HAPI Trails

Local News 8 featured our recent work helping pair HAPI Trails horse rescue with the Saddleback Vistas Homeowners Association so they can take over the languishing horse facilities and the former arena site. Reporter Karole Honas did a great job telling the story of grassroots community planning creating a win-win for both homeowners and horses.

Teton Saddleback Vistas was originally built as an 1,100 acre luxury equestrian development in Teton Valley, located at 3500S and HW 33. When the local real estate market tanked in 2009, many of the luxury homes in Saddleback Vistas stood empty and unfinished. However, by 2014, most of these abandoned or foreclosed homes had been resold to people who completed the improvements and took up residency in them.  Suddenly, what had been a ghost town began to look and feel like a real neighborhood! This fall, the neighborhood Homeowners Association (HOA) approached our organization about breathing new life into the arena site. We paired the Teton Saddleback Vistas HOA with HAPI Trails, a local nonprofit horse rescue organization. It’s a win-win for everyone. The HOA which will see a huge reduction in their property taxes from the re-use of the site, and HAPI Trails will gain the high quality facilities they desperately need for their horse rescue and rehabilitation programs. Through our HOA program we paired the Teton Saddleback Vistas HOA with HAPI Trails, and our staff directly facilitated the negotiations and drafted the custom contracts for HAPI Trails to take over these languishing equestrian facilities and breathe new life into the site. Today, when you drive past Saddleback Vistas on Highway 33 today, you’ll see corrals, barns, and happy horses where the blighted hole from the horse arena once stood.