers want authenticity, access, and a genuine sense of place. They’re not buying a condo in a ski village that looks like every other ski village. I’m designing for the buyer who wants something real.
4. Boutique Lodging
   A curated lodging product — small, deliberate, brand-aligned — that activates the base area and serves both the destination skier and the drive-to visitor. I’m in early conversations with hospitality brands on this component. The goal is a lodging experience that reinforces the identity of the place, not dilutes it.

The Numbers (What I Can Share)
The total project is capitalized at approximately $26.9 million.

This is not a speculative land play. The underlying asset has existing operations, existing infrastructure, and existing revenue. I’m not starting from zero — I’m unlocking value that has been sitting dormant under undercapitalized ownership.

The acquisition basis is compelling. I’ll leave it at that until we’re under NDA.

Why This Deal Works
I’ve been watching this property for years. My relationship with the seller goes back to 2018. That kind of patience is how you get a basis that makes the math work when everyone else is paying peak prices for mediocre assets.
A few structural tailwinds worth understanding:
The ski industry is consolidating — and that’s good for independent operators who get the capital right. The Ikon/Epic duopoly has trained a generation of skiers to expect pass-based access to mega-mountains. But there’s a meaningful and growing counter-movement: skiers who want uncrowded runs, authentic regional character, and a mountain that isn’t optimized for throughput. That’s exactly what I’m building toward.

Northeast ski real estate is supply-constrained. You can’t just go build a new ski mountain. The regulatory, environmental, and capital barriers are prohibitive. Existing permitted, operating ski areas in desirable locations are genuinely scarce assets. I have one.

Workforce housing is no longer optional — it’s infrastructure. Any resort development that ignores the workforce housing equation is building on sand. I’m treating it as a core component of the capital stack, not an afterthought. That changes the operating economics and the community dynamics. Both matter for long-term value.

The mixed-use model creates multiple exit pathways. Residential sales, hospitality stabilization and sale, condo-hotel structures, long-term hold on operations — the architecture of this deal gives me optionality that a single-product play simply doesn’t have.

Who Should Be Reading This
If you’re an investor looking for a real assets play that isn’t correlated to public markets, isn’t a passive REIT, and involves actually building something — this is worth a conversation.
If you’re a family office, high-net-worth individual, or institutional investor with an interest in experiential real estate, resort development, or workforce housing — same.
If you’re a hospitality operator, brand, or lodging group looking for a development partner on a boutique mountain property — let’s talk.
If you’re a potential equity or debt partner who wants to understand how a capital stack gets built on a deal like this — from someone who’s done it across multiple asset classes and multiple market cycles — I’ll walk you through it.

How to Get More Information
Simple. Two steps:

1. Email me directly at Daniel Kaufman and introduce yourself. Tell me who you are, what you do, and why you’re interested. A paragraph is enough.
2. Sign the NDA. It’s standard, it’s mutual, and it’s the price of admission to the real conversation — the one that includes the location, the full financial model, the site plans, and the capital stack detail.
   Once you’re under NDA, I’ll give you everything. Full transparency is how I operate. I don’t believe in dripping information to string people along. If this deal makes sense for you after you see the whole picture, great. If it doesn’t, we both move on without wasting each other’s time.

A Note on How I Think About This
I’ve spent 25+ years developing across multifamily, mixed-use, workforce housing, and resort projects in California, Vermont, Maine, and beyond. I’ve seen what happens when mountain communities get the capital equation right — and what happens when they don’t.
What I’m building here isn’t just a return-maximizing financial instrument. It’s a place. It has history. It has community fabric. The development plan is designed to honor that while creating real value for investors and lasting infrastructure for the people who live and work there.
Those two things aren’t in conflict. That’s the thesis.
If that resonates with how you think about real estate, reach out.

Interested? Email Daniel Kaufman to request the NDA and receive the full deal package. All inquiries held in strict confidence.

Daniel Kaufman is a real estate developer and investor with 25+ years of experience across multifamily, mixed-use, workforce housing, and resort/hospitality projects. He is the Principal of Kaufman & Company and the founder of the Oldivai modular workforce housing platform. Follow his writing at Daniel Kaufman Real Estate and subscribe to The Kaufman Report on Substack.