Big Sky is no Aspen, Colo. But the super rich are flocking here anyway.
The lure: the Yellowstone Club, a private, millionaires-only resort community whose amenities more than make up for Big Sky's lack of a traffic light or a designer boutique. Occupying 22 square miles of mostly wilderness, it's the only private club in the U.S. with its own ski mountain and world-class golf course.
News Corp. President Peter Chernin joined two years ago and, just before Christmas, he and his family stayed for the first time in their newly built house on a double lot near the top of Andesite Mountain. Next door, Steven Burke, president of Comcast Corp., is planning to break ground on a new home next spring. Bill Gates (news - web sites), co-founder of Microsoft Corp., owns the two lots next to Burke's.
"Sometimes you have to pay to play," says the Yellowstone Club's website, which explains that in exchange for an initiation fee of $250,000, a required property purchase of $1 million to $10 million and annual dues of $16,000, members enjoy a gated wonderland that offers 40 hiking and biking trails, rivers perfect for fly-fishing and an 18-hole course designed by former pro Tom Weiskopf, who is a member.
So few skiers use the 2,700 feet of vertical slopes that a blizzard can take weeks to pack down, guaranteeing so much untracked snow that the club has trademarked the slogan "Private Powder."
Perhaps as important, the resort, whose borders are discreetly patrolled by helicopter, employs a 28-year veteran of the Secret Service as its "director of privacy."
"Once you go there, you have to join," said Brad Howard, a Los Angeles real estate developer and Yellowstone Club member who is building a $6-million home, complete with an artist's studio for his wife.
But when he first applied, he admitted, "I wondered if they would like me."
That's because just being loaded does not guarantee entry. Members must also heed the personal motto of Yellowstone Club founder and timber magnate Timothy Blixseth: Check your ego at the door.
"I've given some members warnings. I've returned some checks," said Blixseth, 54, who said his ideal Yellowstone Club applicant possessed not only a minimum of $3 million in liquid assets (a membership requirement), but also impeccable manners. "Our target member is a good, down-to-earth, humble person who is thankful for his or her success.... No jerks allowed."
This marketing strategy -- call it "only nice-rich people need apply" -- sets the Yellowstone Club apart from other enclaves, from Malibu to Maui, where the very privileged gather.
In addition to the club's "honorary board" members, who include News Corp.'s Chernin, former Vice President Dan Quayle and former Rep. Jack Kemp, nearly 200 millionaires have joined, many of them captains of industries such as pharmaceuticals, fast food, finance, real estate and media.
Not for nothing is one of the club's 40 ski trails named "EBITDA," a Wall Street measurement of a company's financial health.
LATimes