Monarch Mountain Lodge pictured in February, 2024. BusinessDen file photo.
Aborted sales of a 50-year-old hotel in Chaffee County in recent years are the subject of a lawsuit that pits two of its co-owners against another co-owner’s estate.
Monarch Mountain Lodge, at 22720 West U.S. Highway 50 outside Salida, was built in the 1970s by the then-owner of nearby Monarch Mountain ski area. The 90-room hotel has changed hands several times since and was closed in 2013 and 2014 while awaiting a buyer.
Inn-Vestors Inc., based in Arkansas, bought the Monarch Lodge for $1.4 million in 2014. It was a risky purchase, according to past media reports, because the hotel was closed, required $450,000 in repairs and owed $60,000 in back taxes. Also, the state was suing Monarch Lodge for allegedly dumping ammonia in the South Arkansas River.
The property was transferred in 2015 to a Texas company, Hotel Finance Partners Inc. Richard Imperatore, Daniel Ritz, Zane Russell and Michael Jud co-owned that company until Imperatore died in 2019, according to last week’s lawsuit in federal court.
Teresa Cavallo, the executrix of Imperatore’s estate, said that the four shareholders agreed to sell Monarch Lodge sometime before his death and it went up for sale in 2021. She is suing Ritz and Russell for allegedly thwarting several seven-figure sales since then.
A $3.5 million bid in 2022 became a $3.6 million offer after negotiations, so Ritz and Russell agreed to sell in October of that year, Cavallo recalls. But Ritz then refused to provide info to the proposed buyer, who is not named, and canceled that sale, her lawsuit claims.
The snowy exterior of Monarch Mountain Lodge in Salida. (Instagram)
In June 2023, Cavallo said Ritz told her of a new offer and a closing scheduled for August of that year. August came and went. Then, in October, Ritz told Cavallo that the deal had fallen through. In December, Ritz said he had a new, $3.8 million offer, but Cavallo hasn’t received paperwork for that bid or the others that she requested, she said.
Cavallo does claim to have other paperwork, however, showing that Ritz has taken out $1.7 million in mortgages on the lodge’s property “to benefit Mr. Ritz and/or Mr. Russell either directly or indirectly through other businesses in which they were involved,” her lawsuit states.
“Mr. Ritz has caused the sale of the hotel to fall through or be otherwise delayed for improper reasons, including to hide the existence of both mortgages,” it alleges.
Cavallo said her demands for tax documents, ledgers and bank statements have been ignored, leaving her unable to administer Imperatore’s estate. She is an attorney and not an heir to Imperatore, according to her lawyer, John McHugh with Fennemore Craig in Denver.
Cavallo’s case is not the only legal threat that the Monarch Lodge has faced in recent months. In the fall, Chaffee County found 29 code violations, including faulty fire alarms and expired extinguishers. A county official said of the lodge, “It’s an unsafe situation.”
The lodge’s general manager, Kelly Ritz, has denied there are violations. Ritz, who is also a realtor in Texas, did not answer BusinessDen’s requests to discuss the lodge.
An electrician at the hotel told county commissioners in November that Monarch’s staff was stretched thin and that he had been electrocuted while working on faulty wiring.
“It’s not my first time being electrocuted up there,” Gage Mayer said. “It was my first time going to the hospital because of it.”
