John E. Sununu is running for Senate touting his management of his family’s ski resort. Records show taxpayers helped build it up at every turn, from federal loans to a state check that only ever goes to one ski resort at a time: theirs.
When John E. Sununu asks New Hampshire voters to send him back to the U.S. Senate, his campaign biography offers the family ski resort as proof of his private-sector judgment: He “served as chairman of the board for the Waterville Valley Ski Resort.”
What the biography does not mention is that more than $28 million in government money has flowed since 2010 to Waterville Valley and to the companies owned by the family that controls the resort, according to federal spending records, state expenditure ledgers, and town documents reviewed by Granite Post.
Nearly $14 million went directly to companies the family owns. Most of the rest went to the town government of Waterville Valley, where the family owns the resort, the town square and most of the land that can still be built on, so public money that improves the town also lifts the value of the family’s holdings.
And Sununu still has skin in the game.
His candidate financial disclosure shows a stake in the family’s ski resort holding company along with Waterville Valley land and property up to $100,000.
One line in the state’s books shows how unusual his family’s position is.
In 2018, the year after Chris Sununu became governor, the state started sending checks of roughly $25,000 to $29,500 to the Sununu family’s mountain resort, issued by a department run by a commissioner he appointed that same year.
No other ski resort in the records has received one since, and the ledgers never say what the money is for.
The money is a mix of grants, forgiven loans, taxpayer-backed loan guarantees, and state payments.
The records show the family’s companies pursuing it. They applied for the loans, invoiced a state-funded tourism nonprofit, wrote letters supporting the town’s federal grant requests, and supplied the growth projections used to justify a publicly funded sewer plant.
They did so while members of the family held some of the most powerful offices in the state. John’s brother Chris ran the resort as chief executive until he was sworn in as governor in January 2017, then spent eight years atop the state government that approved much of the money.
John’s candidate disclosure puts numbers on what he stands to gain.
Under Sununu Holdings LLC, the family’s investment holding company, he reports a stake in Waterville Valley Holdings, which the filing describes simply as “Ski Resort,” valued at $50,001 to $100,000; undeveloped Waterville Valley land held through the family’s Tyrell Development Company, valued at $100,001 to $250,000; and a single-family home in Waterville Valley held through Sununu Partners LLC, valued at $100,001 to $250,000.
While public filings show little income to Sununu from the Waterville Valley resort his family’s holdings have gained significant worth as a result of the influx of taxpayer funds.
As Granite Post has reported on the money behind Sununu’s Senate comeback, his stock portfolio already looks a lot like his donor list.
In 2019, Waterville Valley Holdings bought a majority of the town’s remaining developable land, The company was chaired by John E. Sununu’s father, former Gov. John H. Sununu, who said the purchase would help make Waterville Valley “a thoughtfully developed, year-round recreation destination.” The town’s own 2023 report describes the family’s Tyrell Development Company as the town’s major landowner and developer.
Waterville Valley’s businesses also benefit from New Hampshire’s Joint Promotional Program, a matching grant program for tourism promotion run by the state Division of Travel and Tourism Development. The grants go to the Waterville Valley Resort Association, a nonprofit of local businesses. State ledgers show the association has received more than $468,000 in state grants who administers the grants.
“I am a bit concerned with this because as you know these funds are being awarded to Waterville Valley Resort Association, Waterville Valley Resort needs to be treated as an outside vendor just like you would any other vendor when requesting a service,” Brittany Littlefield, the grant administrator at the state’s tourism office, wrote in an email obtained by Granite Post, quoting the resort’s own contract language saying its marketing team “oversees the grant process from start to finish,” including grant applications and reimbursements.
“This all should be done by the Association not your marketing agency.”
Federal spending records show the family’s companies have repeatedly sought out and won money from programs designed for businesses that cannot get it on their own.
In 2017, the family’s WVRE, LLC received a $5 million loan backed by the Small Business Administration through a program for small businesses, which federal rules limit to applicants who cannot obtain credit elsewhere.
That same year, the resort received a $250,000 federal rural energy award.
In 2020 and 2021, Waterville Valley Holdings received two Paycheck Protection Program loans, $1,429,200 and $1,706,045.
Both loans were fully forgiven with interest, for a total of nearly $3.2 million in federal money the company never had to pay back.
And in February 2022, the US Department of Agriculture approved a $5 million Business and Industry loan guarantee for Waterville Valley Ski Resort, LLC, money the department’s announcement said would buy “an upgraded, 6-person ski lift and new snow-making equipment.”
The family’s companies also backed the town’s own requests for federal money. A 2021 application for more than $1 million in federal transportation funds to build pedestrian pathways around the ski town included letters of support from the resort and Tyrell Development.
And in December 2020, while Chris Sununu was governor, state ledgers show Waterville Valley Holdings received $350,000 in “Main Street Relief 2.0” pandemic aid, paid out through the Executive Department, the branch of state government his own office sits in.
In February 2023, the state awarded Waterville Valley an $800,000 federal grant and a $4 million low-interest Clean Water State Revolving Fund loan for clean water infrastructure.Gov. Chris Sununu, who is John E. Sununu’s brother, and the Executive Council approved the funding. State records show a further $10 million in Clean Water State Revolving Fund money for the project approved in 2024, while Chris Sununu was still governor.
The resort, meanwhile, is asking the US Forest Service to approve a major expansion onto federal land: roughly 333 additional permit acres, an 8,550-foot village-to-summit lift system connecting the town to the mountain, about 200 acres of new tree-skiing terrain, new snowmaking, and a restaurant at the top of Green Peak, along with a forest plan amendment that would remove Canada lynx habitat protections from the expansion area. The resort’s expansion proposal references the need for additional wastewater infrastructure to support the new facilities.
All of it has been good for the family’s balance sheet.
Waterville Valley’s total property valuation more than doubled between 2019, the year the family bought up the town’s remaining developable land, and 2024, rising from roughly $331 million to $729 million.
The family is the town’s principal landowner, and the state has steered a tax break toward the town before.
In 2019, Gov. Chris Sununu selected the area that contains Waterville Valley as one of New Hampshire’s 27 federal Opportunity Zones, a program offering capital gains tax breaks meant to draw investment to distressed communities.
Democrats questioned the pick at the time, noting the area is among the state’s wealthier places and that the governor’s family owns the resort therein. NHPR reported that when James Sununu, the governor’s brother and a director of the resort company, denied plans to use the tax break, he did not rule out ever using it, repeating the phrase “at this time” three times. The governor’s office said the designation targeted neighboring Lincoln and Thornton and denied any conflict of interest.
