After sitting idle for the past two winter seasons and a summer zipline that’s been closed since 2023, Sleeping Giant Ski Area owner Nick Piazza is looking for someone to help run the resort or just buy it outright.
Piazza told Cowboy State Daily he put the ski area located 48 miles west of Cody just outside Yellowstone National Park, including all of its associated infrastructure, on the market Tuesday for $500,000.
“It’s us looking for a strategic partner, but it doesn’t preclude us from selling,” Piazza said. “I wouldn’t say no to the right sale, but it’s not something I think is imminent or reasonable.”
Piazza bought the previously nonprofit ski area in 2020 for less than $100.
He’s now put the mountain up for sale with 307 Real Estate at a price that’s still cheap compared to what other ski areas are going for in today’s ski industry. Piazza also said that although the listing price is “very fair,” it’s also “very negotiable.”
Piazza said his top goal would be to find someone who’s willing to operate the hill on a daily basis, and particularly focus on the mountain’s summer operational activities.
“We’d love to find a strategic partner so we could maintain our financial role, but somebody else would do more operations,” he said. “We are kind of checking the market.”
But if that doesn’t happen, Piazza said he would be willing to part with the ski area outright to ensure it has a better future.
“Our goal from the beginning is to keep Sleeping Giant open,” he said. “We recognize that we need more help. We just don’t have the manpower.”
Piazza said although he’ll put restrictions on who partners with or buys the resort, he wouldn’t be opposed to a large corporation purchasing it and developing the local ski hill significantly.
Harder Than It Looks
Piazza is a Cody native who spent a significant amount of his adult life working in Ukraine, where he was successful working in the finance industry. He still runs a business there and spends a large amount of time working in the eastern European country.
Ultimately, Piazza sees himself much more of a financier than an operations manager or a full-time ski lodge owner.
“What we need is someone to come in and live it on a day-to-day basis, which probably isn’t and never planned to be me,” he said. “We’re happy to try and find those kinds of people.”
But that hasn’t stopped him from spending what he estimates to be around $1.5 million since acquiring the ski area four years ago. This has included the installation of lights for night skiing, building a yurt, around $100,000 in lift upgrades and other works of maintenance around the area that first started running in the 1930s.
“It’s job No. 1 to keep Sleeping Giant in the community and keep it a recreation center in the West,” he said.
One of the biggest hurdles Sleeping Giant must overcome is a lack of proximity to a major metropolitan area. Although the mountain boasts great ski terrain, it’s relatively small, which makes it harder to attract guests from many miles away when there are competing ski areas that are much larger.
To break even financially, Piazza said the mountain needs to sell about 80 lift tickets a day.
Only the ski area infrastructure is up for sale, as the business leases its land from the U.S. Forest Service. Piazza said the business only uses about 10% of this land, so there’s plenty of room for growth.
With the development of lodging or buying into a lodge, he believes that problem could start to be addressed.
“If we had lodging for 50 people to stay all weekend, all of a sudden we have a much stabler business model,” he said.
For The Community
When Piazza bought Sleeping Giant, there was optimism in the Cody community about a better future for the ski hill.
The mountain had run as a nonprofit since 2004, a management approach that worked but left the group asking its donors every year for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Many of Piazza’s stated goals for the mountain still remain, but now with the shifted focus of getting them achieved with a business partner or new owner.
“We’re not running away from this, but our No. 1 goal is to keep it open and operating,” Piazza said. “This is the path we’ve chosen.”
Contact Leo Woflson at leo@cowboystatedaily.com
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
