The Sundance Film Festival is leaving Utah for Boulder, Colorado in January 2027, and Robert Redford — who died at his Sundance, Utah home on September 16, 2025, aged 89 — is no longer around to steer the ship. Yet the 5,000-acre mountain resort he built in Provo Canyon isn't fading into nostalgia. It's mid-way through a deliberate second act, scripted with Redford's approval before he died.
Redford sold the resort in 2020 to Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners, and the transition has preserved what made the place singular. More than 70 percent of the property is now a protected nature sanctuary, thanks to a partnership between the Redford family and Utah Open Lands that expanded the Redford Family Elk Meadows Preserve. New for 2026: a 63-room Inn and a high-speed chairlift.
The operation is in familiar but capable hands. Chad Linebaugh, president and general manager, started as a waiter here at 24 and never left; he's since hired Kit Pappas as managing director, a veteran of Capella, Ritz-Carlton and high-end mountain properties. Linebaugh is now freed up to lead the kind of experiences he personally guided recently — a three-mile VIP hike to Stewart Falls. Weddings and group bookings are up 30 percent from 2025 to 2026, and celebrities still slip in quietly, minus the festival circus.
The setting does a lot of the selling. Mount Timpanogos, an 11,752-foot peak in the Wasatch, looms over the canyon, which blazes red, orange and aspen yellow in fall. Winter turns Sundance into a low-key ski hill: 80 percent of skiers are local, half the runs are expert terrain, and the rest suit beginners and intermediates — practically a private mountain in December. Neighbours Snowbird and Alta are visible from the summit, and Deer Valley's planned terrain doubling nearby hasn't tempted Sundance into an arms race. Linebaugh's line: keep it its own thing, with nature and art at the core.
That art legacy runs deep — the Sundance Institute's director labs here nurtured Quentin Tarantino, Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao. Guests can tap into it at the Art Studio, where two-hour painting, printmaking, pottery and silversmithing classes end with a handmade souvenir. Stays range from the new Inn to cottages and ten managed luxury homes, including six-bedroom Cascade Ridge, a former makeup artist's house with stone fireplaces, taxidermy (a mountain lion, a bear, a steer named Bessie) and an outdoor Jacuzzi big enough for a film crew. Off the slopes: the Tree Room's pepper steak, live music at the Owl Bar, a spa and outdoor hot springs.
Rooms in the Inn start at $433 a night, with cottages and homes priced individually. For travellers, the pitch is simple: you don't need a festival badge to experience Sundance anymore — just a willingness to breathe differently on the drive up the canyon, as Redford put it.
Story via Robb Report Travel.
