Quiros gave his son my dear old Burke Mountain to ruin.
Fortunately, between the receivership, Burke Academy which has trained more Olympic downhill skiing medalists than any other ski academy, and the community, that won't happen.
EAST BURKE - After 180 employees were fired at Q Burke ski resort on March 21 — 45 of whom were full-time workers whose loss could not be blamed on the seasonal nature of the ski business — Michael Sher had enough.
Sher immediately launched a Facebook page called "Friends of Burke Mountain," to vent his frustration with Q Burke ownership — the now infamous Ariel Quiros, who also owned Jay Peak Resort. Quiros' son, Ary, acted as CEO of Q Burke.
The elder Quiros is accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the biggest fraud in the history of the Northeast Kingdom. The SEC says Ariel Quiros diverted millions of dollars from foreign investors intended for projects at the resorts and in Newport to his own purposes, including buying a condo in New York and paying his personal income taxes.
Both Q Burke and Jay Peak, along with properties in Newport, have been turned over to a court-appointed "receiver," Michael Goldberg, the attorney who will decide the fate of the resorts with the approval of the federal judge in Miami, where the complaint against Quiros and his partner, Bill Stenger, was filed by the SEC.
"When I read of the loss of 180 jobs in the Northeast Kingdom, a place where you can't afford to lose jobs like that and people count on jobs so dearly, I thought, 'We've got to organize,'" Sher said.
The Northeast Kingdom is perennially the poorest part of Vermont, at the bottom in terms of jobs and income. Sher, a corporate lawyer in Brookline, Massachusetts, has been a season pass holder at Burke Mountain for the past dozen years. His children, Daniel, 23, and Lily, 19, grew up at Burke, he says. Burke means a lot to the 53-year-old Sher.
Within a day of being launched, Friends of Burke Mountain had 500 members, Sher said. The page is now up to more than 3,700 members, representing a wide variety of Burke lovers, including former employees, local residents and business owners, people who own condos or second homes in the area, and hundreds of other season pass holders."It has an incredible spirit and sense of community," Sher said. "It's like no other place, not just a ski area, but really a huge part of my life because of the friendships I've made there, and the opportunity to be close to nature, to ski in an uncrowded way and to do it among friends in an environment that is as far away from the huge corporate ski areas as possible."
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http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2016/05/01/we-burke-strong-say-supporters-burke-mtn/83663548/
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