Following months of increasingly contentious head-butting, officials in the mountain town of Vail, Colorado, are moving to seize a property from a local ski resort to prevent it from constructing new housing for its employees.

The property in question is a 5-acre site abutting a frontage road in the eastern part of the 5,600-person ski town. After nearly five years of rezonings, planning, permitting, and litigation, ski resort operator Vail Resorts is ready to move ahead with the $17 million Booth Heights project that would create 165 beds for its work force.

"It's been a multiyear partnership, collaboration, and process to get where we are with a fully entitled and shovel-ready project," says Vail Resorts spokesperson John Plack. "This is private property owned by the company and private dollars that the company is investing into the project."

Plack tells Reason that there's a deficit of some 6,000 beds for the county's work force. The Booth Heights development wouldn't solve that crisis, he says, "but every little bit helps."

Standing in their way is the town of Vail itself, which filed a petition in Eagle County District Court on Friday to invoke its eminent domain powers to seize the Booth Heights site and hold it as open space, Vail Daily first reported.

"It's unfortunate we've come to this place," says Vail Mayor Kim Langmaid of the eminent domain petition.