Kygo's Palm Tree Crew and Major Food Group Buy 187-Acre Golf Course Outside Aspen

• Palm Tree Crew, Major Food Group, and 8K Capital have bought River Valley Ranch, an 187-acre championship course in Carbondale, Colorado.
• The Jay Morrish-designed course sits in the Crystal River Valley, about 30 miles from Aspen.
• The plan pairs Palm Tree Crew's lifestyle programming with Major Food Group's dining and hospitality operations.
• Sale price wasn't disclosed. The course had been listed for sale earlier this year at $24.5 million.

The deal

A Kygo-backed lifestyle brand and one of the country's busiest restaurant groups are now golf course owners. Palm Tree Crew, Major Food Group, and 8K Capital have acquired River Valley Ranch, the 187-acre public course in Carbondale that has spent nearly three decades as one of the Roaring Fork Valley's most scenic rounds, framed by the Crystal River and 12,965-foot Mount Sopris.

The buyers describe the plan as building "a new kind of golf experience," folding Palm Tree Crew's cultural programming into Major Food Group's culinary operation on top of an already-decorated course. The companies haven't disclosed the purchase price or released a construction timeline, saying only that more details are coming as the project develops.

What's changing hands

River Valley Ranch opened in 1998, designed by Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Jay Morrish, and has landed on Golf Week's list of Colorado's top-ten public courses in recent years. The course carries real, deal history behind it. The Crown family, owners of Aspen Skiing Company, sold it in 2012 for $1.2 million to Dale Rands' River Valley Ranch Golf LLC, which flipped it in 2018 to Crystal Outdoors LLC, led by Dan and Wynee Coleman, for $3.5 million.

Crystal Outdoors put the course back on the market this year through Florida-based brokerage Leisure Investment Properties Group, asking $24.5 million, a valuation built on an $8.5 million golf operation (an 8.06x EBITDA multiple and 12.4% cap rate) layered with $16 million in separately valued development land. Whether the new ownership group paid close to that ask hasn't been confirmed.

The players

Palm Tree Crew is the golf-and-lifestyle brand Kygo (Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll) launched with manager Myles Shear in 2016, since expanded into apparel with Puma and Cobra Golf and into events, including the Palm Tree Music Festival, which the brand has co-produced in Aspen since 2022. Major Food Group is the hospitality company behind Carbone, Sadelle's, and ZZ's Clam Bar, built by Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick into one of the country's most active restaurant groups. 8K Capital rounds out the buying group as the deal's capital partner; its role and track record weren't detailed in the announcement.

What's next

The buyers say the acquisition is meant to be a catalyst beyond the fairways, aimed at drawing more visitors to the Crystal River Valley and supporting the area's luxury hospitality and residential markets. No opening date or renovation scope has been set. The next milestone will be whatever Palm Tree Crew and Major Food Group choose to build first, whether that's a dining concept, a clubhouse overhaul, or new programming layered onto the existing 18 holes.