Gunstock back open, management team in place following bitter political feud

Gunstock Mountain Resort will re-open following an intense political battle. (Gunstock Mountain Resort)

If you had started getting nervous over the last couple of weeks that Gunstock Mountain Resort — embroiled in a bitter, political battle for control — would not be prepared for the winter season, you can rest easy. 

Summer activities (and preparations for ski season) will return to the New Hampshire resort on Thursday, following back-to-back emergency meetings of the Gunstock Area Commission on Sunday and Monday, during which the delegation voted to re-hire general manager Tom Day and the rest of the upper management team that had resigned from the ski area on July 20.

That was conditional upon the removal of Dr. David Strang from the board. Strang, the acting chair, had stated during Sunday’s meeting that he would “be happy to tender his resignation,” under the condition that the county delegation first appoint an additional member of the Gunstock Area Commission. Fellow commissioner Peter Ness had previously resigned on Friday. 

On Monday night, the commission voted Denise Conroy, who told WMUR-TV that she was a “relative newcomer to the state,” to the board at a packed house inside the Gunstock base lodge. Conroy’s husband is a ski instructor at the mountain. 

After Conroy was sworn in, the other members of the delegation read a statement from Strang that announced he had officially resigned. The commission voted to accept Strang’s resignation by a count of 9-to-1. 

Following the meeting, Gunstock made the announcement on social media that its management team was back and ready to get Gunstock open again. 

Keys and seltzers in hand, Tom Day is ready to put this ordeal behind him and get back to work with his directors! ????#gunstockmtn pic.twitter.com/8EgR0TgYCH

— Gunstock Mountain Resort (@Gunstockmtn) August 2, 2022

In all, it took less than two weeks to put an end to a simmering saga that erupted when Day and his entire management team resigned, one-by-one, before the Gunstock Area Commission meeting in Laconia, N.H. Tensions between the Gunstock Area Commission — a five-member board appointed by the Belknap County Delegation with the responsibility of managing Gunstock — and the Gilford resort’s staff members had been increasing in weeks prior. Most recently, the commission had been trying to take a larger controlling stake in the day-to-day operations of the ski resort, which is owned by Belknap County, N.H. 

Day confirmed to New England Ski Journal that it had been an exchange with Strang at a meeting in June that prompted him to understand the drastic decisions that might have to be made. At that meeting, Strang, who was appointed to the commission in February, delivered some incorrect information about a parking lot project at the resort. When Day and Gunstock staff tried to correct him, Strang asked who was in charge of the resort. Day responded, “I am.”

Strang retorted. “I disagree, and I’m very concerned that you’re in charge of the mountain,” he said. “What role do you think that the commission has?” 

It was, however, the Gunstock staff, not the commission, which was able to increase mountain revenue by $6 million since Day’s arrival at the resort in 2020, according to Day.

“When I got there, we did $12 million in revenue. We’re at $18 million now,” Day said. “We have $7.5 million dollars in the bank. We’ve done — accounting this year — $6.2 million worth of capital. Before I got there, we did about $600,000, or they were borrowing money to do other big projects. We did it with all of the money we generated.” 

The rest of the staff members who resigned — Cathy White, chief financial officer; Robin Rowe, director of resort services; Peter Weber, snow sports director; Rebecca LaPense, director of human resources, Patrick McGonagle, facilities operation director; and Kristen Lodge, director of marketing — will all now head back to work at the Gilford resort. 

According to the Laconia Daily Sun, Strang had asked Day and former facilities operations director Pat McGonagle to step back into their positions. But Gunstock Area Commissioners Doug Lambert and Jade Wood read a statement by Day that read, “We resigned as a team and would need to return as a team.”

There was further urgency than simply getting the mountain’s summer activities back up and running for the public. According to the Sun, Lambert said that legal representatives of Soulfest — the Christian music festival scheduled for Aug. 4-6 at the mountain — had threatened to sue the county if the ski lift, zip lines and aerial treetop ropes course were not operational at the festival.

Rep. Mike Sylvia (R-Belmont), who heads up the Belknap County delegation, was reportedly not at Monday’s meeting. Last week, Sylvia accused Day of a 2020 donation to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s reelection campaign with public monies. 

Sununu had raced to the management team’s defense upon resignation, saying that, “Members of the Gunstock Area Commission have lost the trust of the citizens of Belknap County. These individuals have made bad decisions, and until they are removed from their positions and replaced with good people who recognize the wonderful asset that Gunstock is, the County will continue to suffer.” 

Day, hired as Gunstock GM in 2020, had previously held the same role at New Hampshire’s Waterville Valley Resort, a ski resort “owned and controlled by the governor and his family,” Sylvia wrote. 

That led Sununu to lash back at Sylvia’s political views. 

“They wanted to secede from the United States of America, completely un-American,” the governor said via NH Journal. “They don’t believe in democracy. I think those individuals should be removed for a variety of reasons. This is just the latest episode of their craziness.”

In his release, Sylvia claimed that Sununu called for the resignation of the entire commission despite the “financial malfeasance” it had uncovered. It is an ethical quandary, Sylvia wrote, “as it interferes with the leadership of a competitor ski area, whose closure stands to benefit his family and his pocketbook.” 

In a statement to WMUR-TV, Day disputed that the contribution came from public money. 

“We are a for-profit entity that has a donation line item in our budget and we donate to different things to promote Gunstock and promote the area and promote skiing in general,” Day said. “We generate our own revenue and this donation does not affect Belknap County residents because we don’t take Belknap County money.”

Gunstock announced on its website Tuesday morning that its adventure park would re-open on Aug. 4, an official signal that the sniping has ended, and Gunstock faithful can go back to dreaming about skiing there this winter. 

Eric Wilbur can be reached at [email protected].