Battle Mountain Settlement Agreement

On September 6, 2023, The Minturn Town Council voted to approve the Battle Mountain settlement agreement, which would resolve the lawsuit filed by Minturn on March 4, 2022.  The two parties are now in a 6-month due diligence period.  

The resolution approving the settlement agreement can be found HERE.  

Background:

In 2008 the town of Minturn overwhelmingly voted to adopt an Annexation Agreement, under which the Battle Mountain property was annexed into the Town of Minturn. Due to litigation by a private party and Trust contesting the annexation, the Annexation Agreement didn’t become finalized until 2019 when the final court determination upheld the annexation.

Included in the annexation approval were several promises that Battle Mountain made in exchange for the annexation of the 3000+ acre-property. By 2019 the mountaintop and majority of the property acreage had been sold to a third party, the original development project had been shelved, and the developer sought a scaled-down housing project with a renegotiation of the original Annexation Agreement.  

After several failed attempts to approve a funding agreement, which would have allowed for renegotiation discussions to take place, Minturn ultimately filed the lawsuit for breach of contract to try and force Battle Mountain to pay damages for the promises it made in the Annexation Agreement. The two parties have actively worked over the last year and a half to find a resolution to the dispute, with Minturn having negotiated each part of the Settlement Agreement with the assistance of attorneys and other experts.

The Settlement Agreement (See below for link to full Agreement):

The Settlement Agreement is the culmination of the negotiation between Minturn and Battle Mountain. The Town Council has reviewed all possible legal options for both litigation and settlement scenarios and believes the Settlement Agreement is in the best interest of Minturn. The Settlement Agreement outlines how the two parties will settle the dispute, provides a minimum six-month due diligence period for either party to walk away at any time, and then contemplates how further settlement documents will be executed should the two parties continue to move forward after the diligence period. The Town Council has drafted a Frequently Asked Questions and Answers document that explains the Settlement Agreement in significantly more detail, and many questions about how the settlement would work are contained in that document. See below.