By admin 
A Ouray County judge has sided with the town of Ridgway in a fight over a local hotel’s plan to lease its 52 rooms to construction workers working in Telluride.
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The town of Ridgway sued the MTN Lodge in March in Ouray County District Court, arguing the owners of the MTN Lodge were violating local land use codes by offering long-term leases for workers building the $1 billion Four Seasons Resort and Residences luxury hotel project in Mountain Village, an hour’s drive away.
The owners of the hotel said they would not be able to remain open if they could not rent to the workers, pointing to visitor occupancy rates in the single digits in the winter months since they acquired the hotel in 2021. The town sued the hotel to stop the long-term rental contracts, arguing the deal qualifies as “household living” in a zone that allows only lodging facilities offering stays of fewer than 30 days.
Ouray County District Court Judge D. Cory Jackson agreed with the town and allowed a preliminary injunction that blocks the rental agreement between the MTN Lodge’s owner, Ridgway Suites LLC, and construction workers with developer Merrimac Ventures.
Communities around Telluride and Mountain Village say all the benefits of the Four Seasons project are rolling into the resorts while outlying towns carry the burdens of housing, reflecting a common concern in resort regions.
The multiyear Four Seasons project on four acres in Mountain Village includes 52 hotel rooms, 43 one-bedroom to five-bedroom hotel residences and 26 private apartments that are priced between $4 million and $35 million. The Florida-based developers of the project have purchased and leased several hotels and cabins in the region and are searching for more worker lodging as construction ramps up.
A group of local leaders in the communities around Mountain Village has issues with the housing plan. A July 2025 letter from a coalition of officials in the west ends of San Miguel and Montrose counties asked Merrimac executives to better outline their plan for wider community benefits from the Mountain Village project.
“This is an opportunity to shift the well-worn pattern of extraction, damaging impact and neglect into a new rhythm of co-stewardship,” reads the July 2025 letter, which said the benefits of the massive hotel project “flow inward” into Mountain Village while outlying communities housing workers “anticipate few, if any, long-term benefits.”
The owner of the MTN Lodge argued that the 50-plus workers staying at the hotel over the winter would deliver a needed economic boost to the region during the slow winter months.
“Any such benefit is outweighed by the town’s more definite interest in an orderly development and land use,” Jackson wrote in his ruling, saying the hotel’s argument that it did not need to pay lodging and sales taxes for stays longer than 30 days “undermines MTN’s economic benefit argument.”
The foundation of the ruling rests on the town’s definition of “household living” and “lodging facility” in its land use code. Household living, which is not allowed in the zoning for MTN Lodge, provides kitchens for stays greater than 30 days. A lodging facility, according to town code, offers lodging for fewer than 30 days at a time.
Ridgway argued that the long-term worker housing did not fit into either definition in the town’s zoning rules and the proposed use is “neither as a lodging facility, nor as household living.”
“The new use is inconsistent with the land use code and the injunction therefore works to serve the existing understanding of the code,” reads Jackson’s ruling.
MTN Lodge is appealing the decision and asking the judge to hold off on the injunction until the appeal can be considered. The hotel argues that the town’s code does not clearly limit lodging facilities to renting for fewer than 30 days.
The hotel already rents to workers and if the court forces the hotel to abandon its deal with Merrimac Ventures, those workers “would be required to vacate on short notice,” reads the most recent filing by MTN Lodge. Finding new lodging for those workers would be “incredibly difficult to impossible,” and likely force workers to drive even more miles to reach the Four Seasons project, reads the hotel owners’ plea for a stay on the injunction.
The owners also said killing the deal with Merrimac would force them to lay off hotel workers and possibly close the business.
A statement from the owners said they were disappointed with the court’s decision but they are complying with the order while the appeal process unfolds.
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