Judge stops Lazier family from selling site of proposed Vail condo project

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The proposed Legacy at Vail Square, a 20-unit condo complex. (Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate)

A judge in Eagle County has stopped one of Vail’s best-known families from selling property at the request of a developer who said he was pushed out of a planned condo project.

Scott Ryan “has shown that he will be immediately and irreparably harmed” if the Lazier family is allowed to sell 500 Lionshead Circle in Vail, District Court Judge Rachel Olguin-Fresquez ruled Tuesday afternoon. She stopped the sale for two weeks as a result.

500 Lionshead Circle was set to be sold for an undisclosed amount of money Tuesday, court records show. In a lawsuit Friday, Ryan’s lawyers asked Olguin-Fresquez to stop what they called an “undervalued and rushed” sale of the property in Lionshead Village.

“Mr. Ryan did not want to bring this suit, but his ‘partner,’ whom he helped so many times and in so many ways, has left him with no choice by stubbornly pushing through a sale of a property into which Mr. Ryan is the largest contributor,” his lawyers wrote then.

The project in question is the Legacy at Vail Square, where 20 condos are to range from $1.7 million to $8.5 million, according to past media reports. The Colorado brokerage Slifer Smith & Frampton Real Estate advertises it as “the last development site in Lionshead.”

“We haven’t even broken ground yet and we’re almost 50 percent sold,” broker Pete Seibert said in an August 2022 promotional video. “You could say that Legacy has captured the attention of the world. Our owners are now coming from all over the place.”

The defendant in Ryan’s lawsuit is Jaques Lazier, a former racecar driver and son of Bob Lazier, a key figure in the ski town’s rise. The Laziers own the Tivoli Lodge hotel in Vail.

Ryan said he and Bob Lazier, a friend, agreed in 2019 to co-create condos atop Lazier’s property at 500 Lionshead Circle. Lazier died the following spring, an early victim of COVID-19, and his son Jaques took over his half of the project, according to Ryan’s lawsuit.

“We renamed the project to Legacy in my dad’s honor,” Jaques Lazier told Forbes in 2021.

The project, initially expected to be completed in late 2023, has never broken ground, Lazier said by phone Tuesday. He told BusinessDen that he would respond to Ryan’s lawsuit in court the following day but did not file a response or answer his phone Wednesday.

Ryan’s lawsuit repeatedly refers to the Lazier family as “cash-strapped” or in a “precarious financial position.” As a result, it was Ryan who had to guarantee an $8 million loan for the project, who made payments on that loan, and who paid for asbestos abatement and demolition work, according to the lawsuit. Ryan estimates he has spent $10 million to date.

The Laziers have contributed far less to the project, he alleges, and haven’t transferred 500 Lionshead Circle to a joint LLC. Instead, Jaques Lazier is trying to sell that real estate. Court records don’t name the planned buyer. “None of the proceeds” from that proposed and paused sale “are formally allocated to Mr. Ryan,” his lawsuit said.

With a temporary restraining order preventing Lazier from selling the property until mid-May, Ryan is now seeking a permanent injunction to stop Lazier from marketing or selling it at all. He is also seeking an undisclosed amount of money for theft, breach of contract, bad faith dealing, interference with a contract, unjust enrichment and several other claims.

Ryan is represented by the attorneys Christian Hendrickson, Melissa Reagan and Harshwinder Badhesha from the Denver office of Sherman & Howard.